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Banned ItemsIn 2016, despite contracts that mandate one-on-one arbitrations, consumers will likely gain the right to bring claims against banks, credit card issuers, and other lenders in class actions. The new rule, which the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau announced on October 7, 2015 it will probably issue next year, will partially reverse a string of recent Supreme Court decisions that made class-banning arbitration clauses broadly enforceable.

The action by the Bureau will vastly raise the stakes for disputes involving practices affecting large numbers of consumer finance customers.
Continue Reading Banning Bans on (Some) Class Cases

imageBetter results

Lawyers who like to handle disputes on a basis that shares risk with their clients often prefer the speed and lower cost of arbitration. The process has its drawbacks; some people worry about fuzzy standards and the lack of review for legal errors. And some general counsel even swear that it costs just as much and takes every bit as long as a lawsuit.

To which I say: hire somebody who will work on a contingent-fee or hybrid basis. You’ll get better, more efficient results faster.

But sometimes courts render rulings that seem to put arbitration into a second-class legal stratum, a minor league of law, a dustbin of dispute resolution. The Eighth Circuit did such a thing just this week.Continue Reading The Dustbin of Dispute Resolution

Shutterstock_119691289A way out of arbitration?

A new Ninth Circuit decision points to a possible way to avoid arbitration clauses in the take-it-or-leave-it "adhesion" contracts that electronic retailers post on their websites.

Online vendors want you to accept their terms of service. That way, you will bind yourself to a form contract that mainly favors the…

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Arbitration good?

The Supreme Court of Texas has made enforcing arbitration clauses super-easy. But what happens if the arbitration produces an outcome that may give the conservative Court pause — a $125 million award in favor of the claimant, for instance?

A case that the Court decided last week poses that lurking question. And regrettably their honors answered the…

Anyway the retroactive modification of a plan can't be used to diminish damages to which participants have been held entitled, even if the modification is lawful. In effect the defendant is arguing that okay, we screwed our participants unlawfully, but we could have screwed them lawfully, and that’s what we’ve now done by amending the

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1998-134-4_newSnappy reclines. The Empire State Building looms in the mid-distance. Bitey consults his notes. He clears his throat.

Bitey:    The U.S. Supreme Court's summer break started last week, Snaps, and the time has come for us to look at the . . . uh . . . results of the 2012-13 Term for those commercial cases…