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
In a decision substantively the same as the now-withdrawn opinion entered on January 20, 2021, the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit once again affirmed denial of a non-signatory’s motion to compel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. 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
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
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
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
Federal law’s much-talked-about presumption in favor of enforcing arbitration clauses has its limits. On August 11, 2014, the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit identified one of those limitations: the...more