The Supreme Court of Hawai’i concluded last week that it is fundamentally unfair to allow one party to an arbitration agreement to unilaterally select the arbitral forum. Nishimura v. Gentry Homes, Ltd., __ P.3d__, 2014 WL 5503393 (Haw. Oct. 31, 2014). The parties can either jointly agree to a forum, or the court will
This week marks the third anniversary of this blog devoted to interpretations of the Federal Arbitration Act. (Here’s the first post.) After 155 posts, can there possibly be more to say? Yes, indeed. Three new opinions from federal courts of appeals demonstrate how new issues keep “cropping” up in arbitration law each week.
The
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
Now that we know the Supreme Court is not going to be addressing non-signatories’ ability to compel arbitration this term (at least not in the Toyota case), we can take a moment to look at what lower courts are doing with that issue. In short, the trend is for courts to clarify that it
After reading more than 40 decisions about arbitration from state high courts, issued just in the past eight months, I have two bits of wisdom to share. First, that is not the best way to spend your summer vacation, even for a devoted arbitration nerd. And second, there are arbitration issues percolating in state courts
Two federal circuit courts recently reversed district court decisions allowing non-signatories to compel arbitration. The analysis emphasizes that for a defendant to prove equitable estoppel compels arbitration, the plaintiff’s legal claims must be closely related to the contract containing the arbitration clause.
Retail grocers asserted antitrust claims against wholesalers in In re Wholesale Grocery Products
The Ninth Circuit ruled this week that a class of car owners could pursue their court claims against the manufacturer, Toyota, for product defects and false advertising, despite the existence of an arbitration agreement in each of the owners’ purchase agreements with the car dealerships. The court held that Toyota had not proven either of
Two circuit court decisions in the last week have denied arbitration motions based on the lack of an arbitration agreement between the parties. These decisions show that while the federal presumption in favor of arbitration is generally a strong current, it is not strong enough to pull non-signatories into arbitration (or even to stay their
Two recent decisions illustrate how individuals that did not sign a contract can be bound by that contract’s arbitration provisions.
In the first, Blaustein v. Huete, 2011 WL 5103759 (5th Cir. Oct. 26, 2011), an individual member of an LLC, Huete, argued he should not be bound by the arbitration clause between the LLC