A group of Holocaust survivors and Bank Leumi have agreed to arbitrate their four-year old dispute regarding the bank’s holding of funds deposited by its Jewish clients before World War II. See article here.
In an interesting development, Bank of America announced yesterday that it would remove its pre-dispute arbitration clause from its credit card agreements. See AP report here. This development cannot be a coincidence and surely is tied to the increasing Congressional scrutiny over mandatory consumer arbitration and the National Arbitration Forum’s decision to exit the consumer … Continue reading Bank of America Drops Credit Card Dispute Arbitration Requirement
The Pace Law School Investor Rights Clinic, pursuant to a generous grant from the FINRA Investor Education Foundation, has just published the Investor’s Guide to Securities Industry Disputes: How to Prevent and Resolve Disputes with Your Broker. This Guide, which I co-authored with Clinic Staff Attorney Alice Oshins, is designed to help individual investors with modest investment accounts … Continue reading Investor’s Guide to Securities Industry Disputes
The Associated Press reports: “The private developer of the World Trade Center site threatened Monday to go to an arbitrator unless he and the site’s owner quickly settle a monthslong impasse over how much each should pay to build office towers at ground zero.” How sad to see the terms “arbitrator” and “threaten” in the … Continue reading World Trade Center Developer Threatens Arbitration
A WSJ online article posted here reports that the spike in arbitration filings at FINRA Dispute Resolution is testing recent changes to the process designed to make the forum fairer to investors. The article begins: “Many investors who suffered massive losses in their portfolios are filing complaints against the brokers and brokerage firms that sold them … Continue reading WSJ Asks if FINRA Arbitration is “New and Improved”
Here is a link to a recent column in the New York Law Journal explaining that arbitrators are less prone to grant a dispositive motion than judges, suggesting that disputants are more likely to get to a hearing phase in arbitration than in court. Given the Supreme Court’s recent tightening of the pleading and summary judgment … Continue reading Arbitrators grant dispositive motions less often than judges
I was pleasantly surprised to read in my daughter’s sleepaway camp newsletter that the camp spends time each week teaching the girls conflict resolution skills: Tonight, the counselors are putting on the first Creative Service of the summer. Creative Service is a time to pause and reflect on the lessons learned here at camp. Tonight’s … Continue reading Teaching Conflict Resolution Skills Early
I just learned that my University is closing its Ombuds Office, to save resources in these tight times, and instead is spreading out its functions among various related offices (student complaints to Dean of Students Office; employee disputes to Human Resources, etc.). It seems to me that this economically-driven decision clearly undervalues dispute resolution. While those … Continue reading Are Ombuds Offices Expendable?
Read Professor Black’s Securities Law Prof Blog posting here.
From p. 72 of the Treasury Department’s Financial Regulatory Reform blueprint (entitled “A New Foundation: Rebuilding Financial Supervision and Regulation”) released today: The SEC should study the use of mandatory arbitration clauses in investor contracts. Broker-dealers generally require their customers to contract at account opening to arbitrate all disputes. Although arbitration may be a reasonable … Continue reading The Obama Administration’s Plan for Securities Arbitration
