arbitration | Judiciary.org

Why Your Arbitration Agreement’s Attorney Fee Clause Can Be Important

The Connecticut Appellate Court just released Golden v. WorldQuant Predictive Technologies, LLC, and while the decision covers several arbitration issues (more on another one of those in a future post), there’s one lesson that should have companies reviewing their arbitration clauses: a well-drafted attorney fee provision can be the difference between winning and actually getting paid for winning.

The Golden Setup: When Arbitration Clauses Get Tested

According to the Court’s opinion, James Golden was WorldQuant’s CEO with an $ … Read the rest

Supreme Court

Court set to reverse heightened requirement for arbitration awards under FSIA

Monday’s argument in CC/Devas (Mauritius) Limited v. Antrix Corp. was an odd one: The justices asked no questions at all about the question on which they’d granted review, because the parties agree that the lower court’s answer to that question was incorrect. So almost all of the discussion at the argument focused on what, if anything, the court should decide before sending the case back to the court of appeals.

CC/Devas arises under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act. When … Read the rest

Supreme Court

Justices dubious about dismissing suits while waiting for arbitration

Smith v. Spizziri is this week’s item on the court’s bountiful menu of cases under the Federal Arbitration Act. The question here is what options are available to a trial court that decides to send a case to arbitration. Must it stay the matter or, instead, does it have the option to dismiss it entirely? Discussion at the argument suggested that the justices were skeptical about the practical consequences of dismissal, so Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s opinion for a unanimous … Read the rest

Supreme Court

Justices dubious about dismissing suits while waiting for arbitration

Monday’s argument in Smith v. Spizziri was this month’s case under the Federal Arbitration Act. This one explores what a trial court can do when it refers a pending suit to arbitration. Section 3 of the FAA says that if the court refers the case to arbitration, it “shall on application of one of the parties stay the trial of the action until such arbitration has been had.” The question is whether the trial court, instead of staying the … Read the rest

Supreme Court

Justices exempt bakery-truck drivers from arbitration requirement

The justices on Friday ruled in favor of a group of truck drivers who transport goods for Wonder Bread in their arbitration dispute. Bissonnette v. LePage Bakeries Park St. is another of the court’s numerous cases interpreting the Federal Arbitration Act’s command that courts enforce mandatory pre-dispute arbitration agreements. Bissonnette involves an exception from the FAA for any “class of workers engaged in foreign or interstate commerce,” and the question in Bissonnette is whether that exception turns on the … Read the rest

Supreme Court

Justices seem to resolve Dogecoin arbitration dispute during argument

Wednesday’s oral argument in Coinbase v. Suski was the court’s second case in February under the Federal Arbitration Act, and by all accounts this one will be a lot easier for them to resolve than Bissonnette v. LePage Bakeries. Coinbase is a technical dispute about the “delegation clause” in an arbitration agreement, which “delegates” to the arbitrator not only the job of resolving the dispute between the parties, but also the threshold question whether any particular dispute falls … Read the rest

Supreme Court

Wonder Bread truck drivers seek exemption from mandatory arbitration

Bissonnette v. LePage Bakeries Park St. brings the justices yet another case under a statute with which they are all too familiar – the Federal Arbitration Act. As regular readers will know, the court in the last few decades has heard numerous cases under the FAA. The great majority of those cases have involved arguments, by workers or customers, that for one reason or another courts should not enforce a pre-dispute arbitration agreement against them. And in almost all … Read the rest

Civil Law

Does an Umpire Have Immunity From Suit? Is an Appraisal an Arbitration in North Carolina?

The greater the appraisal award is, the greater frequency that the insurance company will flip out and blame somebody or something for causing a large appraisal award. This is the situation in a North Carolina case where the insurance company has sued the umpire.

In response, the umpire has claimed he cannot be sued because he has immunity as an arbitrator. The umpire, Lewis O’Leary, is very experienced in appraisals. He was noted in “How Late Can Late Notice of … Read the rest