President Biden on March 3 signed into law the Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act. It became effective immediately. This article explores the features of the new law, potential problems, and how it might impact financial services arbitration. In sum: 1) employees/class reps can opt out of PDAAs and class action waivers in cases…
President Biden on February 23 nominated Ketanji Brown Jackson to replace the retiring Supreme Court Justice Breyer, a White House Press Release announced. Judge Brown Jackson was appointed by President Obama in 2013 to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, and by President Biden last year to the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit (to fill the seat vacated by Merrick B….
Just as we were finalizing the last Alert, we learned that a Georgia Trial Court had vacated a FINRA Award based on multiple Federal Arbitration Act (“FAA”) grounds. Here is the promised expanded analysis. We reported briefly on this one in SAA 2022-04 (Feb. 3), focusing mostly on the assertions that the potential arbitrator list preparation…
Just as we were finalizing this Alert, we learned that a Georgia Trial Court has just vacated a FINRA Award based on multiple Federal Arbitration Act (“FAA”) violations, prompting PIABA to call for Congressional and SEC investigations. We will cover this story in detail in the next issue, but we wanted to pass along now some…
We reported in December that the Supreme Court had granted Certiorari in four cases involving arbitration. The Court has just set the cases for oral argument during the last two weeks of March. The oral argument calendar released by SCOTUS on January 28 shows that all four cases have been set for oral argument as follows: March 21: Morgan v. Sundance Inc., No….
On the heels of the decision by Fulton County Superior Court Judge Belinda E. Edwards in Leggett v. Wells Fargo Clearing Services, LLC, No. 2019CV328949 (Ga. Super Jan. 25, 2022), finding that the potential arbitrator list preparation process had been compromised, and subsequent calls by PIABA for Congressional and SEC investigations, two Democratic lawmakers have written to…
With SCOTUS already set to review an FAA preemption challenge to California’s PAGA, the parties to a similar pending Certiorari Petition have agreed to hold the case in abeyance pending the outcome of the first case. We have reported many times on Iskanian v. CLS Transportation Los Angeles, LLC, 59 Cal.4th 348, 327 P.3d 129 (Calif. 2014), cert. den.,…
With four arbitration-centric cases already slated for review this Term, and one Certiorari Petition awaiting imminent disposition, is SCOTUS about to take up yet another arbitration-related case? Stay tuned. As described in our recent feature article, After a Lull in 2021, a Busy Year Ahead Arbitration-wise for SCOTUS, 2021:48 Sec. Arb. Alert 1 (Dec. 23, 2021), the Supreme Court…
Although Credit Suisse is held liable for negligent supervision, the Arbitrators nonetheless recommend expungement of the claimant broker’s record (who was “unnamed” in the sense that he was not named as a party in the underlying arbitration). The unanimous Award by an All-Public Panel in Marmaduke v. Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC, FINRA ID No. 18-02720…
Passengers who had suffered no injury lacked Article III standing to challenge an arbitration clause in Amtrak’s Terms and Conditions. Amtrak’s passenger Terms and Conditions have since 2019 contained a predispute arbitration agreement applying to: “all claims, disputes, or controversies, past, present, or future, that otherwise would be resolved in a court of law or before a forum other than arbitration.”…