Federal Arbitration Act

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Now that Justice Gorsuch is confirmed and can take the open seat on the Supreme Court, maybe SCOTUS can move forward on the cases about whether employers can make employees waive their right to class actions in an arbitration agreement.  (Btw, here’s a nice SCOTUSblog piece on Gorsuch’s arbitration decisions.)  In the meantime, California’s…

While the Supreme Court has put off hearing a more contentious arbitration case until the fall (presumably in hopes that it will have nine justices by then), tomorrow it will hear the nursing home arbitration case from Kentucky.  I look forward to listening to the questions and trying to figure out why the Justices granted …

The Ninth, Sixth, and Third Circuits all recently issued decisions about whether putative class or collective actions could proceed despite the existence of arbitration clauses.  In two of those decisions, the courts found the arbitration agreements did not allow for class arbitration and therefore dismissed the claims.  In the third, the court found the arbitration…

Three state supreme courts tackled arbitration law in recent weeks: Alabama, North Carolina, and Rhode Island.  Rhode Island reversed a construction arbitration award because it disagreed with the arbitrator’s analysis.  North Carolina found that an arbitration agreement in a doctor-patient setting was unenforceable as a breach of the doctor’s fiduciary duty.  And Alabama strictly enforced…

Just three weeks into the year and already my pile of arbitration cases is a skyscraper! So, I will cover a lot of ground in this update.

First, the headline. Kimberly, Kourtney, and Khloe Kardashian moved to compel arbitration, although they were not signatories to the arbitration agreement.  Kroma Makeup EU v. Boldface Licensing +…

If I had drafted this annual summary post on November 7, 2016, it would have looked different. At that point, the year had produced numerous (final or proposed) federal regulations that significantly restricted the use of arbitration with consumers in large industries.  In addition, Justice Scalia’s death, along with the prospective election of Secretary Clinton,…

In a fight over whether a single lending transaction involved interstate commerce, the Supreme Court of Nebraska found the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) applied and preempted its state arbitration act.  Wilczewski v. Charter West Nat’l Bank, __ N.W.2d__ (Neb. Dec. 9, 2016).

The case involved buyers who purchased a home from a bank (who…