Here’s an excellent client alert, out of Holland and Knight, on the question of mandatory arbitration provisions in ERISA benefit plans. The alert discusses a recent federal district court decision out of Arizona requiring the participant in an ESOP to arbitrate her claim, rather than bring a putative class action case in federal court,
Arbitration
What Should Clients and Their Lawyers Learn from Deflategate?
Honestly, I couldn’t really care one whit about the little locker room stare down between Roger Goodell and Tom Brady. Its just sports. A spinning teacher of mine once looked out at the class the day after a playoff or Super Bowl loss by the Patriots (I forget which) and said, in the middle of…
AAA Arbitrations Now Include an Appeal Process for Complex Commercial Disputes
By Stephen Rosenberg on
Posted in Arbitration
Years of experience litigating in the federal courts on the one hand, and arbitrating before the AAA on the other, have left me skeptical of the idea that arbitration is somehow preferable to the courts for resolving complex business disputes. My own experience is that, for those types of cases, arbitration is often not less…
Empirical Proof of What I Always Thought (And Said): The Benefits of Litigation over Arbitration
This is great. I have lost count of how many times I have explained my view that arbitration is not, by definition, preferable to litigation for resolving disputes, and that instead, in each and every given case, a party should think carefully about which dispute resolution forum is preferable. I have written and spoken on…
An Emerging Consensus on Arbitrating Complex Commercial Disputes?
By Stephen Rosenberg on
Posted in Arbitration, Arbitration of Coverage Disputes
Well, I have written extensively on my skepticism about commercial arbitration as a tool for solving commercial disputes, and my belief that the courtroom is a better forum for most complex cases. It would take a lot of links to cover my past discussion of the pros and cons of this type of dispute resolution…
Legal Rights That Are Protected In Courts, May Well Be Lost In An Arbitration
By Stephen Rosenberg on
Posted in Arbitration, Arbitration of Coverage Disputes
I haven’t commented in the past on this, because there was too much else going on directly on point with ERISA. However, as many of you may know, the Supreme Court issued an opinion a week or two back in essence concluding that parties may not contract between themselves to allow a court to review…
Let My People Go, or Something Like That: Granting Parties Greater Freedom to Construct an Arbitration Regime
By Stephen Rosenberg on
Posted in Arbitration
There was an interesting post yesterday on the Wall Street Journal Law Blog – which by its topics provides a nice little overview of the zeitgeist of the legal world at any given moment – on arbitration as an alternative to litigation. The post discusses a column from the Financial Times supporting the growth of…
Electronic Discovery and the Calculus of Arbitration
By Stephen Rosenberg on
I have written before about electronic discovery and the amendments to the federal rules governing that discovery, and my theme has often been that the courts need to develop a jurisprudence concerning electronic discovery that carefully weighs the expense of the discovery versus the need for it before granting extensive (and expensive) electronic discovery. In…
More on the Question of When to Arbitrate and When to Instead Litigate
By Stephen Rosenberg on
Posted in Arbitration
Pretty much since I started writing this blog I have talked about how, in my experience, commercial arbitration is not a panacea and often is not a better forum than litigation for resolving disputes. My main point has always been that it depends on the particular dispute and on the details of a party’s position,…
ERISA and Same Sex Marriage
By Stephen Rosenberg on
Here’s a great story out of Boston, by means of the Workplace Prof, that touches on several obsessions of this blog – ERISA, the federal arbitration act, and court review of arbitration awards. As the Prof explains in this post here, a federal judge for the District of Massachusetts is seeking amicus briefs related…