U.S. Courts News Reporter
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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
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If anything is clear after Tuesday’s argument in Coinbase v. Bielski, it is that the justices are not going to agree on the answer. The case asks what a trial court should do if it denies a defendant’s motion for arbitration. The Federal Arbitration Act gives the defendant the right to an immediate (“interlocutory”) appeal, but it says nothing about a stay of litigation in the district court. So in these cases (proposed class actions against Coinbase, a … Read the rest
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The Petitions of the Week column highlights a selection of cert petitions recently filed in the Supreme Court. A list of all petitions we’re watching is available here.
Over the past four decades, the Supreme Court has issued a long string of decisions interpreting the Federal Arbitration Act to provide extensive protection for arbitration agreements. This term, however, was more of a mixed bag. Although the court issued a number of opinions that were pro-arbitration, it also wrote … Read the rest