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
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
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
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
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