You know what rarely rises to the top of my “to do” list? Reading scholarly articles and studies about arbitration. Blech. But, since I haven’t seen any good court decisions lately, it is time to visit the neglected pile of articles. Turns out, I should have read some of them right away. Below are summaries
Hold Onto Your Hats: CFPB Proposed Rules Will Lead to Lots of Class Action Litigation
Today the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau proposed the rules that it previewed last fall, following up on its Arbitration Study. Those rules would essentially ban class action waivers from consumer financial agreements, as well as requiring arbitral institutions to provide data on consumer financial disputes to the CFPB. (As an aside, the proposal is…
Beyond the Headlines Part II: What The New CFPB Report Teaches Us About Arbitration v. Litigation
In my last post, I shared some of the highlights from the first half of the new CFPB Arbitration Study. This post covers the second half of the report, with juicy information gleaned from CFPB’s analysis of almost 2,000 actual consumer arbitrations and its comparison of those results to actual consumer court actions.
Arbitration…
Beyond the Headlines Part I: What The New CFPB Report Teaches Us About Arbitration Clauses
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau released an “Arbitration Study” exceeding 700 pages to Congress this week. You have likely heard the headlines – most commentators assume that the CFPB will use the study to support an effort to restrict or regulate the use of “pre-dispute” arbitration in financial transactions. But, let’s not get ahead of…
Study of Corporate Counsel Shows Arbitration Is Past Its "Tipping Point," Usage Declining
A new article is out with more detail about how opinions among counsel for Fortune 1000 companies have changed over the last 15 years with respect to arbitration and mediation. (I posted initial info here last spring.)
By comparing results of a 1997 survey of Fortune 1,000 corporate counsel with results of a 2011 survey…
New Federal Agency Will Study Financial Arbitrations
Just a few months after its first Director took office in January of 2012, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is embarking on a study of arbitration. The CFPB announced on April 24 that it invites the public to send information about “how consumers and financial services companies are affected by arbitration and arbitration clauses,” so…