Arbitration

CASE SUMMARY: Ann Eleanor Ploetz, as Trustee For the Laudine L. Ploetz, 1985 Trust v. Morgan Stanley Smith Barney, LLC

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Kantor Photo (8-2012)By Mark Kantor

A decision last Thursday from the US District Court for the District of Minnesota is worth a brief report, as an example of the rejection by US Federal courts of the argument that an arbitrator’s failure to disclose is an automatic basis alone for vacating the resulting arbitration award.  In Ann Eleanor Ploetz, as Trustee For the Laudine L. Ploetz, 1985 Trust v. Morgan Stanley Smith Barney, LLC, Civ. No. 17-1112 (PAM/DTS)(May 25, 2017, available at https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=14229967613986037394&hl=en&lr=lang_en&as_sdt=20003&as_vis=1&oi=scholaralrt), the District Court (Paul Magnuson, District Judge) concluded that “every Court of Appeals to have addressed the issue has rejected Ploetz’s interpretation of Commonwealth Coatings that “the fact of the nondisclosure alone mandates vacatur under either a `reasonable impression of bias’ or `appearance of bias’ standard.”.

Ploetz does not cite any case decided after Commonwealth Coatings [Commonwealth Coatings Corp. v. Continental Casualty Co., 393 U.S. 145 (1968)] interpreting that decision to require vacatur of an award solely because an arbitrator failed to disclose relevant party contacts.  This is likely because there are no such cases.  It appears as though every Court of Appeals to have addressed the issue has rejected Ploetz’s interpretation of Commonwealth Coatings that “the fact of the nondisclosure alone mandates vacatur under either a `reasonable impression of bias’ or `appearance of bias’ standard.” Nationwide Mut. Ins. Co. v. Home Ins. Co., 429 F.3d 640, 644 (6th Cir. 2005); see also id. at 645 (explicitly rejecting “as dicta . . . the appearance of bias standard espoused in the [Commonwealth Coatings] plurality opinion”).

In Ploetz, the losing party in a 2016-2017 FINRA arbitration sought vacatur of the adverse arbitration award on the ground that one of the arbitrators (Goldman) had failed to disclose his 2012 participation as mediator in an unrelated FINRA matter involving the respondent in the arbitration, MSSB.  Goldman had, however, disclosed his service as arbitrator in 6 arbitrations involving Morgan Stanley Smith Barney (MSSB).  The parties in the instant arbitration had not objected on the basis of those disclosed matters.

FINRA requires that arbitrators disclose any potential conflicts, including past service as an arbitrator or mediator. ….  Goldman disclosed that he had served as an arbitrator in proceedings involving MSSB on four occasions and was currently serving as an arbitrator in two pending MSSB arbitrations. …  Neither party sought to disqualify him on the basis of these contacts with MSSB.  After a two-day hearing, the panel unanimously determined that Ploetz’s claims were without merit. …

In February [2017], Ploetz’s attorney learned that Goldman had served as a mediator in a 2012 proceeding in Michigan involving MSSB. ….   Mediation under FINRA is voluntary and private, akin to settlement discussions, and thus there was no record of this proceeding and it was handled by attorneys not involved in the instant arbitration.  The 2012 mediation was unsuccessful and that case eventually proceeded to arbitration, with the arbitration panel finding for the claimant and against MSSB. …  There is no indication that Goldman was involved in the case after the unsuccessful mediation.

Petitioner Ploetz argued that Goldman’s failure to disclose his service as mediator in the earlier MSSB matter required vacating the 2017 arbitration award for “evident partiality”.  She contended that the US Supreme Court’s 1968 decision in Commonwealth Coatings [MK: the only, and famously internally inconsistent, set of Supreme Court opinions seeking to apply the “evident partiality” vacatur grounds in the US Federal Arbitration Act] “sets forth a bright-line rule that when the parties bargain for disclosure of conflicts and the arbitrator fails to disclose a conflict, the arbitration award must be vacated.”  Vacatur was required, said Ploetz, “because the parties agreed to be bound by the FINRA rules, and because the FINRA rules provide that failure to disclose is a “circumstance[] which might preclude the arbitrator from rendering an objective and impartial determination …, a refusal to vacate the award would frustrate the parties’ bargained-for legitimate expectations, not to mention the FAA’s standards.”

For that purpose, Ploetz also asserted that “it is inappropriate for the Court to consider any more recent appellate court interpretations of Commonwealth Coatings because the Supreme Court itself has not changed the Commonwealth Coatings holding.”

Judge Magnuson of the Federal District Court in Minnesota criticized that argument for treating the common-law system as “sclerotic.”

Her position that the law on this issue is sclerotic and may only be refined by the Supreme Court is not supported by either subsequent caselaw or by our legal system’s precedent-based jurisprudence, which relies on the evolution of legal principles through subsequent interpretations of Supreme Court opinions.

Automatic vacatur for arbitrator non-disclosure was not, therefore, mandatory.  Instead, said the Judge, the party seeking vacatur must still satisfy the “heavy burden” of showing “evident partiality”; “Even if an arbitrator fails to make a disclosure regarding potential conflicts of interest, a party must still “demonstrate evident partiality” on the arbitrator’s part.”  Moreover, “a party contending that an arbitration award should be vacated because of an arbitrator’s “evident partiality” bears a “heavy burden.””

Judge Magnuson then concluded that the failure by Goldman to disclose the 2012 MSSB mediation was not sufficient to show “evident partiality” in circumstances where the arbitrator had already disclosed 6 MSSB arbitrations without objection and the prior mediation had no demonstrated effect on the 2016-2017 arbitration.

Here, there is simply no evidence that Goldman’s prior mediation with MSSB had any effect on the resolution of Ploetz’s claim.  Indeed, Goldman disclosed six other MSSB-related proceedings over which he had presided and those proceedings did not cause Ploetz to question his impartiality.

 

Mark Kantor is a CPR Distinguished Neutral. Until he retired from Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy, Mark was a partner in the Corporate and Project Finance Groups of the Firm. He currently serves as an arbitrator and mediator. He teaches as an Adjunct Professor at the Georgetown University Law Center (Recipient, Fahy Award for Outstanding Adjunct Professor). Additionally, Mr. Kantor is Editor-in-Chief of the online journal Transnational Dispute Management.

This material was first published on OGEMID, the Oil Gas Energy Mining Infrastructure and Investment Disputes discussion group sponsored by the on-line journal Transnational Dispute Management (TDM, at https://www.transnational-dispute-management.com/), and is republished with consent.

SCOTUS Says States Can’t Discriminate Against Arbitration, Directly or Indirectly

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Adding to its line of pro-arbitration decisions led by AT&T Mobility LLC v. Concepcion, 563 U. S. 333 (2011)(available at http://bit.ly/1Sf42Bm), the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday reaffirmed in a 7-1 ruling written by Justice Elena Kagan that the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) both “preempts any state rule discriminating on its face against arbitration” and “displaces any rule that covertly accomplishes the same objective by disfavoring contracts that (oh so coincidentally) have the defining features of arbitration agreements.” Kindred Nursing Centers v. Clark, No. 16-32 (May 15)(available at http://bit.ly/2pCk94L ).

Kindred came to the Supreme Court after the Kentucky Supreme Court refused to enforce arbitration agreements signed on behalf of two residents of the Kindred Nursing Center, by relatives to whom the residents had given power of attorney. The two residents died, their families alleged, from substandard care provided by the nursing home.

The nursing home moved to dismiss the complaints on the grounds that the parties had agreed to arbitrate their claims. The trial court initially sent the cases to arbitration, but reconsidered later in light of a Kentucky Supreme Court opinion, and denied these motions. The Kentucky Court of Appeals agreed that the suits could proceed. The Kentucky Supreme Court consolidated the cases and affirmed, holding that a power of attorney must explicitly authorize the attorney in fact to waive jury trials in order to include arbitration agreements under the power.

As the Justices’ questioning during oral arguments earlier this year acknowledged, the facts of this case involved something more important and sensitive than a mere dispute over the arbitrability of a telephone or cable bill. But, with Monday’s ruling, the Supreme Court seemed to be implying that, no matter how emotional the backdrop, the states cannot attack federal law that applies to that contract, even indirectly.

