arbitration

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One way to challenge the very existence of an agreement to arbitrate is to say that the parties’ contract said nothing about arbitration and did not validly incorporate any other document calling for arbitration.  Oklahoma and Alabama have recently come out at opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of what kind of notice must…

Three federal appellate courts recently affirmed lower courts’ refusal to compel arbitration.  These cases show that the federal policy favoring arbitration is not absolute – the parties must have agreed to arbitrate the claims at issue and the defendant cannot have waived its right to arbitrate by engaging in significant discovery and motion practice.

In…

Hawaii issued a bold arbitration decision this month. It applied its state contract law to conclude that the parties did not form a clear arbitration agreement, but even if they did, it was unconscionable because it prohibited both discovery and punitive damages.  Narayan v. The Ritz-Carlton Dev. Co., Inc., __ P.3d __, 2015 WL…

Arbitration has a brand recognition problem. Not enough people know what it is.

The recent CFPB report summarized studies showing that even among consumers who know they have an arbitration clause, the majority do not realize they cannot go to court or have their claims decided by a jury. One explanation is that those consumers…

The Supreme Court of Missouri has issued two significant arbitration decisions in recent weeks, showing its willingness to sever any aspects of an arbitration agreement that it finds unconscionable (while enforcing the overall obligation to arbitrate).

First, in a contentious decision, the Supreme Court of Missouri found that a former employee of the St. Louis…

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…

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…