Legal Commentary

Arbitration and Class Actions

By Eugene Volokh

I blogged earlier about AT&T v. Concepcion, a cert petition on which my colleagues at Mayer are working, and the posts drew a good deal of interest (since this is a very important question). I therefore thought I?d also pass along two new entries in the litigation, the other side?s Brief in Opposition and my colleagues? Reply Brief.

The case, as you may recall, deals with this situation: A consumer signs an agreement which includes an arbitration provision, and which forecloses class action arbitration. The agreement doesn?t make arbitration prohibitively expensive. A state?s law precludes contractual waivers of the right to bring a class action claim; many states don?t do this, but some states do. Does the Federal Arbitration Act preempt the state law on this, and make the no-class-action arbitration provision effective? I guess we?ll soon see whether the Court will be interested enough to take this up.

Full post as published by The Volokh Conspiracy on May 07, 2010 (boomark / email).