Validity of Arbitration Agreement

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Just in time for the Halloween season, the Oklahoma Supreme Court gives us a scary tale about buying a new car.  In Sutton v. David Stanley Chevrolet, Inc., 2020 OK 87, ¶ 1 the Court finds that an arbitration clause in a consumer contract was induced by fraud because the structure of the transaction…

Wrap agreements continue to present challenges.  I don’t often write about district court decisions, and particularly not unpublished ones, but a recent case out of Illinois warrants an exception.  (See earlier considerations of wrap arbitration agreements on this blog hereand here.)

Just as a quick refresher about wrap agreements, courts have refocused the…

At least in theory, mutual assent remains a cornerstone of contract law and thus of arbitration.  The tricky part has become understanding what counts as mutual assent in a world where overwhelming empirical evidence, not to mention our own lived experience, demonstrates that no one reads standardized terms and conditions, including arbitration provisions buried in…

Liz has written before about the ways that state courts sometimes try to resist SCOTUS’s love affair with arbitration.  Resistance can come in many and varying forms, some more subtle than others.

One persistent source of confusion in arbitration law, and thus a locus for resistance, centers on delegation clauses. As a quick refresher, in…

One of the most confounding doctrines in federal arbitration jurisprudence is the severability doctrine.  The U.S. Supreme Court has held, since Prima Paint in 1967, that courts must enforce arbitration clauses within contracts, even if the entire contract is invalid or unenforceable.  (Most non-arbitration geeks don’t believe me when I tell them that’s the law.) …

In an opinion that coins new terms and uses the insouciant tone of a blogger, the 11th Circuit just shut down a putative class action brought by homeowners against a vendor of roof shingles.  The Court found that the terms and conditions printed on the exterior of the shingle packaging formed an enforceable contract (with…

This post is aimed at drafters of arbitration clauses. Because if you don’t insert an administrator for your arbitration, and don’t anticipate that the administrator may just stop providing services, your arbitration clause is dead in the water. At least, that’s the holding of two new state court cases.

In A-1 Premium Acceptance, Inc. v. …

Every time I think the spate of state supreme court opinions about nursing home arbitration surely must be over, another one comes out to prove me wrong.  Last week, it was one from Alabama, finding an arbitration agreement was never formed, because the resident lacked capacity and the daughter who signed on his behalf…