The Kentucky Supreme Court, wrote Kagan in the Kindred opinion, “did exactly what Concepcion barred: adopt a legal rule hinging on the primary characteristic of an arbitration agreement—namely, a waiver of the right to go to court and receive a jury trial.”

With this recent line of cases, the U.S. Supreme Court has made clear that the presence of unequal treatment of arbitration will control the results in these cases.

“There is no doubt that mandatory arbitration procedures, when abused, can be used to stack the deck in favor of companies against individuals, and the original case’s underlying facts are upsetting,” said CPR President & CEO, Noah J. Hanft. “But in ruling that the FAA precludes states from imposing rules that negatively single out arbitration agreements, the Supreme Court in Kindred has correctly protected a process that is fundamentally no less fair or favorable to individuals than a trial might be–and which arguably has the potential to offer many additional benefits. One can, and must, advocate simultaneously both for a robust arbitration option, and for its fair application.”

Justice Kagan’s majority opinion was joined by Chief Justice Roberts, and Justices Kennedy, Ginsburg, Breyer, Alito and Sotomayor. Justice Gorsuch, who had not yet been confirmed when the case was argued, did not participate.

Justice Clarence Thomas dissented–the seventh time he has issued a solo dissent noting that the FAA doesn’t apply to state court proceedings.  He would have backed the Kentucky Supreme Court, writing that in state courts, “the FAA does not displace a rule that requires express authorization from a principal before an agent may waive the principal’s right to a jury trial.”

Gorsuch on Arbitration

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By Russ Bleemer

A review of the arbitration opinions involving Tenth U.S. Circuit Court Judge Neil M. Gorsuch, who last night was nominated to fill the U.S. Supreme Court vacancy, doesn’t provide a definitive indication on how his arbitration votes might fall if the U.S. Senate approves of his nomination.

The 49-year-old Gorsuch, who has been on the Tenth Circuit bench since President George W. Bush nominated him and he was confirmed by the Senate in 2006, has participated in appellate panels that have backed awards, compelled arbitration and reversed a failure to compel arbitration.

But the narrow scope of arbitration cases in which the circuit judge has participated, and the issues on which the cases were decided, don’t show a pronounced tilt toward business or consumers.

Adherence to Contract Law Principles, Combined with Customary View of FAA

In his most arbitration-centric decision, Gorsuch’s preferred path is adherence to contract law principles, combined with a customary view of the Federal Arbitration Act among federal judges.

“Everyone knows the Federal Arbitration Act favors arbitration,” Gorsuch wrote in the opening to Howard v. Ferrellgas Partners, No. 13-3061 (10th Cir. April 8, 2014)(available at http://bit.ly/2jTm6Wi), but, he emphasized, “before the Act’s heavy hand in favor of arbitration swings into play, the parties themselves must agree to have their disputes arbitrated.”

He continued, “While Congress has chosen to preempt state laws that aim to channel disputes into litigation rather than arbitration, even under the FAA it remains a ‘fundamental principle’ that ‘arbitration is a matter of contract,’ not something to be foisted on the parties at all costs.”

Possible Role in Employment Contract Class Action Waiver Cases

There is little in the 38 arbitration opinions that the Tenth Circuit website produces in a search of Gorsuch’s work—mostly incidental mentions–that rises to the level of significance of the preemption of state law and class waiver issues that have steadily appeared at the U.S. Supreme Court in its recent history.

But if confirmed quickly, Gorsuch could find himself participating in the decisions on three cases taken by the Court on Jan. 13 that will be argued together this term, and will settle whether employees can be required as a condition of employment to arbitrate their workplace disputes individually, while waiving their rights to a class process.

The long-simmering group of cases is a clash between the National Labor Relations Act and the Federal Arbitration Act, and an extension to the employment arena of the leading class waiver/mandatory arbitration case in consumer contracts, AT&T Mobility LLC v. Concepcion, 131 S. Ct. 1740 (2011), which Gorsuch was quoting directly in the passage above.

Arbitration watchers who want to try to handicap the Court’s path likely will need to become acquainted with Gorsuch’s by now well-publicized animosity toward the so-called Chevron Doctrine, in which the U.S. Supreme Court has backed deference to administrative agency determinations.  See Chevron v. National Resources Defense Council, 467 U.S. 837 (1984)(available at http://bit.ly/1EirXXt).

In an immigration law decision last year, Gutierrez-Brizuela v. Lynch, No. 14-9585  (Aug. 23, 2016)(available at http://bit.ly/2kPDvh5), Gorsuch blasted Chevron in a concurrence, writing that its deference to the executive branch agencies in derogation of legislative power runs counter to the Constitution’s separation of powers checks-and-balance system.

The issue could control the arbitration outcome in the three employment arbitration cases at the Court, which currently are being briefed and not yet scheduled for oral argument. They emanate from a January 2012 opinion by the National Labor Relations Board.

In one of the three cases, the Board itself is a party, appealing a Fifth Circuit decision which overturned its earlier administrative decision. See NLRB v. Murphy Oil USA Inc., No. No. 16-307 (U.S. Supreme Court case page is available here: http://bit.ly/2kOPxal. Scotusblog’s page including briefs and a link to the Fifth Circuit opinion is available here: http://bit.ly/2kPvTyi).

If the Chevron Doctrine doesn’t figure in a Gorsuch view of the current arbitration cases, the NLRB’s moves to preserve class actions by forbidding mandatory arbitration may be another hot button for the former U.S. Supreme Court clerk.

Gorsuch on Class Actions

Gorsuch has problems with class actions in securities cases.  When he was in private practice, he wrote that “economic incentives unique to securities litigation encourage class action lawyers to bring meritless claims and prompt corporate defendants to pay dearly to settle such claims.” Neil M. Gorsuch and Paul B. Matey, “Settlements in Securities Fraud Class Actions: Improving Investor Protection,” Critical Legal Issues–Working Paper Series No. 128 (Washington Legal Foundation April 2005)(available at http://bit.ly/2kTBDCZ).

Two Opinions, One Dissent

Despite involvement as a panel member in cases producing about a dozen opinions or orders, the Howard case discussed above is one of only three arbitration writings exclusively by Gorsuch in his decade-long tenure on the court.  One of the three is a dissent.

The Tenth Circuit website revealed Gorsuch’s opinions, and orders with judgments, but didn’t produce unpublished opinions in which Gorsuch may have participated.

In Howard, Gorsuch wrote that the customarily swift determination by a lower court of whether the parties in the suit agreed to arbitration didn’t take place—fast or slow.

The plaintiff had filed a class action for overcharges against the propane supplier defendant.  The defense asked for arbitration, and Gorsuch described how the lower court botched its inquiry.  He first noted that the district court, “[u]nsure whether [defendant] Ferrellgas had shown an agreement to arbitrate in its initial motion, . . . entertained discovery and further motions practice.”

The trial court, Gorsuch reported, found “too many unresolved factual questions remained and proceeded to invite yet more discovery followed by yet more motions practice.”

Nearly a year and half after the defendant filed its motion to compel arbitration, the district court, Gorsuch wrote, “issued an order in which it found that material disputes of fact still prevented it from saying for certain whether or not the parties had agreed to arbitrate. But rather than proceeding to resolve the conflicting factual accounts through trial as the Act requires, the court entered an order denying arbitration outright.” [Emphasis is Circuit Judge Gorsuch’s.]

“That was error,” continued Gorsuch, exhibiting his breezy writing style in an area dry even by circuit law standards, explaining, “In these circumstances, the [Federal Arbitration] Act’s summary trial can look a lot like summary judgment. But when, as in this case, a quick look at the case suggests material disputes of fact do exist on the question whether the parties agreed to arbitrate, round after round of discovery and motions practice isn’t the answer. Parties should not have to endure years of waiting and exhaust legions of photocopiers in discovery and motions practice merely to learn where their dispute will be heard. The Act requires courts process the venue question quickly so the parties can get on with the merits of their dispute in the right forum. It calls for a summary trial—not death by discovery.”

Then, Gorsuch spread the blame around for arbitration disaster.  “Of course, the parties here didn’t exactly help themselves,” he wrote, adding, “They were anything but quick to seek the trial promised by the Act. In fact, they seemed content enough to haggle along together in the usual way of contemporary civil litigation, all about discovery disputes and motions practice and with only the most glancing consideration given to the possibility of trial.”

