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While regular people count down the days to summer blockbusters that come in the form of high-paid actors fighting aliens or robots, I prefer my summer blockbusters in the form of arbitration opinions that have been months in the making (maybe finally released because the clerks are about to turn over?). Today, I report on…

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…

Three federal appellate courts recently affirmed lower courts’ refusal to compel arbitration.  These cases show that the federal policy favoring arbitration is not absolute – the parties must have agreed to arbitrate the claims at issue and the defendant cannot have waived its right to arbitrate by engaging in significant discovery and motion practice.

In…

In a victory for advocates who worry that the odds are impossibly stacked against consumers in some arbitral fora, the Seventh Circuit found that a class of borrowers did not have to proceed with arbitration conducted by the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe (“Tribe”) in South Dakota “because the arbitral mechanism specified in the agreement is…

This week the Supreme Court of California held that the FAA preempts California’s 2007 Gentry ruling, one that protected employees from nearly all class action waivers in arbitration agreements.  Iskanian v. CLS Transp. Los Angeles, LLC, __ P.3d__, 2014 WL 2808963 (Cal. June 23, 2014).  However, asserting its Californian-ness, the court found an clever…

Two courts recently refused to compel arbitration because the defendants could not prove that the parties had entered into an arbitration agreement at all.  Therefore, the musical accompaniment to this post is “Do Re Mi” from The Sound of Music.  “Let’s start at the very beginning, a very good place to start.  When you read,…

SCOTUS announced today that it would not review the Third Circuit’s decision in Strine v. Delaware Coalition for Open Government, Inc, holding that Delaware’s Chancery Court could not offer its judges’ services as neutral arbitrators in its courtrooms, unless those arbitrations were open to the public.  Therefore, that decision is final and Delaware will now…

On October 1, new Commercial Arbitration Rules became effective at the American Arbitration Association (AAA).  These rules are likely to apply to all commercial arbitrations filed on and after October 1 (unless an arbitration agreement specifically provides for old rules).  The AAA posted its own summary of the changes.  Four of the most notable…