The Supreme Court issued another arbitration decision today in New Prime v. Oliveira.  And like last week’s decision in Henry Schein, it was unanimous (but Kavanaugh did not participate).  Today’s New Prime decision has two key holdings:  First, it is for courts, and not arbitrators (regardless of any delegation clause) to determine whether

One of the most confounding doctrines in federal arbitration jurisprudence is the severability doctrine.  The U.S. Supreme Court has held, since Prima Paint in 1967, that courts must enforce arbitration clauses within contracts, even if the entire contract is invalid or unenforceable.  (Most non-arbitration geeks don’t believe me when I tell them that’s the law.) 

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

Before I can sum up 2015 in arbitration (next post!), I need to report on some new cases coming out of the federal and state appellate courts in recent weeks.  Two are just good reminders of basic arbitration law, but the third addresses an interesting question of double recovery.

Our first “reminder” case comes from

The Supreme Court of South Carolina just ruled that contracts for the sale of residential property are not interstate commerce, and therefore are outside the reach of the Federal Arbitration Act.  Bradley v. Brentwood Homes, Inc., __ S.E.2d __, 2012 WL 2847616 (S.C. July 11, 2012).  That is a surprising result in my view,