California Employment News: The State of Mandatory Arbitration Agreements in California Employment
Podcast: California Employment News - The State of Mandatory Arbitration Agreements in California Employment
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Arbitration Clauses in Employee Contracts and Beyond
A recent trend in litigation has emerged that is causing companies to re-think conventional wisdom. Until now, it has been a widely adopted best practice for retailers and other consumer-facing companies to include mandatory...more
For more than a decade, companies have benefited immensely from the U.S. Supreme Court's 2011 decision of AT&T Mobility LLC v. Concepcion, which upheld a company's right to compel consumers into participating in individual...more
A state appellate court in California reversed a superior court’s denial of a massage franchisor’s motion to compel arbitration. Jane Doe #1 (I.G.) v. Massage Envy Franchising, LLC, 2023 WL 8801517 (Cal. Ct. App. Dec. 20,...more
Earlier last week, a group of consumer advocate organizations filed a Petition for Rulemaking with the CFPB that would prohibit the use of pre-dispute arbitration clauses in consumer contracts in favor of arbitration clauses...more
The District of Massachusetts’s recent decision in Fairfield v. DCD Auto. Holdings, Inc., No. 22-cv-11977, 2023 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 109463 (D. Mass. June 26, 2023) serves as a key reminder for businesses not only to have...more
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (“CFPB”) issued a proposed rule last week addressing the “Registry of Supervised Nonbanks that Use Form Contracts to Impose Terms and Conditions that Seek to Waive or Limit Consumer...more
As discussed in a blog post last year, Uber learned the hard way that with online agreements, it can take more than a simple provision stating “all disputes must be arbitrated” to ensure that your customers cannot sue you in...more
The Pennsylvania Superior Court recently invalidated Uber’s use of a mandatory arbitration clause in an online registration page for customers, ruling that the arbitration clause was unenforceable because it did not clearly...more
Plaintiffs filed a putative class action against Norwegian Cruise Lines claiming that Norwegian failed to disclose profits it earned when the plaintiffs elected to purchase travel insurance during the cruise booking process....more
Arbitration clauses with class action waivers remain one of the most effective tools that consumer-facing companies can employ to fend off consumer class action litigation. Yet many companies stumble both in getting their...more
Although popular with employers as a method to expedite the resolution of disputes and reduce costs, arbitration is unpopular with plaintiff’s lawyers and, apparently, the California Legislature. As we wrote about here,...more
A California Court granted Defendant’s motion to compel arbitration based on a duly formed and consented arbitration clause via a “clickwrap” agreement, despite Plaintiff’s argument that no contract was ever formed because...more
This past Friday, by a vote of 225-186, the House passed H.R. 1423, the “Forced Arbitration Injustice Repeal Act.” A Senate companion bill (S. 610) was introduced in February 2019 and referred to the Senate Judiciary...more
In a dispute involving fraudulent charges, the District of Connecticut required American Express and the cardmember to resolve their issue in arbitration, pursuant to the cardmember agreement, as amended. AmEx provided notice...more
The Northern District of Illinois recently denied a motion to compel arbitration in a putative class action, and in doing so found that the defendants failed to show that the plaintiff had agreed to arbitrate the dispute when...more
A class action alleging unsolicited text messages received from Uber violated the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) and California competition law was sent to arbitration by a California federal court based upon an...more
For an arbitration agreement to be enforceable, the parties must have a reasonable opportunity to understand its terms. See Fagerstrom v. Amazon.com, Inc., 141 F. Supp. 3d 1070 (S.D. Cal. 2015). With this principle in mind,...more
A day after the U.S. Supreme Court issued a decision seen as pro-arbitration – see our January 10, 2019 Blog Post, Arbitrator to Decide Whether Dispute is Subject to Arbitration Even if Argument is “Wholly Groundless,”...more
On January 10, 2018, the New Jersey Supreme Court decided a case involving the enforceability of mandatory arbitration agreements in consumer contracts. In Kernahan v. Home Warranty Administrator of Florida, the Court held...more
A federal court in Minnesota determined that three of Plaintiffs’ claims were not subject to the applicable arbitration clause: (1) state-law usury claims; (2) state and federal financial disclosure claims; and (3) state-law...more
The First Circuit recently held that an arbitration clause contained in the online contract of the ride sharing app, Uber Technologies, Inc., is unenforceable under Massachusetts law. ...more
Executive Summary and Takeaway. User agreements for websites and apps have become increasingly prevalent in recent years, and courts have had to adapt traditional rules of contract interpretation to the new digital frontier....more
Ruling in a class action brought against Uber Technologies, Inc., the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit recently held that the company's arbitration clause could not be enforced because it was not "reasonably...more
On July 1, 2018, California’s revised Automatic Renewal Law (ARL), Cal. Bus. & Prof. Code § 17600 et seq., goes into effect. The updated law requires e-commerce sellers, doing business in California, to allow online...more
Courts are increasingly taking a magnifying glass to electronic contracting processes, particularly how the presentation of the terms of service and call to action are displayed. As such, companies might take a second look at...more