Welcome back to ArbitrationNation after a pandemic and protests hiatus. I hope that you and your families are safe and that you’re confronting and coping with the injustices of our world.
I’m glad to have a good reason to write about arbitration again. I’ve got a boatload of arbitration developments and cases to catch up
Welcome to 2020!
I hope that you all had a safe and rejuvenating holiday season. A new decade brings us plenty of new opportunities for thrilling arbitration news and developments!
But, up first, more on class arbitrability. I know. I know. So last decade. But trust me, this is a case you want to keep
Delegation provisions are a hot topic this year! This week, we’re going to look at two more circuit court decisions centering on delegations and finding ways around them.
Just to set the stage, though, I’ve got to put a little egg on my own face. To quote myself from back in June: “it’s almost
Happy August! What’s a better way to start the month than thinking about class arbitrability! Again. Ugh.
Trust me, I would much rather consider so many other exciting arbitration issues, but this one seems to be occupying a lot of court attention, so I’d be remiss not to report on it.
Since my last update,
The Fifth Circuit just deepened (and confused) a Circuit split over the question of who decides whether an arbitration agreement permits class proceedings. See 20/20 Communications, Incorporated v. Crawford, 2019 WL 3281412 (5th Cir. July 22, 2019).
Liz has written about the split here, here, and here. (You might also recall
So, remember when we talked about Just How Small the Bullseye Is for Challenging a Delegation Clause a few weeks ago? Apparently, the target is small but not necessarily as unhittable as I suggested.
You might recall that in that earlier post we were looking at a Missouri Supreme Court decision, State Ex Rel. Newberry
Happy summer! It’s been far too long since my last update, but rest assured I have been thinking a lot about arbitration. In fact, I’m currently teaching a summer course at Queen Mary University of London’s International School of Arbitration, which is a ton of fun.
My teaching, in fact, partly inspired this post. Teaching
The interplay of the separability doctrine and delegation clauses can create a bullseye that only Hawkeye, the OG Avenger with a bow, might have a prayer of hitting. The Missouri Supreme Court provided a nice reminder about this problem in a recent case, State Ex Rel. Newberry v. Jackson, 2019 WL 2181859 (May 21,
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
I called it. SCOTUS issued its unanimous opinion today in Henry Schein v. Archer & White, vacating and remanding the Fifth Circuit decision and making clear that there is no “wholly groundless” exception to the Federal Arbitration Act’s enforcement of delegation clauses.
As you may recall, a circuit split had developed over the “wholly