The Eleventh Circuit has “ironed out a wrinkle” in Alabama’s arbitration jurisprudence that seemed to find executors outside the scope of arbitration contracts signed by the decedent.
In Entrekin v. Internal Medicine Assocs. of Dothan, P.A., ___ F.3d __, 2012 WL 3208641 (11th Cir. Aug. 9, 2012), the district court had denied a nursing home’s
Three federal circuit courts have recently looked at the shelf-life of an arbitration agreement. Can it apply even before the contract is effective? What about after a successor takes over the relationship? What if one party unilaterally changes its terms? The answer is that a properly worded arbitration agreement can apply in all those instances,
It must be near the end of the clerk year, because courts are going gangbusters issuing opinions. Today, a roundup of three arbitration decisions from Southern states. Notably, Louisiana makes it tough for lawyers to enforce arbitration agreements with their clients.
After prominently noting that the lower court rulings were “eminently reasonable, logical and just,”
With less colorful language than its last arbitration opinion, the First Circuit sided with the Second and Third Circuits in limiting the application of the 2010 Stolt-Nielsen decision on the availability of class arbitration. Fantastic Sams Franchise Corp. v. FSRO Assoc. Ltd., __ F.3d __, 2012 WL 2402560 (1st Cir. June 27, 2012).
While a court may vacate an arbitration award if the arbitrator exceeds the scope of his authority, the City of Lebanon was unable to convince the Supreme Court of New Hampshire that an arbitrator exceeded his authority when siding against the City in a tax dispute.
The plaintiff in Lebanon Hanger Assoc. v. City of
The Fifth Circuit just issued a decision openly disagreeing with how the Second Circuit has interpreted both the Stolt-Nielsen decision and case law regarding the level of deference that courts owe arbitrators. In Reed v. Florida Metropolitan Univ., Inc., __ F.3d __, 2012 WL 1759298 (5th Cir. May 18, 2012), the Fifth Circuit vacated
A reasonable person may have thought that the Supreme Court effectively killed off class arbitrations with its decisions in Stolt-Nielsen and Concepcion, but at least two government agencies have recently made decisions that ensure financial consumers and employees can bring classwide claims in some arbitrations.
FINRA, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, regulates all securities
The highest court in the District of Columbia has held that piercing the corporate veil is outside the scope of the arbitration clause in Giron v. Dodds, 2012 WL 18574 (D.C. Ct. App. 2012). But the case’s reasoning may extend to all cases in which a party must bring a court case in order
As we pile up the cardboard boxes that held holiday gifts for the recycling truck and select our new year’s resolutions for 2012, here are a few reflections on the last twelve months in arbitration law. I would summarize it as another year where the U.S. Supreme Court was playing whack-a-mole, trying to tamp
Two recent decisions illustrate how individuals that did not sign a contract can be bound by that contract’s arbitration provisions.
In the first, Blaustein v. Huete, 2011 WL 5103759 (5th Cir. Oct. 26, 2011), an individual member of an LLC, Huete, argued he should not be bound by the arbitration clause between the LLC