Parties who ask a court to compel arbitration of all the plaintiff’s claims have a decision to make: should they ask the court to stay the claims or dismiss them (if it finds them arbitrable)? After noting that the federal courts of appeal are “about evenly divided” on that question, the Second Circuit held that
Usually, when faced with a respondent who refuses to pay its share of the arbitration fees, a claimant simply pays both sides’ fees, so that the arbitration can proceed. A new case out of the Tenth Circuit answers the question: what happens if it does not pay both sides’ fees? Pre-Paid Legal Services, Inc. v.
I field a lot of good procedural questions about how arbitration pleadings should be styled. Some of them are answered within the text of the FAA, but many of them leave clerks of court and practitioners scratching their heads and getting creative. I will address one of those common questions today: is a motion to
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