As recently as 1995, the Supreme Court observed, in First Options of Chicago v. Kaplan, that arbitration was a creature of contract: "[A] party who has not agreed to arbitrate will normally have a right to a court's decision about the merits of its dispute." Yet what constitutes an agreement to...
Several list serves and correspondents have taken note of the July 26, 2013 decision of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in the matter Benes v. A.B. Data, Ltd. The opinion, authored by Chief Judge Easterbrook, is not earth-shattering. But the case is diverting nevertheless and might bring a smile...
One of the most interesting sessions at the ABA Dispute Resolution meeting in Washington was a report on an initiative of the Straus Institute at Pepperdine and the Dickerson School of Law at Penn State: A National Roundtable on Consumer and Employment Dispute Resolution. Consumer and employment arbitration is a difficult topic upon...
Prof. Thomas Stipanowich writes a lot and writes well -- two gifts that don't always go together. His most recent article, for the Kansas Law Review, addresses the concern he has always had that arbitration be -- and be perceived to be -- fair. Stipanowich is worried that recent Supreme...
At the IBA in Dubai last week, a three-hour session was held on "The Rise of Multiculturalism and Resulting Challenges of Managing Diversity in the Workplace." While the subjects discussed were fascinating, the subjects not discussed might have been even more so. ...
Hans Peter Frick, General Counsel of Nestlé, once offered this guidance for business mediators: You can either make what you think is a good candy bar and convince people that they "ought to" buy it, or you could go out and ask people what kind of candy bar they want, and...
Prima Paint teaches that the arbitration agreement nestled in a commercial contract has a legal validity of its own, and that once a court determines that the "nestled" agreement to arbitrate is enforceable, then the arbitrator and not the court shall determine the enforceability of the rest of the contract. The interesting thing about the arbitration...