Articles

In the federal statute heavyweight championship bout between the 1925 Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) and the New Deal's 1935 National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), the Supreme Court today declared a winner: The Federal Arbitration Act by a knockout! Today's decision upholds workers' and employers' freedom to choose how to resolve workplace disputes ...

In January, the Supreme Court granted certiorari and consolidated three cases to decide whether the National Labor Relations Act, which protects workers' rights to engage in "concerted activities" for their mutual benefit, trumps the Federal Arbitration Act's protection of the freedom of contract that allows employers and employees to agree to reso ...

When the California Supreme Court invalidated yet another arbitration contract in yesterday's McGill v. Citibank decision, I explained that a cert petition would almost certainly follow. PLF has supported many, many cert petitions challenging California's anti-arbitration rules because we believe that competent adults have the freedom to contract t ...

caption id="attachment_45182" align="alignright" width="300" Worth the paper it's printed on?/caption Sharon McGill sued Citibank under California's consumer protection laws for alleged unfair competition and false advertising in offering a credit insurance plan she purchased to protect her Citibank credit card account. McGill signed a contract th ...

Property rights -- limits on the public trust doctrine The Washington state court of appeals issued this opinion on the "public trust doctrine" in Chelan Basin Conservancy v. GBI Holdings.  The facts here involved a lake that had been raised 21 feet by a dam in the 1920s. GBI owned several acres of land that periodically flooded under the rai ...

Sharon McGill sued Citibank under California's consumer protection laws for alleged unfair competition and false advertising in offering a credit insurance plan she purchased to protect her Citibank credit card account.  McGill signed a contract that contained an arbitration provision and allowed her to opt-out if she chose not to accept that prov ...

Supreme Court briefing is now underway in one of this Term's major arbitration cases: MHN Government Services, Inc. v. Zaborowski. The case will determine whether the California Supreme Court's severability rule—used almost exclusively to invalidate arbitration contracts—will survive scrutiny under the Federal Arbitration Act. The Ninth Circuit ...

For years, PLF has been chronicling—and combating—the efforts of California courts to nullify arbitration contracts. Federal law requires that states enforce arbitration agreements just like any other contract, but California courts have found various loopholes to avoid enforcing such agreements, largely because they regard arbitration as basic ...

New Jersey courts, along with those of California and Massachusetts, continually exhibit hostility to the freedom of contract, when that freedom is expressed in a contract to arbitrate consumer or employment disputes. Today, the Supreme Court denied certiorari in U.S. Legal Services Group v. Atalese, a New Jersey Supreme Court decision requiring ar ...