Blawgletter confesses a distaste for litigation about arbitration.  Instead of promising to settle fights cheaper-better-faster, arbitration agreements nowadays provide fodder for lawsuits.  Blawgletter, following the lead of its sister e-publication, Barnett’s Notes on Commercial Litigation, calls the phenomenon "arbitragation".  Get it?

A new opinion fresh out of the Sixth Circuit spotlights the arbitragation problem without lamenting it.  (See the "for publication" opinion.) In Electronic Data Systems Corp. v. Donelson, Nos. 06-1211/1478 (6th Cir. Jan. 18, 2007), two former EDS employees alleged race discrimination by a supervisor who displayed in her work cubicle a black-face doll hanging from a noose around its neck.  They originally filed suit in federal court (2002), worked out an agreement to arbitrate their claims (2003), went to arbitration (2004), received a favorable award (2005), and persuaded the district court not to vacate it (2005).  And, in 2007, the court of appeals rejects EDS’s arguments for vacatur.

Cheaper-better-faster than litigation?  Nosir.

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