Two different panels of the Second Circuit issued opinions about class arbitration on the same day last week. One creates a circuit split over how specific parties must be to delegate the availability of class arbitration to arbitrators, and the second addresses when bankruptcy law can preempt the federal arbitration act.
In Wells Fargo Advisors
In a recent opinion, the Fourth Circuit cited waiver as its basis to refuse to compel arbitration, but the result seems animated by a sense that the arbitration agreements were unenforceable. Degidio v. Crazy Horse Saloon & Restaurant, Inc., __ F.3d __, 2018 WL 456905 (4th Cir. Jan. 18, 2018).
The case involved a
The Federal Arbitration Act has been in effect for nearly 100 years (92, to be precise). Nevertheless, the First Circuit found two issues of first impression to address this month. In Oliveira v. New Prime, Inc., 2017 WL 1963461 (1st Cir. May 12, 2017), the court refused to compel arbitration of a class action
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
The highest state court in West Virginia just found that a credit card company did not waive its right to arbitrate, despite initially choosing a court forum and waiting almost five years to raise its right to arbitrate. That is a somewhat surprising decision from a court that has been repeatedly willing to buck SCOTUS
Of all the federal circuit courts, I was not expecting the 7th Circuit to venture out on a limb to support the NLRB’s interpretation of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) as precluding class arbitration waivers. After all, the 7th Circuit gets affirmed more than other circuit courts by SCOTUS, earning it a reputation for
What’s one way to derail a potentially large collective action about Fair Labor Standards Act violations? To implement a new arbitration policy within days, thereby ensuring that your current employees cannot join the court case. At least, that was the successful tactic used by a Chicago restaurant recently.
In Conners v. Gusano’s Chicago Style Pizzeria,
In the past year, if I wrote about “FLSA” and “arbitration” in the same post, it likely meant that another federal court had found employers can include class action waivers in their employment contracts without violating the Fair Labor Standards Act. Today, however, is different. The Eleventh Circuit last week found that it was the
After three federal circuits had already refused to defer to the NLRB’s decision in D.R. Horton, it is not surprising that the Fifth Circuit yesterday overruled the NLRB’s critical holding: that precluding class arbitrations is a violation of federal labor law. D.R. Horton, Inc. v. Nat’l Labor Relations Bd., __ F.3d __, 2013
In January of this year, the Eighth Circuit was the first federal appellate court to refuse to adopt the National Labor Relations Board’s ruling on class action waivers in employment contracts. (The previous year, in D.R. Horton, the NLRB declared it a violation of federal labor law for employers to require employees to waive their