Arbitration

Subscribe to Arbitration

The Ninth Circuit has issued its long-awaited ruling in Chamber of Commerce v. Bonta, perhaps putting a nail in the coffin of the controversial California law known as AB 51, which would have made it criminal conduct to require an applicant or employee to sign an arbitration agreement.

The history of AB 51 and the case challenging it is a tortuous one, to say the least, but the issue has always remained the same: was the California legislature too clever in its attempt to circumvent the Federal Arbitration Act (“FAA”) and the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Epic Systems? …

Continue Reading Ninth Circuit Holds California Mandatory Employment Arbitration Ban Is Invalid

Silence can be telling.

That is especially so in the legal industry.

In the context of a hearing or oral argument, if judges or justices don’t ask an attorney a question, it can be incredibly encouraging – or incredibly discouraging.  It often means that the judges or justices have already made up their minds after having read the parties’ briefs and simply don’t have any questions or don’t need to hear anything more.…

Continue Reading Did the Supreme Court Oral Argument on Viking River Cruises Signal a Coming Sea Change for California Employment Law?

In response to the increased use and enforcement of class and collective action waivers, plaintiffs’ attorneys are now relying on a new strategy to gain leverage over businesses.  More specifically, they have started to commence mass arbitrations by simultaneously filing hundreds—and in some cases, thousands—of individual arbitration demands in an effort to trigger a business’…

Given the ever-increasing number of wage-hour class and collective actions being filed against employers, it is no surprise that many employers have turned to arbitration agreements with class and collective action waivers as a first line of defense, particularly after the United States Supreme Court’s landmark 2018 Epic Systems v. Lewis decision.

If there is…

As we wrote here recently,  two federal courts in California rejected Postmates’ attempt to escape having to defend thousands of individual arbitrations filed by drivers contending they have been misclassified as independent contractors. Those decisions require Postmates to pay millions in arbitration fees alone.

A federal court in Illinois has now reached the same…

We have written here about the efforts of several gig economy companies like DoorDash to avoid having to conduct – and pay for – thousands of individual arbitrations alleging that their workers had been misclassified.

As we have said before, companies that implement arbitration agreements with class action waivers must be careful what they ask…

Be careful what you ask for.

We have used that expression frequently when writing about recent federal court orders requiring DoorDash and Postmates to conduct thousands of individual arbitrations in California pursuant to the terms of their arbitration agreements with their drivers.

Thousands of individual arbitrations for which DoorDash and Postmates would have to pay…

Recently, we wrote here about a federal court order requiring DoorDash to conduct more than 5,000 individual arbitrations under the terms of its mandatory arbitration agreements, with each arbitration to address claims that it had misclassified its drivers as independent contractors.

The order would fall in the category of “Be Careful What You Wish For.” …

It’s no secret that many employers have employees sign arbitration agreements with class and collective action waivers in the hopes of avoiding the massive wage-hour lawsuits that have become so prevalent in the past two decades.

Nor is it any secret that, following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Epic Systems affirming that such agreements…