Now that Justice Gorsuch is confirmed and can take the open seat on the Supreme Court, maybe SCOTUS can move forward on the cases about whether employers can make employees waive their right to class actions in an arbitration agreement. (Btw, here’s a nice SCOTUSblog piece on Gorsuch’s arbitration decisions.) In the meantime, California’s
The Supreme Court of Louisiana refuses to send customers who were injured while playing at Sky Zone to arbitration, finding that the arbitration clause “is adhesionary and therefore unenforceable”. Duhon v. Activelaf, LLC, __ So. 3d __, 2016 WL 6123820 (La. Oct. 19 2016); Alicea v. Activelaf, LLC, __ So. 3d __, 2016
Just under the wire, SCOTUS released an arbitration opinion today, ensuring that 2015 would continue the string of years with cases interpreting the Federal Arbitration Act. In DIRECTV v. Imburgia, the Supreme Court found that California’s interpretation of an arbitration clause was preempted by the FAA. DIRECTV is a 6-3 decision, with Justice Kagan
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
The Tenth Circuit ruled last week that arbitration case law from New Mexico is preempted by the FAA. This decision calls into question whether states can find arbitration agreements unconscionable simply for being unilateral, i.e. one party is bound to arbitrate its claims while the other party is free to litigate in court.
In 2012,