arbitration

Subscribe to arbitration

Earlier this week, we wrote about Verizon’s appeal to the Ninth Circuit from a district court ruling that the bellwether provision in its arbitration clause was unconscionable.  Both the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the California Employment Law Council have filed amicus curiae briefs in support of Verizon’s position that bellwether procedures, which for decades…

On September 13, 2022, Public Justice and other consumer advocacy groups sent a letter to CFPB Director Rohit Chopra urging the CFPB to limit the use of “forced” arbitration provisions by banks and other consumer finance companies.  According to reports appearing in Law360 and BNA, at a virtual event organized by Public Justice and…

According to a report appearing in today’s Law360, CFPB Director Rohit Chopra has indicated that the agency appears unlikely, at least in the near future, to undertake new rulemaking that would regulate the use of consumer arbitration agreements.  The CFPB’s previous rule—which would have forbidden companies from including class action waivers in consumer arbitration…

Recently, a divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit held in Zirpoli v. Midland Funding, LLC that an arbitrator, not the district court, must decide whether class action claims brought against Midland Funding LLC are subject to arbitration.  The question in Zirpoli was whether a challenge to the legality of…

The U.S. Supreme Court has once again confirmed that the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) preempts incompatible state laws that preclude contracting parties from controlling which claims are subject to arbitration.  Ruling in favor of the employer in Viking River Cruises, Inc. v. Moriana, the Court held that the California courts erred in refusing to…

For the second time in two weeks, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled against a company seeking to compel individual arbitration of Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) collective action claims.  In Southwest Airlines Co. v. Saxon, the Court held that the plaintiff’s claims were exempt from arbitration under Section 1 of the Federal Arbitration…

Recently, Professor Jeff Sovern and I exchanged views on whether the CFPB could (or should) add arbitration rulemaking to its regulatory agenda.  Professor Sovern has now suggested that the CFPB’s 2015 Study of consumer arbitration would support a new regulation.  It would not.

The CFPB’s earlier final arbitration rule was overridden by the Congress under…

In Wednesday’s edition of Consumer Law & Policy Blog, Professor Jeff Sovern laments that during Director Rohit Chopra’s recent testimony before the Senate Banking Committee and the House Financial Services Committee, neither he nor any member of the Committees mentioned “arbitration” as an action item on the CFPB’s agenda. Professor Sovern expresses hope that…

Recently, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reexamined when use of a website can bind a consumer to hyperlinked “terms and conditions” containing an arbitration provision that the consumer never saw or read.  Affirming the district court, the appeals court held that the plaintiffs in Berman v. Freedom Financial Network, LLC did not enter into…