The case is a war over a contract, and whether and when it took effect.  Gorsuch explained that it was unclear from the record whether an oral contract for the propane tank and initial delivery was followed by a written contract for future deliveries containing the arbitration clause—and restricting it to the subsequent deliveries.

Regardless, Gorsuch–joined by his two fellow appeals panel members–ruled that with material facts in dispute, the district court should have proceeded to a trial on whether an arbitration agreement existed, and should not have denied the request to arbitration.

He wrote that the Federal Arbitration Act should have shown the path to the case’s resolution.  “We appreciate both sides’ evident frustration at how long this case has lingered at the transom without having entered either the door into arbitration or litigation,” Gorsuch concluded, adding, “It’s understandable that everyone might want us to give the case a firm nudge (one way or the other) so the parties’ dispute can finally progress past preliminary venue questions to the merits. But unresolved material disputes of fact block our way—disputes that could and should have been resolved years ago according to the procedures the FAA provides.”

Taking a Broader FAA View

Gorsuch took a broader FAA view in a dissent in a 2-1 Tenth Circuit arbitration case, Ragab v. Howard, No. 15-1444 (Nov. 21, 2016)(available at http://bit.ly/2gCL3pn).  The dissent—in a case where his panel affirmed a lower court’s ruling that conflicting arbitration agreements in six contracts between two parties should not be arbitrated because there was no meeting of the minds as to conducting the arbitration—appears to be is his most demonstrative view of the FAA’s effect on state laws.

Gorsuch strongly rejects the majority’s use of a New Jersey case that struck arbitration where multiple contracts conflicted on the terms of arbitration.  He notes that the New Jersey ruling had little application to Colorado laws, but also explains that it may not pass muster with the Supreme Court for its disregard of the FAA.

The New Jersey ruling, he explains, was a deep dive into the state’s consumer protection laws, in a case where the Tenth Circuit Colorado plaintiff more closely resembled a merchant.  But he noted that federal preemption is a big issue:  “Whether or not the FAA would preempt New Jersey’s special ‘extra clarity’ rule for certain kinds of arbitration agreements, that possibility undoubtedly exists and seems to me to counsel against endorsing it without a good deal more careful investigation than the parties offer us in this case.”

He wrote that with six of the parties’ interrelated commercial agreements containing arbitration clauses, and other circumstances, “In my view, parties to a commercial deal could have hardly demonstrated with greater clarity an intention to arbitrate their disputes and I see no way we might lawfully rescue them from their choice.”

Procedural holes are frequently filled by the parties, he explained, in providing “two easy workarounds that I believe would be more consistent with the parties’ expressed purposes than the course my colleagues chart.”

Additional Arbitration Work

Gorsuch was the author of one additional unanimous panel order and judgment on the Tenth Circuit’s website that backed a lower court’s refusal to compel arbitration for a former top executive who was fired by a pharmaceutical company. Genberg v. Porter, No. 13-1140 (May 12, 2014)(available at http://bit.ly/2kpuRs7).

The bulk of Gorsuch’s arbitration work appearing on the Tenth Circuit website, at www.ca10.uscourts.gov, was as part of a panel where others wrote the opinion or order. Among the opinions, Gorsuch joined his fellow circuit judges in backing a lower court ruling that a suit by a union under the Railway Labor Act  belonged in mandatory arbitration (BMWE v. BNSF Railway, No. 12-3061 (March 2, 2010)(available at http://bit.ly/2kpIwif).

In addition, he participated in panels in the following cases but didn’t write the unanimous opinion or order and judgment:

  • An order noting that an arbitration acts as a res judicata bar against a subsequent suit related to the wrongful discharge suit by an ex-Department of Veterans Affairs employee, backing a Merits Systems Protection Board order. Johnson v. DOVA, No. 14-9619 (May 22, 2015)(available at http://bit.ly/2kOYaBK).
  • An order strongly backing a major defense contractor’s mandatory arbitration clause contained in its employment dispute resolution program. Pennington v. Northrop Grumman Space & Mission Systems Corp., No. 07-2250 (March 14, 2008)(available at http://bit.ly/2jTh49F).
  • An affirmance of a Colorado court that overturned an arbitration award against a company which claimed that an arbitration notice presented by its Chinese business partner didn’t put the company on notice of a deadline it missed to participate in the ADR process. CEEG (Shanghai) Solar Science v. Lumos, No. 15-1256 (July 19, 2016)(available at http://bit.ly/2kOUorT).
  • An nonprecedential order and judgment as to arbitration backing a lower court that refused to compel arbitration, noting that the defendants seeking ADR didn’t establish that an arbitration agreement existed. Bellman v. i3Carbon, No. 12-1275 (May 2, 2014)(available at http://bit.ly/2kp3FJT).
  • An order, also nonprecedential as to the FAA, sending a case to arbitration and entitling the party to attorneys’ fees and costs “incurred in enforcing its right to arbitrate.” The order reversed a federal district court denial of arbitration. The winning defendant in the Tenth Circuit was a builder that sold the plaintiffs two condominiums with a mediation and arbitration clause in the sales agreement. Lamkin v. Morinda Properties Weight Parc, No. 11-4022 (Sept. 19, 2011)(available at http://bit.ly/2jTdKeS).
  • A case affirming dismissal of an employee’s wrongful termination suit after it had been arbitrated, citing claims preclusion under the arbitration award. Lewis v. Circuit City Stores, 05-3383 (Aug. 31, 2007)(available at http://bit.ly/2keVY6J).
  • A decision reversing two federal district court denials of arbitration against an employer charged by workers with violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act and an Oklahoma labor law, focusing on the scope of an arbitration clause, but in the remand order asking the lower court to consider whether the arbitration agreement preserves FLSA rights. Sanchez v. Nitro Lift Technologies, 12-7046 (Aug. 8, 2014)(available at http://bit.ly/2kT2Ple).
  • A determination that one of “two factually distinct injuries” related to a commercial contract fell under an arbitration clause, reversing in part a magistrate judge and a federal district court which had found that the case couldn’t be arbitrated. Chelsea Family Pharmacy PLLC v. Medco Health Solutions Inc., No. 08-5103 (June 2, 2009)(available at http://bit.ly/2jtiefT).

The author edits Alternatives to the High Cost of Litigation for the CPR Institute.

*Updated at 12 p.m.

Making the Mandatory Argument: Arbitration, Class Waivers and the Practitioners’ Role

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By Russ Bleemer

Legislative and court arguments over whether ADR processes can be used to defray class litigation are moving toward a decisive 2017 conclusion.

New regulations barring the use of class waivers associated with mandatory arbitration clauses in consumer financial contracts, like credit card agreements or wireless telephone service agreements, are due for release soon by the Washington, D.C.-based Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.  The CFPB had issued a proposal in May and accepted public comments until August.

In the December Alternatives, Sanford Jaffe and Linda Stamato, longtime conflict resolution process theorists, designers, and practitioners at the Center for Negotiation and Conflict Resolution at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J., backed the move.  They argue that the mandatory arbitration processes that prohibit class litigation that the CFPB targets indeed should go.

But with the intervention of last month’s election, the prospects for the vitality and longevity of the coming regulation has dimmed.

So the authors also argue that the responsibility for preserving the integrity of alternative dispute resolution processes by breaking the link between mandatory processes and class waivers lies with practitioners themselves.

“Rarely seen are misgivings about mandatory arbitration expressed by dispute resolution professionals,” the authors write. “But we ought to be heard in the hearings and rule-making processes, and in social and print media, to support the proper use of the processes we have worked to design, develop, apply and evaluate.  We need . . . to defend the principles upon which this field is grounded, not the least of which is choice. We need to return to the attitudes and beliefs with which the field started decades ago, to fulfill the promises of the architects of the field.”

In addition to discussing mandatory arbitration in contracts over which the CFPB regulates, Jaffe and Stamato discuss mandatory arbitration in the employment context, noting the line of cases involving the clash between the Federal Arbitration Act and the National Labor Relations Act.

Three federal circuit courts have held that the FAA permits employers to use class waivers in requiring arbitration to resolve workplace disputes, while two circuits have gone the other way, saying that the NLRA preserves a right to class processes, including litigation, under the law which says that employees may “engage in . . . concerted activities.” See CPR Blog post from Aug. 23 HERE.

