Arbitration

Subscribe to Arbitration via RSS

For decades, the debate over arbitration agreements and class action waivers in consumer financial services contracts has largely played out in courtrooms, before regulators and Congress, and in academic journals. Advocates and critics have debated issues ranging from consumer access to justice and deterrence to litigation costs and whether the benefits of arbitration are ultimately passed along to consumers.… Continue Reading

The SpaceX IPO generated enormous attention for obvious reasons. It was the largest IPO in history, and the company’s stock price initially surged after trading began. But an important legal development associated with the IPO has received considerably less attention: SpaceX adopted an unusually comprehensive shareholder dispute-resolution regime (the “Regime”) in its bylaws.… Continue Reading

Artificial intelligence is rapidly evolving from a tool that assists human decision-making into technology capable of acting independently. The next frontier, often referred to as agentic AI or agentic commerce, envisions AI agents negotiating contracts, making purchases, authorizing payments, and completing commercial transactions with little or no human intervention.

While enormous investments are being made to develop this technology, far less attention has been devoted to an equally important question: What legal infrastructure will govern autonomous commercial transactions?… Continue Reading

Based on reports published around the IPO and the first day of trading, the SpaceX offering appears to have set or approached a remarkable number of records. Some are clear-cut “firsts,” while others are more accurately described as unprecedented milestones. In my view, the three most extraordinary records are:

  1. Largest IPO ever ($75 billion raised);
  2. Largest valuation ever for a newly public company ($1.77 trillion at pricing); and
  3. Creation of the world’s first trillionaire as a direct result of an IPO.
… Continue Reading

For years, the debate over mandatory arbitration clauses and class-action waivers in consumer financial services contracts has largely focused on questions of consumer protection, access to justice, the validity of class action waivers in arbitration provisions, and the value of class actions as a tool for redressing systemic consumer harm and litigation policy.… Continue Reading

In a significant win for parties seeking to enforce arbitration agreements, the U.S. Supreme Court yesterday issued a unanimous decision in Jules v. Andre Balazs Properties holding that when a federal court stays a case pending arbitration under Section 3 of the Federal Arbitration Act (“FAA”), the federal court retains jurisdiction to later confirm or vacate the resulting arbitration award, even if the post-arbitration motion would not independently satisfy federal subject matter jurisdiction requirements.… Continue Reading

This week on the award-winning Consumer Finance Monitor Podcast, host Alan Kaplinsky is joined by Senior Counsel Mark Levin and special guest Professor Mohsen Manesh for a powerful roundtable on one of today’s most consequential topics: the SEC’s new position on mandatory arbitration in corporate governance documents and how state law and market realities are shaping the future for consumer financial services companies, investors, and legal counsel.… Continue Reading

We recently wrote about the new policy statement issued by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) “that the presence of an issuer-investor mandatory arbitration provision will not impact decisions whether to accelerate the effectiveness of a registration statement under the Securities Act.” This reverses the agency’s previous position that it would not use its authority to accelerate the effective date of a company’s registration statement when the company’s governing documents contained a mandatory arbitration provision covering disputes under the federal securities laws.… Continue Reading

Citing a host of recent U.S. Supreme Court rulings interpreting the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA), the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has “determined that the presence of an issuer-investor mandatory arbitration provision will not impact decisions whether to accelerate the effectiveness of a registration statement under the Securities Act.” This new policy statement reverses the agency’s previous position that it would not use its authority to accelerate the effective date of a company’s registration statement when the company’s governing documents contained a mandatory arbitration provision covering disputes under the federal securities laws.… Continue Reading