Arbitration agreements often seem straightforward—until they unexpectedly bind parties who never signed them. The United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit’s recent decision in Various Insurers v. General...more
Tell me if you have heard this one before: ten companies are sued by a former employee as “joint employers”, even though the employee technically worked for, and signed a binding arbitration agreement with, only one of them....more
Employees who sign an arbitration agreement with one company cannot avoid arbitration with related defendant-companies by arguing they were not parties to the agreement. The California Court of Appeal held that claims against...more
Departing from the ruling in Soltero v. Precise Distribution earlier this year, the California Court of Appeal in the Second District in Gonzalez v. Nowhere Beverly Hills LLC, created a split of authority regarding an alleged...more
A novel question arose over the past few years in residential construction law as to whether minors were subject to the contractual provisions in their parents’ purchase or construction contract. The contract typically has a...more
Many courts enforce forum selection clauses in contracts between parties. In W. Bay Plaza Condo. Ass’n v. Sika Corp., No. 3D21-1834, 2022 Fla. App. LEXIS 1637 (W. Bay Plaza), the Court of Appeal of Florida, Third District...more
Commercial leases often contain attorney fee provisions allowing a party who prevails in litigation to recover attorney fees from the losing party. Can those attorney fee provisions apply to third parties — outsiders to...more
In a decision substantively the same as the now-withdrawn opinion entered on January 20, 2021, the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit once again affirmed denial of a non-signatory’s motion to compel arbitration. Setty...more
The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit issued an order withdrawing its opinion in Setty v. Shrinivas Sugandhalaya, where the Court affirmed the denial of a non-signatory’s bid to arbitrate its claims for trademark...more
The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit tackled the question of whether non-signatories to an agreement may use state law doctrines to compel arbitration. Holding that the claims were insufficiently “intertwined” to...more
The U.S. Supreme Court recently addressed whether a non-signatory’s attempt to compel arbitration under an international arbitration agreement using domestic doctrines of equitable estoppel is barred by the Convention on the...more
The ongoing Kout Food saga provides a salutary reminder that difficult issues can sometimes arise when parties choose different systems for the substantive law of their contractual relationship and the curial law of the seat...more
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that the district court did not err by allowing non-signatories Jess Smith & Sons Cotton LLC (JSS) and J.G. Boswell Co. to invoke the arbitration clause in a license...more
As discussed in our post from last year, on August 30, 2018, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a lower court decision to compel arbitration between an Alabama steel plant owner, Outokumpu Stainless USA, LLC...more
The Supreme Court of South Carolina recently determined that non-signatory insureds could not be compelled to arbitrate their claims under an arbitration clause in an agency agreement where the insureds did not obtain a...more
Lenders who prevail on claims arising from a deed of trust can always recover their attorney fees from the losing party as long as the deed of trust says something about fee recovery, right? It’s not that simple....more
Plaintiff Outokumpu Stainless USA, LLC (“Outokumpu”) contracted with F.L. Industries, Inc. “”FLI”), a German company, to provide cold rolling mills (“CRMs”), which are used in the production of certain steel products. FLI...more
The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeal has handed down some rather remarkable TCPA rulings over the years. First came Palm Beach Golf Center-Boca, Inc. v. Sarris, 771 F. 3d 1274 (11th Cir. 2014) in which the Eleventh Circuit...more
Generally, only signatories to an arbitration agreement can compel one another to arbitrate their claims. However, in certain situations, a nonsignatory may take advantage of an arbitration agreement between other parties....more
In A.D. vs. Credit One Bank, N.A., the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit reversed a district court order compelling individual arbitration of a putative class action for Credit One's alleged violations of the...more
The Tennessee Supreme Court recently held that Tennessee’s Trust Code and broad trust-instruments authorize a Trustee’s execution of a pre-dispute arbitration clause. That isn’t a per se breach of fiduciary duty, but the...more
Trustees in California trust disputes should not overlook the power of the constructive trust remedy as a way to recover errant trust assets. That’s a takeaway from Higgins v. Higgins (2017) __ Cal.App.5th __, an opinion in a...more
A recent decision of the New Jersey Court of Appeals considered the enforceability of arbitration agreements by non-signatories. In Foti v. Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A., Inc., the plaintiff filed a putative class action...more
Under Alabama law, “arbitration may be compelled under the doctrine of ‘intertwining’ where arbitrable and nonarbitrable claims are so closely related that the party to a controversy subject to arbitration is equitably...more
Bass, Berry & Sims attorney Chris Lazarini provided insight on a case in which a widow and one-time named beneficiary of her husband's IRA account acquired the account assets after her husband's death, although she was not...more