In two recent decisions, the Alabama Supreme Court made clear that if an arbitration clause specifies it only applies to disputes between the two parties who sign the clause, that will be strictly enforced.  No third party can enforce the arbitration agreement.

In Nissan N. Am. v. Scott, 2017 WL 3446129 (Ala. Aug. 11,

Just as I predicted, SCOTUS reversed the Kentucky Supreme Court’s decision in Kindred this morning.  The interesting piece, though, is that the seven member majority went out of its way to cut off some of the “on trend” methods that state courts have been using to avoid arbitration clauses.

The Kentucky decision can be

Demonstrating just how difficult it can be to separate questions about the “formation” of an arbitration agreement from the “validity” of that agreement, the Fifth Circuit found this month that when an argument was applied to two of the parties’ three agreements, it related to their formation, but when the same argument was applied to

In the past week, the Third Circuit has issued two important decisions on the formation of arbitration agreements.  (Sing it Beyoncé! “Okay ladies, now let’s get in formation.”)  In one, a class action was allowed to proceed in court because the defendant did not obtain explicit enough agreement to the arbitration, and in another an

The Supreme Court of Louisiana refuses to send customers who were injured while playing at Sky Zone to arbitration, finding that the arbitration clause “is adhesionary and therefore unenforceable”.  Duhon v. Activelaf, LLC, __ So. 3d __, 2016 WL 6123820 (La. Oct. 19 2016); Alicea v. Activelaf, LLC, __ So. 3d __, 2016

Lest anyone think that the preemption doctrine in arbitration has gone dormant, today’s cases should set the record straight.  Courts have recently found the FAA preempted state rules in Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Alabama.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court found that one of its rules of civil procedure was preempted by the FAA in Taylor v

What is “arbitration”? Although courts often use and apply the word, rarely do they stop to define it.  While the FAA concerns agreements to “settle by arbitration a controversy,” the FAA does not define “arbitration,” leaving the question to the courts. Lacking definitive guidance from the U.S. Supreme Court, two lines of cases have developed

While regular people count down the days to summer blockbusters that come in the form of high-paid actors fighting aliens or robots, I prefer my summer blockbusters in the form of arbitration opinions that have been months in the making (maybe finally released because the clerks are about to turn over?). Today, I report on