Litigation vs. Arbitration

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

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

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau released an “Arbitration Study” exceeding 700 pages to Congress this week.  You have likely heard the headlines – most commentators assume that the CFPB will use the study to support an effort to restrict or regulate the use of “pre-dispute” arbitration in financial transactions.  But, let’s not get ahead of

We all know that the doctrines of issue preclusion (collateral estoppel) and claim preclusion (res judicata) apply with equal force to both arbitration awards and court orders.  But, if your adversary brings new claims that you believe have already been determined in arbitration, where do you go to shut down those new claims — court