Liz Kramer

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Liz Kramer current serves as Minnesota's Solicitor General.  Previously, she was a partner at Stinson Leonard Street and the founder of the award-winning blog, ArbitrationNation.

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Today I present a collection of recent state and federal appellate court decisions that vacate or un-vacate arbitration awards. The seven opinions below emphasize how difficult it is to prove that an arbitrator exceeded his or her power and suggest that the surest way to vacate an arbitration award is still by presenting evidence that…

The Fifth Circuit un-vacated an arbitration award last week, holding the district court had wrongly concluded that the court was the proper decision-maker on contract formation.  Although courts are presumptively authorized to decide whether an arbitration agreement exists, the Fifth Circuit found the parties altered that presumption by “submitting, briefing, and generally disputing that issue…

If you won your arbitration, it is vexing to have to spend many thousands more in attorneys’ fees opposing a motion to vacate the arbitration award.  (That is especially true if you signed up for arbitration thinking it was faster and avoided appeals.)  But, can you ask the court to award you the attorneys’ fees…

In March, the highest courts of Montana, Texas, and Wisconsin all held that, when parties have a valid arbitration agreement, the issue of whether an arbitration demand was timely is presumptively for the arbitrator to decide.  That principle of law has been established under the FAA at least since the Howsam decision in 2002 (and…

Let’s say your arbitration agreement calls for arbitration administered by JAMS under JAMS rules, but the arbitrator is independent and applies AAA rules, over one party’s objection.  A new decision from the Fifth Circuit says that is enough to vacate the resulting award.

In Poolre Insurance Corp. v. Organizational Strategies, Inc., __ F.3d__, 2015 WL…

A new case from the Sixth Circuit addresses whether accountants who are resolving a dispute about payments made under an agreement can also make legal determinations about the same agreement. In a 2-1 decision, the Sixth Circuit held that the scope of the dispute clause is broad enough to allow the accountants to resolve contract…

Almost two years ago in American Express Co. v. Italian Colors, SCOTUS significantly narrowed, but did not overrule, the “effective vindication” doctrine, which allows plaintiffs to invalidate an arbitration agreement if it precludes them from effectively vindicating their federal statutory rights.  A decision today from the Eighth Circuit shows just how difficult it is…

What’s one way to derail a potentially large collective action about Fair Labor Standards Act violations?  To implement a new arbitration policy within days, thereby ensuring that your current employees cannot join the court case.  At least, that was the successful tactic used by a Chicago restaurant recently.

In Conners v. Gusano’s Chicago Style Pizzeria, …

In my last post, I shared some of the highlights from the first half of the new CFPB Arbitration Study.  This post covers the second half of the report, with juicy information gleaned from CFPB’s analysis of almost 2,000 actual consumer arbitrations and its comparison of those results to actual consumer court actions.

Arbitration…