Category Archives: Class Actions

Study of Repeat Players in Mutidistrict Litigation

Elizabeth Chamblee Burch of Georgia and Margaret S. Williams of the Federal Judicial Center have written Repeat Players in Multidistrict Litigation: The Social Network.  Here's the abstract: To promote pretrial efficiency, the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation has transferred 36 percent of the entire federal courts’ civil caseload to transferee judges for coordinated handling. Transferee […]

More on Debt Collection and Arbitration

by Jeff Sovern Richard posted a link last week to the Times article about how debt collectors first sue in court and then when consumers sue them, use arbitration clauses to block the consumer law suit.  Today the Times published four letters responding to the article, including mine. I want to comment on two of […]

A Reply to Alan Kaplinsky’s Comment on My Claim about the Industry’s Supposed Love of Arbitration

by Jeff Sovern In a recent American Banker essay, I argued that businesses praise arbitration not because they genuinely value it, but because it enables them to block class actions.  I said that for two reasons: first, that if businesses truly believe arbitration is superior to litigation, as they say they do, they should prefer […]

S.I Strong Chapter: Incentives for Large-Scale Arbitration

S.I. Strong of Missouri has written Incentives for Large-Scale Arbitration: How Policymakers Can Influence Party Behaviour.  Here's the abstract: At this point, the future of large-scale arbitration (i.e., class, mass and collective procedures) can best be described as mixed. On the one hand, class arbitration has been curtailed in the United States as a result […]

More From the Times on Arbitration: Efforts to Rein In Arbitration Come Under Well-Financed Attack

Here. Excerpts: [T]he U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the most powerful business lobby in the country, started a new effort to block the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau by lobbying lawmakers to attach a rider to the federal budget bill that would force the regulator to conduct a new study before issuing any rule, according to people […]