Since the December issue of Alternatives was released (HERE free on CPR’s website for members logged in; HERE with archives on publisher John Wiley’s site) , the U.S. Supreme Court has scheduled five FAA-NLRA cases for discussion at its Jan. 6 case conference.

Experts believe the Court will accept one or more of the cases—perhaps one favoring the defense view upholding mandatory arbitration with a class waiver, and one backing the National Labor Relation Board’s ruling that class processes must be preserved—to finally decide the matter, which has been brewing since the NLRB struck the mandatory arbitration/class waiver provision it found in D.R. Horton Inc., 357 NLRB No. 184, 2012 WL 36274 (Jan. 3, 2012)(PDF download link at http://1.usa.gov/1IMkHn8), enforcement denied in relevant part, 737 F.3d 344 (5th Cir. 2013)(Graves, J., dissenting)(PDF download link at http://bit.ly/1XRvjrM), reh’g denied, No. 12-60031 (Apr. 16, 2014).

Meantime, the viability of the CFPB’s yet-to-be-released regulations is in doubt in light of President-elect Trump’s anti-regulation views, including his loathing of the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which authorized the CFPB.  While the agency is committed to a forthcoming final regulation, it’s unlikely it will stand without attack.

In the forthcoming January issue of Alternatives, available at the links above on or around Jan. 4, Philadelphia-based Ballard Spahr partner Alan Kaplinsky will counter the December Alternatives commentary discussed above with an outline of the options to challenge to the CFPB’s regulation, which some analysts say may emerge before Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration.

As Kaplinsky points out, a Congressional repeal may not even be necessary.  A new Trump appointee replacing current CFPB Director Richard Cordray could roll back the roll-out, restore (or reassert) mandatory arbitration and class waivers, and delay or change the regulations via the Administrative Procedure Act.

The December Alternatives commentary, “Private Justice: Losing Our Day in Court,” by Sanford M. Jaffe and Linda Stamato, is available now for all readers HERE.

The author edits Alternatives to the High Cost of Litigation for the CPR Institute.

Commercial Questions: CPR Board Chair John Kiernan Assesses ADR Progress and Suggests a Future Path

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kiernan

John S. Kiernan

International Institute for Conflict Prevention and Resolution Chairman John Kiernan recently told the Association for Conflict Resolution of Greater New York 2016 Annual Conference that conflict resolution practices had made great strides, and the processes and practitioners are widely used.

But he warned that in some ways, they are still facing not only growing pains, but even issues of general acceptance.

Kiernan, who also is president of the New York City Bar Association and co-chairs the Litigation Department at Debevoise & Plimpton, where he is a partner in the New York office, addressed the June 16, 2016, luncheon following ACR-GNY’s presentation of an ADR Achievement Award to Kiernan for his work in the field.

The Association for Conflict Resolution of Greater New York is the New York City metropolitan area chapter of the national, 7,000-member professional association of neutrals, educators, and others involved in the conflict resolution field. Its membership includes professional and volunteer mediators, government employees, lawyers, arbitrators, environmental public policy specialists, community and consensus-building facilitators, ombuds, educators, students, and others.

Kiernan then delivered the following address:

“It’s a pleasure to have this opportunity to gather and break bread with this impressive collection of ADR practitioners and fans. In the presence of dispute-resolvers like the folks in this room, advocates like me can practically feel the ‘adversarial-ity’ drain right out of us. If we can just infuse our clients, our clients’ adversaries and their lawyers with the same peace-mongering hormones, maybe we can get something accomplished.

“Gatherings like this provide an opportunity to pause and check the scorecard on how ADR is really doing in practice and in the general marketplace of ideas. The range of answers you can get from asking this question is broad, but the best answer from this litigator’s perspective appears to be that there has definitely been progress, to the point where partisans of ADR rightfully believe there is a widely recognized first level (as it might be called) of increased openness to ADR that did not exist in the same measure a few decades ago. And that ADR methods truly have established themselves as able to foster resolution of disputes faster, more efficiently and less expensively than litigation would do, but ADR remains far short of its full, what might be called “Level Two Maturity.”

“Universal buy-in remains held back by shortcomings in individual participants’ particular experiences with ADR efforts; by disputants’ understandable preference for winning over compromise so long as winning seems potentially achievable without intolerable expense; by institutional or personal priorities that cause litigants to feel a need for a judicial resolution, and by a wide array of cultural sensibilities among disputing parties that can be deeply felt and are hard to shake.

“Where is the progress?

“In the commercial sector, certainly, senior lawyers can all remember times when even highly sophisticated litigators and clients would breezily dismiss suggestions to consider mediation with statements like, “We can’t profitably talk settlement until we have inflicted some of the pain of litigation on the other side and seen how the case develops. Later, if the other side really becomes ready to talk settlement, we won’t need a mediator because I and my adversary can accomplish as much by talking to each other nose-to-nose, as old warhorses, as any mediator can accomplish.”

“That sensibility hasn’t disappeared, and by the way sometimes it’s exactly correct. But too many of us have seen too many disputes resolved through mediation, sometimes after efforts at bilateral negotiation have gone nowhere, for the categorical form of this view to feel like the reflexive majority sensibility today.

“Instead, it now feels as though discussion of mediation or some other form of ADR will be part of the vocabulary attached to a big percentage of disputes, often at multiple different points in the dispute.

“To the extent that ADR partisans want to claim a universally accepted new paradigm about how disputes should be resolved, though, that might be a little more self-congratulatory than the objective evidence suggests. In lots of contexts, at least absent court mandate, mediation remains exceptional rather than normal.

“Some of the best expansions of mediation have occurred because particular messes involved too many parties and too many different subgroups that had to sort out their own separate side agreements for a normal bilateral settlement negotiation to seem even potentially workable.

“Some mediations have worked simply because mediation created a process for compelling the personal attention of key business decision-makers who, unless scheduled and directed to sit in a room until a deal got negotiated, otherwise were too susceptible to getting distracted by other demands to focus as needed on the hard work of negotiating a resolution.

“Sometimes parties are drawn to ADR because they just plain need a decision so they can move on, and because they can’t get what they want from courts in a satisfactory fashion or acceptable timetable. That certainly seemed to be a big factor in the ADR boom in California that ran distinctively ahead of East Coast practice in the late 1980s and early 1990s, for example.

“Or sometimes the parties, unable to agree on anything else, have been able to agree that they simply couldn’t stand that such a large percentage of the pool of money available to resolve a dispute was being paid to litigators rather than to the settlement pot.

“In some contexts–particularly ones where the plaintiffs are individuals who feel personally aggrieved and the defendants have no principled objection to paying something or taking other formal actions if that will enable them to achieve peace–courts and other bodies have also seen that procedures giving claimants an outlet to tell their stories and then negotiate an early settlement can have a high success rate if the narratives get managed effectively and the mediators do their jobs well.

“These increasingly popular sources of resort to ADR are important. Having ADR available in these circumstances significantly advances the cause of achieving workable resolutions of disputes at tolerable costs.

“But before we over-celebrate, it’s worth recognizing the continuing ways that mediation and other forms of ADR remain in their relative infancy, with major distances yet to travel, in both the commercial marketplace and general public sensibility.

“We can take as a given that many people who bring lawsuits, and most people who are sued, correctly view the lawsuit as a problem that needs to be solved, as to which litigation to a final resolution is only one of a wide range of potential outcomes. Litigants uniformly want to win their disputes, but tend to recognize that if the case can’t be resolved or transformatively narrowed by an early dispositive motion, litigation to final judgment will likely be the most expensive possible mechanism for getting the dispute resolved.

“So if you set aside the important set of cases that seem readily susceptible to an early dispositive or narrowing motion, and accept the general starting reality that most litigations will settle instead of getting litigated to final judgment, and that expenditure of litigation dollars before any negotiations will not always significantly alter the risk-discounted value of the dispute or the price of settlement, that should objectively lead the most thoughtful participants in the process to certain kinds of pragmatic thinking and conduct.

“Now, in the face of those realities, ask any random sampling of experienced commercial litigators or in-house litigation counsel the following questions:

1. How often is your first approach in a new litigation, as a matter of agreement between litigator and client, to take an immediate deep dive into the merits as necessary to develop, at the very outset of the dispute, your best truly objective assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of the claims, the probability of success and failure, and the range of possible outcomes? For most disputes, the most common answer would probably be more often now than a decade ago, but still not very often.

