The 9th Circuit’s decision to enforce the arbitration agreement in Uber’s agreements with drivers made lots of news last week.  And although it includes no new principles of law, it does emphasize some principles that come up regularly in consumer and employment arbitration, so it’s worth reviewing the details.

Former drivers brought an action in

Continuing last week’s theme of “States Gone Wild,” here are three more oddball summer decisions from state supreme courts. All of them find interesting paths around federal case law (IMHO).

Georgia Says Class Complaint Is Deemed Arbitration Opt Out For All Class Members

In Bickerstaff v. SunTrust Bank, 2016 WL 3693778 (Ga. July 8,

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

This week, the Fourth Circuit found an arbitration agreement invalid because it waived all federal and state laws.  Although two other federal circuit courts had already found the same company’s arbitration agreement unenforceable because it called for an impossible arbitration process, the Fourth Circuit found it invalid for a new reason.

The issue in Hayes

Lots of interesting arbitration law has been made already in 2016, so here is a roundup from the first four weeks of the year. As a teaser, courts have breathed life into the effective vindication doctrine, found arbitrators cannot determine the availability of class actions, and found state laws not preempted.  More surprisingly, state courts

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

Some arbitration topics just never die.  This post strings together new cases on three of those topics: 1) whether arbitration agreements that call for the now-defunct National Arbitration Forum (NAF) are enforceable; 2) formation fights in nursing home agreements; and 3) the continuing fight between the NLRB and the courts over class action waivers in