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
In most circumstances, the Federal Arbitration Act requires that the losing party move to vacate an arbitration award within three months. However, the Ninth Circuit recently ruled that the three-month timeline can be tolled, especially for something as significant as the chair lying about being a licensed attorney.
In Move, Inc. v. Citigroup Global Markets
Today’s post is brought to you by the number 8. The 8th Circuit Court of Appeals issued a new opinion yesterday finding that a defendant who litigated in court for 8 months waived its right to arbitrate (aka, ARBITR8) plaintiff’s employment claims. [That could be my vanity plate!!]
Messina v. North Central
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
We haven’t had a good waiver case in a while. The First Circuit served one up last week with a flourish, teaching me multiple new words in the process (not for the first time, either). It found that a plaintiff had waived its right to arbitrate, not by bringing its claims to court
In a decision this week, the Third Circuit found two related parties had waived their right to arbitrate claims. One was no suprise — it had vigorously litigated the dispute for eleven months. But the second may have been simply guilty by association, as it had only litigated for two months. Supermedia v. Affordable Electric
In contrast to recent decisions from other circuit courts, the Fourth Circuit found a defendant did not waive its right to arbitrate, despite litigating for more than 6 months and conducting discovery. Rota-McLarty v. Santander Consumer USA, Inc., __ F.3d __, 2012 WL 5936033 (4th Cir. Nov. 28, 2012).
In this potential class
A party with an arbitration agreement can waive its right to arbitrate by acting inconsistently with that right, usually by “invoking the litigation machinery” before demanding arbitration. However, the federal circuits are split over whether a party asserting a waiver of arbitration must also show it was prejudiced by the other party’s use of that