2. How often do clients communicate by words or body language, or do outside litigators develop on their own, the strong sense that the client wants its litigators to be “true believers” in its position, such that no matter how the client nominally asks for the lawyers’ assessment, provision of truly objective assessments of the dispute’s merits and risks or fully candid discussion about the expected range of outcomes or the advantages of early consideration of settlement carries a major risk of damaging the client’s confidence in the lawyer’s expected zeal as an advocate–or maybe even of preventing the lawyer from getting hired?

3. When lawyers are asked to advise on disputes challenging the conduct of particular individuals within an institution, how rigorously does the client work to separate the decision-making regarding the dispute from the understandable instinct of the attacked individuals to defend their conduct, so that the risks are evaluated objectively?

4. How often do either outside or in-house lawyers think that the time would be ripe to begin exploring settlement in a litigation–in that further litigation will not likely change the settlement price by an amount exceeding the costs of that litigation–but that they can’t yet do so with any force because the ultimate business client is not ready to think in those terms? On the flip side, how often do plaintiffs’ lawyers approach mediation with the view that their goal is not to settle but to establish a floor of commitment by the defendant that can become a starting point for negotiations further down the line?

“In the arbitration world, meanwhile, how many of us have heard highly skilled outside lawyers or in-house clients say they won’t ever agree to arbitrate as a matter of policy, based on a bad experience with a mismanaged arbitration, a belief that arbitrators merely split the baby, or a hatred of giving up appeals?

“As a result of this view, these executives have preferentially consigned complex disputes to horrendously overworked trial judges who can’t set the case for trial for many years and may hand the case to someone else for trial, and to juries that likely won’t understand the issues in sophisticated ways.

“Why don’t they consider it indisputable that they would have a better prospect of avoiding unwarranted results by instead selecting highly experienced arbitrators who would carefully study the record, responsibly streamline the process, and understand the most complex issues far better than the judge will likely have time or the jury will likely have capacity to do?

“These questions aren’t offered to criticize any participants in the dispute process–a litigation is a profound human experience, and it’s usually extremely important to both parties to aim for an outright win and view that outcome as the only tolerable one. There are often highly creditworthy institutional or personal reasons for parties to a litigation to fight to a final decision rather than press for the earliest possible resolution.

“The more modest point is that further advancement of ADR will require a continuation of the evolution of cultural sensibilities–and, ultimately, the wills of disputing parties and the perspectives of their most trusted advisers–that have already advanced mediation and other forms of ADR from a position of near-institutional invisibility a few decades ago.

“Although, as many of you in today’s audience know, it has always existed in families, communities and some kinds of institutions where disputes needed to be resolved.
“So what is the next wave of ADR sensibilities that folks at CPR, JAMS, the [New York City Bar Association] and this and other organizations are thinking about?

“Maybe we aren’t too far away from the time when the pursuit of negotiated resolutions stops getting postponed for long periods because each side is unwilling to make the first overture out of a belief that introducing the subject is a sign of weakness that will cost big settlement dollars.

“Maybe others will emulate the Fortune 100 in-house head of litigation who recently addressed his company’s nine-digit annual litigation spend, and overwhelmingly directed to disputes with his enterprise’s biggest competitors by setting up a monthly lunch with his counterparts at each of those competitors–a step that led to a wide range of different forms of alternatives to litigation for resolving disputes, and a massive reduction in dispute-related costs.

“We have been seeing mandatory mediation or streamlined arbitration clauses in contracts and in some court rules for the past decade or two. Maybe we will increasingly see settlements actually get reached as a result of those provisions, to a degree that alternatives to litigation like these will become a matter of reflex–not only for parties that need to continue doing business with each other but also for other counter-parties that hate the pain and distraction of protracted litigation almost as much as its cost.
“Maybe, in contexts where neither party sees a major advantage in a jury trial, clients will increasingly come to value and hire lawyers in part based on their nimbleness in figuring out and working with their adversaries on ways to resolve the dispute more quickly and less expensively.

“Some recent experiences of mine–one with some really good in-house lawyers at a client who ultimately redirected their company’s business strategy based on a rigorous and candid pre-litigation assessment of a massive and complicated dispute in which no complaint was ever filed, and another matter with an unusually resourceful and pragmatic adversary where the parties found themselves litigating a billion dollar dispute under a contract provision requiring that arbitration hearings conclude no more than 45 days after they were initiated–have strongly suggested to me that these kinds of thoughts about improving the process for resolving disputes do not necessarily involve looking generations into the future.

“That kind of second-wave thinking about ADR will not eliminate the need to litigate when one or both parties feel a need for the litigation process or a determination to get to a decision, win or lose, and it will not put litigators out of a job, because there will always be disputes.

“Lawyers who think creatively about different ways to help their clients resolve disputes, and who have the capacity to pursue ADR as effectively as they pursue traditional litigation, should remain in great demand.

“It’s great to have a conference to tease out some of this new thinking, and to have a chance to talk to you about the Level 2 sensibilities of ADR that may lie in our futures. But it’s also important to remain attuned to the timing sensibilities of the mediator who, asked whether he considers himself facilitative or evaluative as a mediator, responded,

“I’m highly facilitative, relentlessly so, until about 4:30.”

“Time for me to stop talking and for you to enjoy each other’s company and your lunches. Many thanks.”

Ninth Circuit Backs NLRB’s View Barring Mandatory Pre-dispute Class Waivers, Deepening a Circuit Split

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By Ksenia Koriukalova

The Ninth U.S. Court of Appeals Monday joined the Seventh Circuit in supporting the position of the National Labor Relations Board against “concerted action waivers” in employment agreements

Morris v. Ernst & Young LLP, No. 13-16599 (9th Cir. August 22, 2016) (available at http://bit.ly/2bqiU0k) contributes to deepening the circuit split regarding the enforceability of class waivers that compel employees to take their employment disputes to individual arbitration.

Morris v. Ernst & Young was the first case in which the NLRB intervened as amicus curiae to urge the court to support its view on the issue, which has been rejected by the Fifth and Eighth Circuits, but backed by the Seventh Circuit in Lewis v. Epic Systems Corp., No. 15-2997 (7th Cir. May 26, 2016) (available at http://bit.ly/1U8lhTW).

Lewis, the first in which the NLRB argued, caused the split.  The Lewis parties requested and received an extension to decide upon and prepare a petition for certiorari to the U.S. Supreme Court.  Arbitration experts and analysts expect that employer Epic Systems will file for an appeal sometime next month.

On Monday, in the 2-1 Morris opinion written by Chief Circuit Judge Sidney R. Thomas, the Ninth Circuit vacated a federal district court order compelling individual arbitration in a class and collective action brought by Ernst & Young employees.

The action was originally brought in New York for the alleged misclassification of employees and violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act. After the case was transferred to California’s Northern District, Ernst & Young filed a motion to compel arbitration in accordance with the agreements executed by the plaintiffs as a condition of their employment.

The agreements contained provisions requiring the employees to pursue their legal claims against the accounting and consulting giant exclusively through arbitration, and to arbitrate only in their individual capacity and in “separate proceedings.”

The plaintiffs argued that the “separate proceedings” clause of their agreements violated federal law, in particular the National Labor Relations Act, or NLRA. The district court granted the employer’s motion to compel individual arbitration. The appellate court disagreed with that decision.

For full details on the November 2015 Morris argument in the Ninth Circuit, as well as information on the background of the case and resources on the class waivers-NLRA issue, see “Cutting Arbitration Classes: Facing Court Defeats on Workplace Waivers, the NLRB Refuses To Back Down,” 34 Alternatives 1 (January 2016)(available at http://bit.ly/2c3hewf).

This week, the Ninth Circuit overturned the district court decision and joined the Seventh Circuit view that class waivers mandating arbitration violate federal labor law.

Specifically, the Ninth Circuit panel held that by requiring employees to sign agreements containing “concerted action waivers,” the employer interfered with the employees’ “essential, substantive right” to “engage in concerted activity” granted by the NLRA § 7.

