Parties Agree Trial Court Is Best Positioned to Resolve Procedural Issues. After ruling in Iskanian v. CLS Transportation Los Angeles, LLC, 59 Cal.4th 348 (2014) that the Federal Arbitration Act did not preempt a state law rule prohibiting waiver of Private Attorney General Act of 2004 representative actions, the California Supreme Court left it […]
California Attorney’s Fees has a short post dated February 18, 2015, with tips for successful enforcement of arbitration clauses in fee retainers found in a recent article in the Daily Report, authored by Randy Evans and Shari Klevens of McKenna Long.
“Judicial Economy Was Not . . A Proper Basis For Delaying Arbitration.” What’s a judge to do when confronted with the possibility of compelling thousands of individual grievances to arbitration, versus staying the arbitration of arbitral issues, while one case is tried? Here, the trial judge expediently stayed the individual arbitrations, and got reversed […]
State Of The Record And Substantial Evidence Of Waiver Result In Affirmance. Defendants appealed the trial court’s order denying First American Title Insurance Company and First American Title Company’s motion to compel individual arbitration of plaintiffs’ claims. Kaufman v. First American Title Insurance Company, No. B248689 (2/5 Feb. 2, 2010) (Turner, Kriegler, Goodman) (unpublished). […]
By Suing DirectTV For Unpaid Wages, Employee Acknowledged Existence Of An Employment Relationship With Entity That Survived Merger. May a nonsignatory defendant enforce an arbitration agreement between a signatory plaintiff and a corporation that was acquired by the nonsignatory defendant, which assumed all rights and obligations of the acquired corporation? “We have found no […]
The Pros And Cons Of Creative Ambiguity. Lawrence Wright has written a fascinating book about the thirteen days of intense negotiations at Camp David in 1979 leading to a peace agreement between Egypt and Israel. Earlier, Wright earned a Pulitzer Prize for his book The Looming Tower about events leading up to 9/11. […]
Sometimes Unilateral Changes To Agreement Are Protected By Covenant of Good Faith And Fair Dealing – But Not Here. I have posted about employment cases in which the covenant of good faith and fair dealing allowed an employer to unilaterally change an arbitration provision without the contract being illusory, because the covenant reins […]
Plaintiffs’ Pleading Allegations Didn’t Help Their Argument. The somewhat anomalous circumstances in this case allowed a nonsignatory defendant to arbitrate its claims with a nonsignatory plaintiff. O’Donnell Strategic Industrial REIT v. Super. Ct., G049498 (4/3 Jan. 28, 2015) (Thompson, Bedsworth, Moore) (unpublished). In a dispute concerning the setting up and operation of […]
Damn Those Hyperlinks That Rot In Cyberspace ! Jill Lepore, Professor of American History at Harvard, has written a fascinating article in the January 26, 2015 edition of the The New Yorker. Her subject, which interests and plagues every blogger, is archiving the Internet before the information vanishes into cyberspace. If you have […]
California Supreme Court Leaves Employer’s “Honest Belief Defense” Unsettled. This case fits under the rubric “no harm, no foul.” Plaintiff Richey sued his employer AutoNation, Inc., for terminating his employment after he went out on sick leave, thereby violating his right to reinstatement under the California Family Rights Act (CFRA). While on sick […]