Today the Supreme Court handed down its decision in AT&T v. Concepcion, and it went the way I think most observers predicted. Concepcion involved a dispute over the charges in a cell phone contract. The contract included an arbitration agreement that expressly waived the right to proceed as part of a class. In addition, in … Continue reading Supreme Court Allows Companies to Opt Out of Class Actions
Lawrence Cunningham (GW Law) has posted his forthcoming article Rhetoric vs. Reality in Arbitration Jurisprudence: How the Supreme Court Flaunts and Flunks Contracts (and Why Contracts Teachers Need not Teach the Cases) on SSRN. The article addresses the contradictions in the Supreme Court’s arbitration jurisprudence caused when the Court recites incantations about freedom of contract … Continue reading Cunningham on Arbitration Rhetoric & Reality
As Jill mentioned last week, the Indisputably crew was assembled in Denver for the ABA DR Section meetings last week. It was good, as always, to hang out w/ the crew – and rumor has it that there are some incriminating photos that may make it on the blog. Luckily they’re all family friendly. Readers know that we’re … Continue reading Temple Grandin and the ABA DR Section Meetings in Denver
This will be the last post regarding the trip from Israel (at least for now!) and I wanted to close with some of the students’ last reflections and humorous comments about the trip: Most people said I was a little crazy for heading to Israel in my first trip out of the country but what … Continue reading Israel Reflections–Closing Thoughts
Most of our loyal readers know that the deafening silence on the blog this week is due to the fact that we are all in Denver at the ABA Dispute Resolution Spring Conference, attending as many of the 90 plus program offerings, Section Council meetings, Section subcommittee meetings, dine-arounds and social events that we can. … Continue reading Greetings from Denver – ABA DR Spring Conference
How could I not blog about the Ninth Circuit’s decision earlier this week in Facebook, Inc. v. ConnectU, Inc., No. 08-16745, 2011 U.S. App. LEXIS 7430 (9th Cir. April 11, 2011)? It involves the interaction of three of my favorite things: ADR, Securities Law and Facebook. The primary ADR issue before the Ninth Circuit was … Continue reading ADR, Securities Law and Facebook – I “like”
After much fanfare in the mediation community when it premiered, including plenty on this blog, there’s been little mention of it. I caught up with more Fairly Legal episodes over the weekend and realized why. Mediation provides a nice setting for the show, but there little mediation going on. Like many other tv shows it manufactures false … Continue reading Reflections on Fairly Legal
If you haven’t been following the NFL labor situation, the sides are fighting over the biggest pot of professional sports money in America. George Cohen, head of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, mediated a brief and ultimately fruitless attempt to negotiate a new collective bargaining agreement between the NFL and the players’ union earlier … Continue reading How Process Can Affect BATNA: The NFL Labor Dispute
In light of yesterday’s events in Israel–Hamas launching a missile attack on an Israeli schoolbus and the Israeli response of missile attacks into Gaza–one of our speakers that we heard during our trip to Israel is particularly on point today. How do you determine an “appropriate” response to the Hamas attack? Here are one student’s reflections on … Continue reading Israel Reflections–Use of Force & Civilian Targets
After more than six years in development, and hundreds of public comment letters on two different proposed versions, the SEC approved a revised Discovery Guide applicable to customer cases in FINRA securities arbitration. FINRA is one of the few arbitration forums mandating automatic production of “presumptively discoverable” documents and information in arbitrations brought by customers … Continue reading SEC Approves New Discovery Guide for FINRA Arbitration
