Usually the plaintiffs in a class action want to stay out of arbitration, but in the recent case of JPAY v. Kobel, 2018 WL 4472207 (11th Cir. Sept. 19, 2018), it was the class representatives who were fighting for arbitration.  In particular, they wanted the arbitrator to decide whether they could have a class

The last post focused on three recent state appellate court decisions that refused to compel arbitration or vacated an award, and this follow-up post focuses on seven recent cases that are friendly to arbitration.

My favorite is from Montana.  Although none of its arbitration decisions have been addressed by SCOTUS, Montana decided to preempt any

Showing it will soldier on without Justice Scalia, the Supreme Court granted cert, vacated, and remanded an arbitration decision from West Virginia yesterday.  Because this is the exact same treatment the Court gave a case from Hawaii’s highest court in January (and the same treatment I predicted, ahem), it suggests SCOTUS is trying to go

Lots of interesting arbitration law has been made already in 2016, so here is a roundup from the first four weeks of the year. As a teaser, courts have breathed life into the effective vindication doctrine, found arbitrators cannot determine the availability of class actions, and found state laws not preempted.  More surprisingly, state courts

Relying on the Rent-A-Center decision, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a decision today that construed the parties’ relevant arbitration agreement very narrowly, thereby ducking a decision about whether the larger “disputes” section of the contract was void under state law.  That makes the Eighth Circuit the first federal court to do exactly what