The panel relied on the NLRB’s decision D.R. Horton, Inc., 357 NLRB No. 184, 2012 WL 36274 (Jan. 3, 2012)(PDF download link at http://1.usa.gov/1IMkHn8), enforcement denied in relevant part, 737 F.3d 344 (5th Cir. 2013) (Graves, J., dissenting)(PDF download link at http://bit.ly/1XRvjrM), reh’g denied, No. 12-60031 (Apr. 16, 2014).

In its original D.R. Horton decision, the NLRB concluded that an employer’s requirement that an employee sign a waiver as a condition of employment violated the NLRA. The Ninth Circuit analyzed NLRA § 7, which establishes an employees’ rights to engage in concerted activities, and NLRA § 8, which enforces collective action rights.  The circuit appeals court agreed with the NLRB’s D.R. Horton interpretation of these statutory provisions.

“This case turns on a well-established principle,” wrote Chief Circuit Judge Thomas, “employees have the right to pursue work-related legal claims together.  . . . Concerted activity—the right of employees to act together—is the essential, substantive right established by the NLRA. 29 U.S.C. § 157. Ernst & Young interfered with that right by requiring its employees to resolve all of their legal claims in ‘separate proceedings.’” [Citations omitted.]

Moreover, the Ninth Circuit also held that the application of the Federal Arbitration Act did not change its conclusion. The panel found that the requirement to pursue legal claims against an employer in “separate proceedings” violated the NLRA, irrespective of whether employees were required to bring their complaints in arbitration or in court.

Circuit Judge Sandra Ikuta dissented, concluding that that the arbitration agreements signed by Ernst & Young employees were enforceable, because the NLRA did not contain a “contrary congressional command” overriding the FAA.

Morris v. Ernst & Young deepens the circuit split on enforceability of class action waivers in employment agreements. In addition to D.R. Horton, the Fifth Circuit also has reversed the NLRB’s decision repeatedly, most notably in Murphy Oil USA Inc., Case 10–CA–038804, 361 NLRB No. 72, 2014 WL 5465454 (Oct. 28, 2014) (PDF download link at http://bit.ly/1LVnR8d), enforcement denied in relevant part, 2015 WL 6457613 (5th Cir. Oct. 26, 2015)(PDF download link at http://bit.ly/1TMfDFO).

The Eighth Circuit followed the Fifth Circuit’s view in Cellular Sales of Missouri LLC v. NLRB, 824 F.3d 772 (8th Cir. 2016).  Earlier the Second Circuit also found class action waiver provisions in employment-related arbitration agreements to be enforceable. (see Sutherland v. Ernst & Young LLP, 726 F.3d 290 (2d Cir. 2013)) But the viability of Sutherland decision is in question following the oral argument in Patterson v. Raymours Furniture Co. heard by the Second Circuit this past Friday.

The Seventh Circuit supported the NRLB’s interpretation in Lewis v. Epic Systems Corp., where the appeals court reaffirmed the NLRB’s position that class action waivers contained in arbitration agreements employees were required to sign as a condition of their employment violated the NLRA.

Monday’s Ninth Circuit Morris decision is powerful support for Lewis. As a result, while the concerted action waivers in employment-related agreements are considered incompatible with the federal labor law in the Seventh and the Ninth Circuit, the Fifth, the Eighth and the Second Circuits render them enforceable–that is, until the Supreme Court of the United States addresses the issue of the compatibility of the NLRA and the FAA nationwide.

The author is a Fall 2016 CPR Legal Intern. And please stay tuned: there will be more on the Patterson case posted here before the weekend! 

Examining New Jersey’s Arbitration Scrutiny

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New Jersey courts’ recent arbitration decisions have opened a floodgate of controversy en route to the establishment of new precedent.

The most recent case, Morgan v. Sanford Brown Institute, 2016 WL 3248016 (N.J. June 14, 2016)(available at http://bit.ly/29mSQkS), demonstrates the discord among courts in reaching a consensus about arbitration enforcement—or, at least, a strong New Jersey trend of scrutinizing the particulars of agreements before compelling ADR processes.

The case stems from a complaint by New Jersey residents Annemarie Morgan and Tiffany Dever, who had enrolled in an ultrasound technician program provided by defendant Sanford Brown Institute, a for-profit educational company that is winding down its operations. The plaintiffs alleged that the defendant violated the Consumer Fraud Act and had committed breach of contract, breach of warranties and negligent misrepresentation. The complaint alleged the institute misrepresented the value of the ultrasound program, the quality of its instructors, and that the school used high-pressure and deceptive business tactics that led the plaintiffs to finance the classes using high-interest loans.

“This New Jersey trend should be taken as a warning for employers to address their notice provisions.”

The trial court followed the ruling in Atalese v. U.S. Legal Servs. Group L.P., 219 N.J. 430, 99 A.3d 306 (2014), cert. denied, 135 S. Ct. 2804 (2015)(available at http://bit.ly/ZtfbW4), invalidating the arbitration clause because it didn’t provide proper notice that court remedies were being waived, and violated the New Jersey Consumer Fraud Act (CFA), N.J.S.A. 56:8-1 to -195.

The Appellate Division reversed, ordering arbitration, noting that the ADR clause was sufficiently clear for all parties.

Last month, the New Jersey Supreme Court reversed again, holding that the arbitration provision and delegation clause in the school’s enrollment agreement failed to comply with the requirements of First Options of Chi., Inc. v. Kaplan, 514 U.S. 938 (1995), and Atalese. The arbitration and delegation clauses also failed to satisfy the elements necessary for the formation of a contract.

The defendants had argued that Rent-A-Center West, Inc. v. Jackson, 561 U.S. 63 (2010), required a specific challenge to the delegation clause by the plaintiffs, but the New Jersey Supreme Court found that the lack of the challenge didn’t matter.

“The arbitration provision did not clearly and unmistakably delegate arbitrability to the arbitrator,” wrote Associate Justice Barry T. Albin for a 5-1 court, adding, “Plaintiffs cannot be faulted for not objecting to an inadequately limned delegation clause that, in addition, did not define arbitration as a substitute for a judicial forum.”

Consequently, whether the parties agreed to arbitrate their dispute is an issue for determination by the court.

This decision does not stray far from its recent predecessors—Scamardella, et al. v. Legal Helpers Debt Resolution LLC, No. A-4170-14T3 and L-2402-14 (Middlesex County and Statewide) (April 19, 2016), and Guidotti v. Legal Helpers Debt Resolution, L.L.C., No. 15-1054 (3rd Cir. Feb. 10, 2016)(available at http://bit.ly/1QOkCSm), vacating 866 F. Supp. 2d 315, 332–36 (D.N.J. 2011)–New Jersey cases in, respectively, state and federal courts that also denied motions to compel arbitration.

Atalese, the parent case for the rest, outlined disclosure requirements that the subsequent decisions have used as the reason for invalidating the arbitration provision. The New Jersey Supreme Court found that the arbitration provision in the case did not have “clear and unambiguous” language stating that the plaintiff was waiving her right to sue in court to secure relief.

“Two more unpublished decisions show the significance of the new trend in addressing notice in arbitration provisions.”

The New Jersey Supreme Court stated in Atalese that an enforceable arbitration clause “at least in some general and sufficiently broad way, must explain that the plaintiff is giving up her right to bring her claims in court or have a jury resolve the dispute.”
Furthermore, the waiver must “be written in a simple, clear, understandable and easily readable way.”

Similarly, Scarmadella ruled that the arbitration clause failed to comply with Atalese disclosure requirements.

Guidotti determined that the plaintiff had not received the account agreement containing the arbitration provision. The court did not require or permit discovery on that issue because it concluded that the existing documentary record was sufficient. Further proceedings will be held next month.

There’s other arbitration coming out of New Jersey courts to raise eyebrows. Just before Morgan v. Sanford Brown Institute was released, a published Appellate Division decision, Kleine v. Emeritus at Emerson, Docket A-4452-14T3 (N.J. App. Div. June 9, 2016), struck an arbitration agreement because a forum suggested by the contract’s use of the American Arbitration Association rules was ruled by the court to be unavailable. The personal injury case was against a nursing home; the decision included strong wording about the presumption to arbitrate.

