arbitration agreement

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By: Julia Keenan and Noah Finkel

Seyfarth Synopsis: The Supreme Court held that no showing of prejudice is necessary to establish a waiver of the right to arbitrate. The validity and enforceability of arbitration agreements themselves is not affected by this ruling.

Followers of this blog, and of wage and hour litigation generally, have seen an unbroken string of victories…
Continue Reading Prejudice will no longer be considered when deciding if a waiver of arbitration occurred; Not to worry, arbitration clauses still as enforceable as ever

By David S. Baffa, Noah A. Finkel, and Joseph S. Turner

Seyfarth Synopsis: Congress has once again proposed legislation that would seek to ban mandatory workplace arbitration of employment claims, despite a string of United States Supreme Court decisions upholding arbitration and class/collective action waivers as a lawful and appropriate mechanism to resolve workplace disputes. 

H.R. 7109,…
Continue Reading Halloween Bill Provides a Scare By Seeking to Prohibit Workplace Arbitration Altogether

Authored by Holger G. Besch 

Perhaps signaling the importance of the issue for American businesses and jurisprudence, the U.S. Supreme Court‎ chose the first day of its term beginning in October as the date to set oral arguments in three petitions for certiorari asking whether employees can be required to waive their rights via arbitration agreements to file class and…
Continue Reading SCOTUS Puts the Class Action Waiver Issue at the Top of Its Agenda

Co-authored by Noah Finkel and Andrew Scroggins

Employers have faced questions about the enforceability of arbitration agreements with class and collective action waivers since the NLRB’s highly controversial D.R. Horton decision in 2012, which held that the waivers violate employees’ right to engage in protected concerted activity. The Fifth Circuit refused to enforce the decision, and other courts followed…
Continue Reading Mandatory Arbitration, Class Waivers, and the Future of Wage-Hour Litigation: 6th Circuit Shows One Reason Why High Court Rejection of D.R. Horton Theory Would Not Kill Collective Actions

Co-authored by David D. Kadue and Rocio Herrera

Seyfarth Synopsis: A California appellate court has held that unless a collective bargaining agreement includes an explicitly stated, clear, and unmistakable intent to waive the right to a judicial forum for statutory claims, arbitration of those claims will not be compelled. The CBA in the case, Vasserman v. Henry Mayo Newhall Memorial…
Continue Reading CBAs Must Specifically State Intent to Arbitrate Statutory Rights

Authored by Simon L. Yang

As discussed by our Consumer Class Defense Blog, this week’s Supreme Court decision in DirecTV, Inc. v. Imburgia reversed a California Court of Appeal that had applied the California Consumer Legal Remedies Act’s prohibition of class waivers in arbitration agreements. According to the lower court’s decision, an arbitration agreement’s terms—directing application of the “law…
Continue Reading Supreme Court Airs Re-Run on Class Waivers in DirecTV But Disappoints Again by Declining PAGA Waiver Programming

Authored by Emily Barker

This week, in Sakkab, et al v. Luxottica Retail North America, Inc., the Ninth Circuit ruled that an employee cannot waive the right to bring a representative action under the Private Attorneys General Act (“PAGA”) through an arbitration agreement or any other means. In so doing, it found the California Supreme Court’s “Iskanian …
Continue Reading Ninth Circuit’s Pro-PAGA Decision Is Not the Death Knell for Class Waivers in Arbitration Agreements

Co-authored by David D. Kadue and Simon L. Yang

On Tuesday, January 20, 2015, the Court declined to take the case of CLS Transportation Los Angeles, LLC v. Iskanian, in which an employer asked the Court to reverse a ruling of the California Supreme Court. At issue was whether an employee who has agreed to submit all employment-related claims…
Continue Reading U.S. Supreme Court Declines to Referee Slugfest Between Federal and California Courts on Enforceability of Arbitration Agreements