By F. Paul Bland On Twitter @PblandBland This is a classic good news/bad news type of case for plaintiffs. The good news is that a court struck down as unconscionable an arbitration clause that imposed enormous fees on an individual before the individual could go to arbitration. The bad news is that the case shows what a […]
Category Archives: Arbitration
By Paul Bland, On Twitter @PblandBland This is a case with very painful facts – according to the complaint, a Kaiser patient went in to see his doctor and was told he had a particular type of cancer that his doctor wasn’t familiar with, but would do “internet research” about, that he might die within […]
By Paul Bland On Twitter: @PBlandBland In the wake of recent Supreme Court decisions, forced arbitration clauses are generally enforced unless a corporation sticks something particularly overreaching and unfair in its arbitration clause, or drafts an arbitration clause in an unusually stupid way. A U.S. district court in Nevada just found that Zappos did both […]
by Paul Bland On Twitter @PblandBland In Setlock v. Pinebrook, a Pennsylvania appellate court read a nursing home's arbitration clause to cover only the types of disputes named, refusing the home's invitation to re-write the clause more broadly. This is a tragic wrongful death and survivorship case, where nursing home personnel allegedly accidentally moved […]
John A. E. Pottow of Michigan, and two recent graduates, Jacob Brege and Tara J Hawley, have written A Presumptively Better Approach to Arbitrability, 53 Canadian Business Law Journal (2013). Here's the abstract: One of the most complex problems in the arbitration field is the question of who decides disputes over the scope of an arbitrator’s […]
by Paul Bland, Senior Attorney, Public Justice, Of Counsel, Chavez & Gertler On Twitter @PblandBland In Kennedy v. Wells Fargo, Judge King of the Southern District of Florida enforced another arbitration clause that tosses out consumer claims in the multi district litigation involving checking overdraft claims. The plaintiffs had several arguments that the particular arbitration clause at […]
Peter B. Rutledge of Georgia and Christopher R. Drahozal of Kansas have written 'Sticky' Arbitration Clauses?: The Use of Arbitration Clauses after Concepcion and Amex. Here's the abstract: We present the results of the first empirical study of the extent to which businesses have switched to arbitration after AT&T Mobility LLC v. Concepcion. After the […]
by Jeff Sovern I figure if it's good enough for the CFPB, it's good enough for us: I'm part of a team, along with other professors and the Hugh L Carey Center for Dispute Resolution here at the Law School, that is crafting a survey on consumer understanding of arbitration clauses. Unlike the CFPB survey, […]
I'm presenting at a few CLE programs over the next few days and I thought readers of the blog might be interested. The first can be accessed via phone; the other two will be at the American Association of Justice's Annual Convention in San Francisco: A one-hour phone briefing on American Express v. Italian Colors: Practical Implications […]
by Jeff Sovern Here (behind paywall). Excerpt: Court decisions tied to the 1968 law fell 18% year over year during a12-month period that ended May 31, to 1,037, data from the National ConsumerLaw Center shows. That number is down 38% from the peak two years earlier. The pace of new litigation is also slowing. […]