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
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
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
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
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
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
Can a party to written agreement that does not include an arbitration clause enforce an arbitration provision in another agreement to which it is not a party? Boiled down to the essentials, this is the question decided...more
The Eighth Circuit affirmed a decision by the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri which rejected the contention that an arbitration agreement was unconscionable, and unenforceable under the Federal...more
A California appellate court recently examined that state’s legislative response to the situation where a party moves to compel arbitration and some of the parties to the dispute are not parties to the arbitration agreement....more