First, SCOTUSblog referenced “arbitration nation” last fall, which was flattering. Then last week the Ninth Circuit declared: “we have become an arbitration nation.” That was basically the title of my first post on this blog seven years ago! (“We are becoming an arbitration nation.”) I am going to turn up the Janet Jackson
Federal Arbitration Act
Arbitration In the Eye of the Storm
Sometimes current events provide an occasion perfect storm to educate about arbitration basics. This is one of those occasions.
Here are questions that friends and colleagues storming mad people have asked me in the past day or so, with my best answers:
- Does an arbitration agreement have to be signed by both parties to be
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State Supreme Courts Falling In Line On Arbitration
Despite how often I talk about whack-a-mole and the tug-of-war between the state courts and SCOTUS on arbitration, the truth is that the majority of state supreme courts follow SCOTUS’s arbitration precedent (whether holding their noses or not, we don’t know). Recent weeks have given us multiple of those pro-arbitration state court decisions to highlight…
Back to Arbitration Basics: Recent Federal Decisions (and a SCOTUS preview)
Remember when Maria sang “Let’s start at the very beginning, it’s a very good place to start”? Well, that seems to be what federal circuit courts are doing with their arbitration decisions recently. This post will run through some Do Re Mis of arbitration law, as articulated by those decisions (and will close with some…
Un-Vacated: Arbitration Awards Get Whiplash
Two cases recently fit in one of my favorite categories: those awards that get “un-vacated.” These cases went through arbitration, had that arbitration award vacated by a district court, only to have the award later resurrected by an appellate court. In today’s edition, the whiplash happens in both state and federal court.
In Caffey v.
Tale of Two Arbitrations: Demonstrating The FAA In Flux
Whenever people ask me why I choose arbitration law to write and talk about, one of the reasons I give is that the law is in flux, creating a demand for information and analysis. Despite the fact that the Federal Arbitration Act has been around for over 90 years, there are constantly new developments in…
The Arbitration Resistance May Look Like This… (Post #300)
What happens when state courts disagree with SCOTUS’s interpretation of the Federal Arbitration Act? They resist, and they have a thousand different ways of doing so. The Mississippi Supreme Court demonstrated one way to resist recently in Pedigo v. Robertson, Rent-A-Center, Inc., 2017 WL 4838243 (Miss. Oct. 26, 2017). (I neglected to mention the…
Six Arbitration Trends In 2017 (6th Blogiversary Post)
This is my 290th post at ArbitrationNation and today I celebrate six years of blogging. Woo hoo — that’s longer than most celebrity marriages! In honor of the occasion, here are updates on six of the hottest issues in arbitration law so far this year.
- Agency regulation of arbitration agreements. On the one hand, the
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Marshal Service for Arbitration Awards, Relic or Requirement?
So you’ve got an arbitration award, what next? In other types of civil cases, the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (Rules) control service, and they have greatly reduced the role of U.S. Marshals in serving parties. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 4(c). But enter the Federal Arbitration Act § 9 and § 12 (FAA). When…
SCOTUS Reverses KY Nursing Home Arbitration Decision; Refuses To Prioritize Right To Jury Trial
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…