And there’s more. Two more unpublished decisions show the significance of the new trend in addressing notice in arbitration provisions. Shortly after the Atalese decision, in Kelly v. Beverage Works NY Inc., No. A-3851-13T4 (NJ App. Div. Nov. 26, 2014)(unpublished)(available at http://bit.ly/29kJwR6), the New Jersey Appellate Division applied Atalese to decide whether the arbitration provisions in a collective bargaining agreement barred a plaintiff’s lawsuit for wrongful termination.

The appeals court first declined to consider the employer’s argument concerning preemption because that argument was not raised prior to oral argument. The Appellate Division then held that “neither the arbitration provisions nor the employee handbook put plaintiff on notice that he was waiving his right to try his claims in court.”

Therefore, those provisions did not clearly and unambiguously waive plaintiff’s right to seek a remedy in court and, thus, were unenforceable.

Similarly, in Milloul v. Knight Capital (App. Div. N.J. Sept. 1, 2015)(unpublished)(available at http://bit.ly/1INt69V), the Appellate Division held that an arbitration agreement between a plaintiff and his employer was unenforceable because it did not “even mention a waiver of plaintiff’s right to a trial.” Therefore, the contract did not meet the minimal requirement of stating “in some express fashion that the employee is sacrificing his or her right to a trial.”

This New Jersey trend should be taken as a warning for employers to address their notice provisions. Employers should carefully review every arbitration agreement to ensure that every employee understands that they are waiving their right to bring claims in court, and agreeing to arbitrate all claims that may arise out of the contractual relationship.

This report will be expanded and updated in September’s Alternatives. For more recent background, see Daniela Albert & Russ Bleemer, “New Jersey Court Again Refuses To Compel, Demanding Better Arbitration Notices,” 34 Alternatives 66 (May 2016)(available at http://bit.ly/29lwZeG).

______________________________________

CPR would like to thank interns Daniela Albert (working towards her LLM at Northeastern) and Elizabeth Heifetz (Brooklyn Law School), supervised by Alternatives editor Russ Bleemer, for their research and writing contributions to this post. A longer version of this post, with comments from the attorneys involved, will run in the September issue of Alternatives.

Delaware Chancery Defines ‘Quick’ Court Inquiry Before Referral to Arbitration

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By Kelly Zhang

An action for a preliminary injunction to enjoin arbitration proceedings by officers of a Delaware limited liability company has been denied by the Delaware Court of Chancery.

The decision supports the vitality of a limited liability company’s use of arbitration in its operating agreement. But as it develops the Delaware business court’s view of cases to be sent for arbitration, the case arguably increases the chancery court’s gatekeeping function. Angus v. Ajio LLC, Civil Action No. 11895-VCG (May 13, 2016)(available for download at http://bit.ly/1sXAChn).

The matter concerned whether a dispute was arbitrable, and the question was whether the dispute should go to an arbitrator, or be decided by a court. The underlying suit included allegations of a breach of fiduciary duties and fraud brought by some members the company, MoGo Sport LLC, against MoGo’s officers, for entering into a transaction that ultimately sold the company.

Traditionally, questions of arbitrability have been left to the arbitrators, once a court has found that parties had agreed to submit their disputes to arbitration. The landmark case of Moses H. Cone Memorial Hosp. v. Mercury Construction Corp., 460 U.S. 1, 24 (1983) confirmed that the Federal Arbitration Act created a “liberal federal policy favoring arbitration agreements,” and that “any doubts concerning the scope of arbitrable issues should be resolved in favor of arbitration.”

This suggested a first look to the arbitration tribunal, which further U.S. Supreme Court cases developed. But the determination of arbitrability ultimately follows the contract. First Options of Chicago Inc. v. Kaplan, 514 U. S. 938 (1995), enshrined the principle that “courts should not assume that the parties agreed to arbitrate arbitrability unless there is “clea[r] and unmistakabl[e]” evidence that they did so.” (Internal citation omitted.) The First Options inquiry turned upon what parties agreed to; the question was settled by the court once it was shown that parties had not agreed to arbitrate.

Subsequent cases like Howsam v. Dean Witter Reynolds Inc., 537 U.S. 79 (2002), and Green Tree Financial Corp. v. Bazzle, 539 U.S. 444 (2003), further narrowed courts’ ability to decide on arbitrability.

Howsam focused on time bars on arbitration, which the Supreme Court ruled was to be determined by arbitrators. Green Tree Financial further held that an ambiguity in the arbitration provision was to be resolved by an arbitration tribunal.

But the May Angus opinion in Delaware’s Chancery Court doesn’t follow the general deference toward arbitration. It shows the Delaware business court examining the frivolity of claims.

In his 12-page opinion, Vice Chancellor Sam Glasscock III affirmed a two-pronged test to show a “clear and unmistakable” intent to arbitrate issues of arbitrability in James & Jackson LLC v. Willie Gary LLC, 906 A.2d 76 (Del. 2006)(available at http://bit.ly/1NZBonr).

The test, Glasscock wrote, requires a “’clear and unmistakable evidence’ of intent to arbitrate arbitrability . . . where there is:

‘1) an arbitration clause that generally provides for arbitration of all disputes; and
2) a reference to a set of arbitration rules that empower arbitrators to decide arbitrability, such as the American Arbitration Association . . . Rules.’”

Glasscock then expanded the test by citing McLaughlin v. McCann, 942 A.2d 616 (Del. Ch. 2008)(available at http://bit.ly/1RGfmke), noting that

only where “a non-frivolous argument in favor of substantive arbitrability exists and the first two prongs of Willie Gary are satisfied, [should] the Court . . . defer to the arbitrator.” [Emphasis added; citation omitted.]

The Angus opinion notes that the additional requirement serves the interests of justice by preventing wasted resources from the adjudication or arbitration of frivolous claims, allowing the court to strike the frivolous claims. But the court’s examination is limited; cases where “more than a quick, facial review of claims would be required” would proceed to arbitration.

Out of the four officers against whom the arbitration demand was brought, only Bruce Angus was a party to the MoGo operating agreement. Consistent with the contractual approach, the motion to halt the arbitration preliminarily against the remaining three officers was granted, as it was held that they would more likely would not be bound to arbitrate because of the lack of contractual obligations under the LLC operating agreement.

On the other hand, the court found at least one “non-frivolous” claim with regard to the original plaintiffs’ standing to force arbitration. As a result, Vice Chancellor Glasscock denied the motion for a preliminary injunction in Angus’s case, and deferred the decision to the arbitrators on the substantive issue of whether the case should be arbitrated.

The court conducted an analysis to determine if there were non-frivolous claims to arrive at the conclusion that the case should be arbitrated.

First, Angus and the other officers who sought to block the arbitration argued that the LLC members who filed for arbitration over the company’s sale lacked standing to enforce arbitration under the operating agreement when they cited a covenant not to compete. The theory was that only MoGo itself could enforce the non-compete provisions, and not the Members.

Glasscock saw these “issues of standing by signatories to a contract to enforce breaches of that contract” as non-frivolous, and that the officers failed to demonstrate that the original plaintiffs’ assertion of standing was frivolous. That finding sent the case to arbitrators for the determination of whether the case arbitrable.

In addition, the defendant officers had said that the arbitration claims against them for a breach of fiduciary duties were outside the scope of the LLC operating agreement because the contract was silent on fiduciary duty.

The court noted that the arbitration provision only covered disputes “among Members or former Member over the provisions of the Operating Agreement.” [Emphasis is the court’s.] It said that whether a breach-of-fiduciary-duties claim would arise from the agreement, and whether the agreement’s silence on the point incorporates default fiduciary duties from state law, was a “nice question” that needed deeper examination.

“This question,” Glasscock wrote, “which warrants more than a cursory inquiry by the Court into the frivolousness of the claim, should be referred to arbitration” under the parties’ agreement.

Angus arguably paves the way for courts to have more say in deciding the arbitrability of disputes despite arbitration provisions. “Litigants’ economy,” the opinion notes, mandates courts to conduct at least the “quick, facial review” of the frivolousness of claims, discussed above, before allowing them to proceed to arbitration. Cases would have to both show a clear intent to arbitrate, as well as present non-frivolous claims, in order to strike a balance between serving the economy and providing parties the benefits of their bargain.

Attorneys from both sides declined to comment.

The case proceeds. An answer and counter-claim was filed by the MoGo LLC members, as they proceed on their fiduciary and fraud claims against the officers not subject to arbitration, on May 27.

