With less colorful language than its last arbitration opinion, the First Circuit sided with the Second and Third Circuits in limiting the application of the 2010 Stolt-Nielsen decision on the availability of class arbitration. Fantastic Sams Franchise Corp. v. FSRO Assoc. Ltd., __ F.3d __, 2012 WL 2402560 (1st Cir. June 27, 2012).
Arbitration agreements may shorten the statute of limitations that would otherwise be available for claims — but only to a point. A recent opinion from the First Circuit shows that how a plaintiff frames its argument that the contractual limitations period is unreasonably short can make a difference not only on whether the argument is
The saga of Brown v. Genesis Healthcare Corporation continues. Almost exactly a year ago, the West Virginia Supreme Court declared that arbitration agreements in pre-dispute nursing home contracts were unenforceable. Then in February SCOTUS reversed that decision and remanded the case for consideration of un-preempted unconscionability. Now, the West Virginia court has issued its decision
While a court may vacate an arbitration award if the arbitrator exceeds the scope of his authority, the City of Lebanon was unable to convince the Supreme Court of New Hampshire that an arbitrator exceeded his authority when siding against the City in a tax dispute.
The plaintiff in Lebanon Hanger Assoc. v. City of
To date, courts have largely limited the impact of the Rent-A-Center decision to arbitration agreements with explicit delegation clauses. But, what if Rent-A-Center applied to every single arbitration agreement that mentioned the AAA rules? That is a very real possibility, and one which would send almost all arbitrability disputes to arbitrators.
The Rent-A-Center decision used
The Sixth Circuit easily affirmed a district court’s finding that the defendant had waived its right to arbitration by participating in litigation for eight months. Johnson Assoc. Corp. v. HL Operating Corp., __ F.3d __, 2012 WL 1861675 (6th Cir. May 23, 2012). Plaintiffs had filed suit in late December of 2009 and a discovery
The Fifth Circuit just issued a decision openly disagreeing with how the Second Circuit has interpreted both the Stolt-Nielsen decision and case law regarding the level of deference that courts owe arbitrators. In Reed v. Florida Metropolitan Univ., Inc., __ F.3d __, 2012 WL 1759298 (5th Cir. May 18, 2012), the Fifth Circuit vacated
A few months ago I posted about actions that FINRA and the NLRB were taking in support of allowing class arbitration, and those agencies have recently taken additional actions that help consumers or employees with relatively low dollar claims.
The NLRB brought a complaint against 24 Hour Fitness USA, Inc. The complaint alleges that 24
Maryland’s highest court recently affirmed the dismissal of an employer’s non-compete claims as time-barred, even though the employer argued that the parties’ arbitration excused the untimely filing. Kumar v. Dhanda, __ A.3d ___, 2012 WL 1521567 (Md. May 2, 2012).
The employee, a urologist, had signed a contract calling for all disputes to be “resolved
Relying on the Rent-A-Center decision, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a decision today that construed the parties’ relevant arbitration agreement very narrowly, thereby ducking a decision about whether the larger “disputes” section of the contract was void under state law. That makes the Eighth Circuit the first federal court to do exactly what