arbitration

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A few months ago, the Ninth Circuit found that the arbitration agreement in Barnes & Noble’s website was not enforceable.  This week, the Ninth Circuit found that the arbitration agreement Sirius XM Radio relied upon was not enforceable because the user did not know he had any agreement with Sirius XM, let alone an arbitration…

The Supreme Court of Hawai’i concluded last week that it is fundamentally unfair to allow one party to an arbitration agreement to unilaterally select the arbitral forum. Nishimura v. Gentry Homes, Ltd., __ P.3d__, 2014 WL 5503393 (Haw. Oct. 31, 2014).  The parties can either jointly agree to a forum, or the court will…

In three cases in recent months, courts have found that plaintiffs who did not sign an arbitration agreement (non-signatories) are not obligated to arbitrate.  In all three cases, a key issue was that the plaintiff’s claims in court did not rely on the contract containing the arbitration clause.

In the most interesting and widely applicable …

Two state supreme courts found consumer arbitration agreements unenforceable in the past week: Arkansas and New Jersey. Arkansas grounded its decision on the lack of mutuality in the consumer arbitration agreement (similar to Missouri’s recent ruling). Alltel Corp. v. Rosenow, 2014 WL 4656609 (Ark. Sept. 18, 2014). New Jersey grounded its decision on…

Cue the R.E.M folks, because the Supreme Court of Missouri issued a 4-3 opinion recently that appears to upend many employment arbitration agreements in that state.  Baker v. Bristol Care, Inc., __ S.W.3d__, 2014 WL 4086378 (Mo. Aug. 19, 2014).  However, the situation is not as dire as it may seem.

The high court…

In a victory for advocates who worry that the odds are impossibly stacked against consumers in some arbitral fora, the Seventh Circuit found that a class of borrowers did not have to proceed with arbitration conducted by the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe (“Tribe”) in South Dakota “because the arbitral mechanism specified in the agreement is…

This week marks the third anniversary of this blog devoted to interpretations of the Federal Arbitration Act.  (Here’s the first post.)  After 155 posts, can there possibly be more to say?  Yes, indeed.  Three new opinions from federal courts of appeals demonstrate how new issues keep “cropping” up in arbitration law each week.

The…