The author was a Summer 2016 CPR Institute summer intern and is a third-year LL.B. student from the Singapore Management University.

Class Act: Looking at How the CFPB Wants to Restrict Arbitration Agreements

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By Russ Bleemer

If you want to make your voice heard on federal arbitration regulation, now’s the time.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in May released its proposal to ban arbitration agreement provisions that bar class processes and require individual ADR for disputes in consumer financial services contracts under the agency’s jurisdiction.

The formal public announcement early last month was followed by the publication May 24 of the official proposal. “If finalized in its current form,” said CFPB Director Richard Cordray last month, “the proposal would ban consumer financial companies from using mandatory pre-dispute arbitration clauses to deny their customers the right to band together to seek justice and meaningful relief from wrongdoing. This practice has evolved to the point where it effectively functions as a kind of legal lockout.”

Public comments, due by Aug. 22, are piling up. There are 599 at this writing. (You can view them HERE, along with the full proposal and the link to provide a comment.) A day after the comment period opened, the deluge was kicked off with a letter signed by more than 200 law professors strongly supporting the agency’s proposals.

But Republicans on the House Financial Services Committee, continuing a long-running push to eliminate the CFPB and overturn the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010 that created the agency, introduced on June 8 a new proposal that specifically bars the CFPB from regulating arbitration.

The June Alternatives, available now HERE, covers in detail Cordray’s remarks and those of a pro-and-con panel at the May 5 CFPB Albuquerque, N.M., field hearing that introduced the proposed regulation. (An enhanced, annotated version of the article can be accessed directly by subscribers and individuals at CPR Institute members who are logged into CPR’s website at this link.)

The June Alternatives article discusses how the agency’s research into arbitration’s effects on consumers—a voluminous 728-page report conducted over a three-year period that was released in March 2015–led to last month’s proposal.

Agency representatives, including Cordray, emphasized that the CFPB is not proposing to ban pre-dispute arbitration agreements. The key agency goal is to allow consumer class actions that the waivers have cut off.

The Albuquerque panel discussion of arbitration practice experts included three consumer advocates who congratulated the agency, and three business representatives who criticized it and suggested alternative paths–assuming what has become, for some of the panel, traditional public roles in a short period of regulatory time.

The debate continues in Alternatives in the special combined summer July/August issue, which will be available by July 14 HERE. In “Between the Lines: How the CFPB Will Police Financial Services Arbitration,” we examine the specifics of the proposal, including the mandatory language that the CFPB wants included in consumer financial services arbitration agreements.

Following the June report linked above, the new article wades through the 377-page proposal and accompanying report to highlight how the class action moves will affect arbitration parties, providers, contract drafters, neutrals and tribunals.

It will focus on the details in the CFPB’s proposal and report absent from generalized coverage of the CFPB’s move—minutiae to most, but parts of the proposal that are essential to arbitration practitioners and providers’ businesses, and which are drawing comments this summer.

Russ Bleemer edits the CPR Institute-published Alternatives to the High Cost of Litigation.

2nd Update*: Class Waivers and Arbitration: The Battleground Focus Moves to Labor and Employment Law

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*The area of class action waivers and employment law saw an absolutely whirlwind close to 2015, with the NLRB releasing yet another decision midday, on 12/31, following two weeks that saw 16 decisions restricting arbitration practices. Please see below for an up-to-date summary of these rapidly breaking developments.

By Russ Bleemer

The emphasis on the law and politics of consumer arbitrations, and their relationship to class waivers, has overshadowed developments in another closely related area of conflict resolution law.

But the time has come for finality on the legality of employment law class-action waivers.  Developments in 2015’s final quarter indicate that decisive events are coming in the area, which involves the intersection of U.S. labor law and the Federal Arbitration Act.

On the first day of December, the National Labor Relations Board issued two decisions finding labor law violations against companies for using mandatory pre-dispute class action waivers with their arbitration agreements requiring individual processes.  The waivers, the NLRB said, violate Sections 7 and 8 of the National Labor Relations Act, which allows employees, among other things, “to engage in . . . concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection.”

That was only the beginning:  By Christmas, the NLRB had issued at least 16 more decisions striking down mandatory pre-dispute arbitration clauses that coupled class waivers as a condition of employment.

The decisions are crucial because the rights of collective action under the NLRA address far more than union workplaces. The law applies to most employees, and key cases that have arisen in this area focus on white-collar employees.

It’s a major statement by the Board. The NLRB decisions’ reasoning—that the NLRA and the FAA co-exist compatibly but the latter isn’t preferred over workers’ rights to act in concert—had already been rejected by the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.  Twice, in fact, including in a decision just five weeks before the December Board decisions, in Murphy Oil Inc. v. NLRB, No. 14-60800, 2015 WL 6457613 (5th Cir. Oct. 26, 2015).

The Fifth Circuit relied on the U.S. Supreme Court’s high-profile consumer-contract arbitration decision–AT&T Mobility LLC v. Concepcion, 563 U.S. 333 (2011), along with the business-to-business class waiver in American Express Co., et al. v. Italian Colors Restaurant, 133 S. Ct. 2304 (2013)—to justify rulings that mandatory individualized arbitrations are authorized by the FAA.

Consumer arbitration controversy has rolled over into politics in 2015, when the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau moved to regulate the process by barring waivers of all class processes. Congressional Republicans introduced legislation to hamper the regulation efforts directly, as well as defund the federal agency.

In November, the NLRB said it would request a rehearing in Murphy Oil, but it did not appeal the Fifth Circuit reversal of its first case on the subject, D.R. Horton Inc., 357 NLRB No. 184, 2012 WL 36274 (Jan. 3, 2012), enforcement denied in relevant part, 737 F.3d 344 (5th Cir. 2013) (Graves, J., dissenting), reh’g denied, No. 12-60031 (Apr. 16, 2014).

December’s stream of cases from Board decisions backing its Murphy Oil and D.R. Horton decisions mostly occurred mid-month, leading up to Christmas.  But for good measure, just hours before the close of business on Dec. 31, the Board added its final 2015 decision, again affirming its view in the cases already rejected by the Fifth Circuit.  The decision, GameStop Corp., 363 NLRB No. 89, 20-CA-080497 (Dec. 15, 2015), went even further, affirming a line in those cases barring class waivers in employment arbitration agreements that provide an “opt out” allowing employees to waive participation in the ADR scheme.

“Regardless of the procedures required, the fact that employees must take any steps to preserve their Section 7 rights burdens the exercise of those rights,” the decision states.

It’s clear that the NLRB, an independent federal agency that oversees workplace conduct by enforcing the National Labor Relations Act, is picking and choosing its battles, which experts on both sides of the argument agree will be finalized by a U.S. Supreme Court decision.  The NLRB appears to be seeking a suitable case to ask the Supreme Court to hear, unloading years of litigation in December sourced from a variety of forums that reject the FAA’s predominance over the NLRA.

And while it awaited Murphy Oil’s Fifth Circuit fate, and while preparing the Board decisions it released in December maintaining its insistence on the NLRA’s vitality in the face of required arbitration clauses, the NLRB for the first time filed an amicus brief in a court case on the subject in the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in Morris v. Ernst & Young LLP, No. 13-16599.

The November filing, just a week after the Fifth Circuit decided Murphy Oil, noted that the Board would seek en banc review of that decision, and strongly defended its own D.R. Horton/Murphy Oil lineage.

At the oral argument on Nov. 18, Ninth Circuit Judge Andrew D. Hurwitz prodded the attorneys on both sides to come up with a formula for NLRA and FAA co-existence.  He suggested severing the waiver clause, but keeping arbitration decisions for a tribunal, rather than blowing up the entire ADR process in favor of litigation.

The Ninth Circuit argument also dissected the class rights being waived by the pre-dispute mandatory arbitration agreement in the context of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23, which establishes the ground rules for court class actions.

The details on the December NLRB decisions; the Fifth Circuit’s Murphy Oil reversal; the NLRB Morris amicus filing, and highlights of the Morris oral argument are the subject of the January 2016 cover article in Alternatives, out this week.

Alternatives is available HERE for CPR Institute members after logging into the CPR website.  The newsletter, marking its 33rd year of publication with the January issue, is available to nonmembers at altnewsletter.com.

 

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Bleemer edits Alternatives to the High Cost of Litigation for the CPR Institute.