Many companies use pre-dispute arbitration agreements to protect themselves from the public and protracted process of litigation and the risk of runaway juries. Some arbitration agreements go a step farther and include class action waivers. We recently wrote an article on these waivers in the American Bar Association's In-House Litigator publication. Courts have not uniformly enforced class action waivers and generally have focused on whether waivers in effect act as exculpatory clauses. In other words, if class arbitration is unavailable, will unlawful activity go unchecked because individual claims would not be feasible or effective.
Please see full publication below for more information.