Today’s post concerns a perennially hot topic: class actions.  In particular, do courts decide whether an arbitration agreement allows for class actions?  Or do arbitrators?  (Because, it turns out, there are actually some corporations who have not inserted class action waivers in their consumer contracts.)  To date, four circuit courts have held that class arbitrability

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

Class action arbitration continues to be a hot topic among the federal appellate courts this summer.

The 8th Circuit followed the lead of other circuit courts, finding that courts, not arbitrators, presumptively decide whether the parties’ arbitration agreement allows for class arbitration. Catamaran Corporation v. Towncrest Pharmacy, 2017 WL 3197622 (July 28,

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

In a short and sweet opinion issued just six weeks after argument, the Eighth Circuit yesterday held that an arbitrator was authorized to decide whether a non-signatory was able to arbitrate a dispute.  Eckert/Wordell Architects, Inc. v. FJM Props. of Willmar, LLC, __ F.3d __, 2014 WL 2922343 (8th Cir. June 30, 2014).

The

It must be near the end of the clerk year, because courts are going gangbusters issuing opinions.  Today, a roundup of three arbitration decisions from Southern states.  Notably, Louisiana makes it tough for lawyers to enforce arbitration agreements with their clients.

After prominently noting that the lower court rulings were “eminently reasonable, logical and just,” 

To date, courts have largely limited the impact of the Rent-A-Center decision to arbitration agreements with explicit delegation clauses. But, what if Rent-A-Center applied to every single arbitration agreement that mentioned the AAA rules?  That is a very real possibility, and one which would send almost all arbitrability disputes to arbitrators.

The ­Rent-A-Center decision used