Category Archives: Arbitration

Green article on forced arbitration of discrimination claims

Michael Z. Green of Texas A&M has written Expanding the Ban on Forced Arbitration to Race Claims, 72 Kansas Law Review  455 (2024). Here’s the abstract: When Congress passed the Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act (“EFASASHA”) in March 2022, it signaled a major retreat from the Supreme Court’s broad enforcement […]

More on “Browse-Wrap” Arbitration

Yesterday, I noted the Pennsylvania Supreme Court had agreed to hear a case involving browse-wrap arbitration agreements. Later in the day, the Seventh Circuit issued a decision concerning one such agreement, finding  that a consumer and a home improvement had entered into a valid and enforceable agreement. Adopting case law from the 9th and 2nd […]

PA Supreme Court to Consider “Browsewrap” Arbitration Agreements

In July 2023, an intermediate appellate court in Pennsylvania decided Chilutti v. Uber Technologies.  There, the court held that a so-called “browsewrap” arbitration agreement was invalid, and that two conditions are necessary to establish an unambiguous manifestation for assent to arbitration via a registration for a website: (1) explicitly stating on the registration websites and […]

Disney withdraws arbitration motion in Disney restaurant wrongful death case after bad publicity

So reports  PHILIP MARCELO of the Associated Press here. This isn’t the first time a company has changed course in an arbitration demand after adverse publicity. Wells Fargo had actually won a motion to send a case to arbitration arising out of its unauthorized account scandal back in 2016, before settling its class action for […]

No standing for FDCPA case after arbitration; now what?

In 2018, a consumer brought a putative FDCPA  class action based on a letter naming the collection arm of her credit card company, rather than the credit card company itself, as the “current/original creditor.”  A federal district court granted the defendant’s motion to compel arbitration, and the parties arbitrated the dispute. After 4 years of […]

Seventh Circuit Holds Company Can Flout Arbitration Agreement Without Consequence

Generally, when you read an opinion holding that there was insufficient evidence of an arbitration agreement between a consumer and a corporation, it’s a win for the plaintiff. But in Wallrich v. Samsung Electronics America, decided by the Seventh Circuit yesterday, the opposite was true. Paula Wallrich and several thousand other consumers had filed arbitration […]

The Biden-Trump debate and consumer protection

Will consumer protection come up during the debate? My guess is not. It seems unlikely that a moderator or President Trump would raise it. I could see President Biden bringing up junk fees, as he has called for their regulation, in response to a question, though I am not expecting it. The headline issues have […]

SCOTUS: “disputes are subject to arbitration if, and only if, the parties actually agreed to arbitrate those disputes.”

From today’s decision in Coinbase, Inc. v. Suski. Longtime readers will recall the empirical evidence that consumers do not understand arbitration clauses and so, in my view, they have not “actually agreed” to arbitration clauses.

Meshel & Yahya empirical study of how lower courts rule on arbitration motions

Tamar Meshel and Moin A. Yahya both of the University of Alberta – Faculty of Law, have written The Gatekeepers of the Federal Arbitration Act: An Empirical Analysis of the FAA in the ‎Lower Courts, forthcoming in the Mississippi Law Journal.  Here’s the abstract: This article presents the results of the first comprehensive empirical study of motions […]