Employment Law This Week®: Sexual Orientation Bias, Religious Discrimination, At-Will Employment Provision, Class Arbitration
A federal district court judge in the Eastern District of Kentucky has enforced an ESOP’s arbitration clause, sending P.L. Marketing Inc. employees’ breach of fiduciary duty claims on behalf of a putative class to individual...more
Imagine arriving at the office to find 20 bankers' boxes full of 20,000+ individual arbitration demands. The claims appear identical and non-meritorious. But to even get a chance to make an argument, it will cost you nearly...more
On June 23, 2023, in Coinbase, Inc. v. Bielski, the Supreme Court resolved a deeply divided circuit court split and ruled that a district court must stay its proceedings while an interlocutory appeal on the question of...more
In the decade since the Supreme Court decided AT&T Mobility LLC v. Concepcion, 563 U.S. 333, 339 (2011) and American Express Co. v. Italian Colors Restaurants, 570 U.S. 228, 233 (2013), arbitrability has become a threshold...more
In Pounds, et al. v. Portfolio Recovery Associates, LLC, the North Carolina Court of Appeals recently issued an opinion that may have a significant impact on collections law and arbitrability. Defendant is an entity that...more
The Supreme Court’s 2018 decision in Epic Systems Corporation v. Lewis, 138 S. Ct. 1612 (2018), validated the use of class action waivers, providing employers with a valuable tool to preserve bilateral employment arbitrations...more
In its restraint, SCOTUS has shown us the mischief that arbitrators may do if parties are lax in setting boundaries in their agreement to arbitrate. By declining to grant certiorari regarding the Second Circuit’s most recent...more
Takeaway: The concept of class arbitration has endured stiff headwinds. In Lamps Plus, Inc. v. Varella, 139 S. Ct. 1407 (2019), the Supreme Court ruled that a party cannot be required to participate in a class arbitration...more
Takeaway: We have written a number of articles about class arbitration. See, e.g., Fifth Circuit: arbitrator’s decision to conduct class arbitration cannot be vacated (May 11, 2020). A key issue is whether the parties’...more
Arbitration provides a lower-cost alternative to litigation. Yet, a growing predicament continues to penetrate the conversation surrounding arbitration: mass arbitration. On the one hand, no rational customer or employee...more
The Fifth Circuit has suggested that the question of class arbitrability was for the arbitrator, not the court, based on the language of the arbitration clause at issue. The court ultimately concluded, however, that it did...more
The United States Supreme Court established that questions of arbitrability are presumptively for a court unless the parties clearly and unmistakability manifest their intention (i.e, agreement) that such issues should be...more
On April 16, 2020, the Fifth Circuit held that an employee is entitled to arbitrate his federal labor law claims as a collective action on behalf of his coworkers against their employer, Sun Coast Resources, Inc. (“Sun...more
Takeaway: A lot of ink has been spilled on the issue of class arbitration, but this much is clear: If a federal court decides the class arbitration issue, then the proponent of class arbitration should lose, unless the...more
If we needed a reminder of why the “delegation” question – i.e., whether parties have agreed that gateway arbitrability issues should be adjudicated in the first instance by an arbitrator rather than by a court – is...more
Under the Federal Arbitration Act (“FAA”), “a party may not be compelled . . . to submit to class arbitration unless there is a contractual basis for concluding that the party agreed to do so.” Stolt-Nielsen S.A. v....more
The United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit recently articulated a new statutory framework for determining whether notice to a putative plaintiff should be issued under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). At...more
The Eighth Circuit recently concluded that there was no contractual basis to conclude that a pharmacy benefit manager agreed to class arbitration with four pharmacies because the agreement did not use the word “class” or...more
Seyfarth Synopsis: As detailed in our 2020 Workplace Class Action Litigation Report, 2019 was an interesting year for employers in terms of class certification rulings. Plaintiffs achieved the highest numbers of initial...more
“Class arbitration” signifies the utilization of the Fed.R.Civ.P. 23 protocol in an arbitration proceeding. A fundamental question among many concerning the legal viability of “class arbitration” is whether an arbitrator can...more
Takeaway: The concept of class arbitration has recently faced stiff headwinds. In Lamps Plus, Inc. v. Varella, 139 S. Ct. 1407 (2019), the Supreme Court ruled that a party cannot be required to participate in a class...more
In reversing a New York federal court, the Second Circuit found the arbitration was within the arbitrator’s authority in binding absent class members to class proceedings because, by signing the operative arbitration...more
In 2004, the Supreme Court of Texas first addressed the issue of whether an arbitrator or a judge decides if an arbitration agreement permits (or prohibits) class arbitration....more
In their 2013 concurrence in Oxford Health Plans LLC v. Sutter, Justice Samuel Alito, joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, questioned whether absent class members “will be bound by the arbitrator’s ultimate resolution of th[e]...more
US Supreme Court Issues Trio of Arbitration Decisions - During its 2018-19 term, the U.S. Supreme Court issued decisions in three cases involving arbitration matters. These decisions, discussed further in our September 26,...more