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Dispute Resolution and Arbitration

University of Michigan Law School

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Full-Text Articles in Law

Enforceability Of Mandatory Arbitration Clauses For Shareholder-Corporation Disputes, Garry D. Hartlieb Dec 2014

Enforceability Of Mandatory Arbitration Clauses For Shareholder-Corporation Disputes, Garry D. Hartlieb

Michigan Business & Entrepreneurial Law Review

Investor litigation is an increasingly vexatious field of law. Nearly every time a significant change of control or corporate ownership occurs, plaintiffs’ attorneys file standardized complaints to set in motion class action suits. Ultimately, the settlements shareholders receive fail to achieve the practical effects that parties on both sides desire. Shareholders may receive pennies on the dollar of what they allege was lost by corporate wrongdoing, and, in some cases, shareholders may not receive monetary recovery as the settlement requires only that the corporation to make changes to its governing documents. These suits distract directors and management from the core …


The Influence Of Arbitrator Background And Representation On Arbitration Outcomes, Adam C. Pritchard, Stephen J. Choi, Jill E. Fisch Oct 2014

The Influence Of Arbitrator Background And Representation On Arbitration Outcomes, Adam C. Pritchard, Stephen J. Choi, Jill E. Fisch

Articles

We study the role of arbitrator background in securities arbitration. We find that several aspects of arbitrator background are correlated with arbitration outcomes. Specifically, industry experience, prior experience as a regulator, and status as a professional or retired arbitrator are correlated with statistically significant differences in arbitration awards. The impact of these characteristics is affected by whether the arbitrator in question serves as the panel chair and by whether the parties to the arbitration are represented by counsel. Our findings offer some preliminary insights into the debate over possible arbitrator bias. On the one hand, they suggest that the party …


Employment Arbitration Reform: Preserving The Right To Class Proceedings In Workplace Disputes, Javier J. Castro Sep 2014

Employment Arbitration Reform: Preserving The Right To Class Proceedings In Workplace Disputes, Javier J. Castro

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The recent judicial enforcement of class waivers in arbitration agreements has generated ample debate over the exact reach of these decisions and their effects on the future of collective action for consumers and employees. In AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion, a 5-4 majority of the Supreme Court majority held that the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) preempted state laws prohibiting companies from incorporating class action waivers into arbitration agreements. The Court upheld such waivers on the grounds that they are consistent with the language and underlying purpose of the FAA. Most courts across the country have since reinforced the strong federal policy …


The Use And Abuse Of Precedent In Labor And Employment Arbitration, Theodore J. St. Antoine Jul 2014

The Use And Abuse Of Precedent In Labor And Employment Arbitration, Theodore J. St. Antoine

Articles

As he did so often with legal problems, Oliver Wendell Holmes put his finger on the key to the problem of precedent with a memorable assertion. Said he: "It is revolting to have no better reason for a rule of law than that so it was laid down in the time of Henry IV." Notice that Holmes did not say it is a bad thing for a rule to have an ancient lineage. The question is whether the rule that may have made sense when Henry IV reigned, or when the Wagner Act was passed, has stood the test of …


Parallel Justice: Creating Causes Of Action For Mandatory Mediation, Marie A. Failinger Jan 2014

Parallel Justice: Creating Causes Of Action For Mandatory Mediation, Marie A. Failinger

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The American common law system should adopt court-connected mandatory mediation as a parallel system of justice for some cases that are currently not justiciable, such as wrongs caused by constitutionally protected behavior. As evidence that such a system is practical, this Article describes systemic and ethical parallels between court-connected mediation and the rise of the equity courts in medieval England, demonstrating that there are no insurmountable practical objections to the creation of “mediation-only” causes of action. The Article then explores the constitutional concerns surrounding the idea of “mandatory mediation-only” causes of action, using constitutional hate speech and invasion of privacy …


The Bible Of Labor Arbitration: Tribute To Professor Frank Elkouri, Theodore J. St. Antoine Jul 2013

The Bible Of Labor Arbitration: Tribute To Professor Frank Elkouri, Theodore J. St. Antoine

Other Publications

Each of the three traditional learned professions has had its “bible.” Divines had the progenitor, the Holy Bible itself; medical doctors had Gray’s Anatomy; and lawyers had Blackstone. What could be more fitting than that the sprightly newcomer to the ranks of the learned professions—labor arbitration—should also have its own bible: Elkouri & Elkouri, How Arbitration Works? But while Blackstone, Gray’s, and perhaps even the King James Version have largely been supplanted by sleeker, more contemporary models, nothing of the sort has happened to Elkouri. It just sails on majestically from one edition to another, now heading into its seventh.


To Skin A Cat: Qui Tam Actions As A State Legislative Response To Concepcion, Janet Cooper Alexander Jun 2013

To Skin A Cat: Qui Tam Actions As A State Legislative Response To Concepcion, Janet Cooper Alexander

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The Supreme Court's decision in Concepcion is widely regarded as heralding the demise of small-claims class actions whenever contracts of adhesion are involved in the transaction-which means for virtually all consumer and employment claims. Amending the Federal Arbitration Act to overturn Concepcion would be a relatively simple exercise in legislative drafting, but in the current political climate such efforts are unlikely to succeed. Thus far, proposed federal corrective legislation has failed to pass, and federal agency regulation of class waivers has been lacking. State legislatures might have the political ability to pass corrective legislation, but virtually all state limitations on …


Concepcion's Pro-Defendant Biasing Of The Arbitration Process: The Class Counsel Solution, David Korn, David Rosenberg Jun 2013

Concepcion's Pro-Defendant Biasing Of The Arbitration Process: The Class Counsel Solution, David Korn, David Rosenberg

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

By mandating that numerous plaintiffs litigate their common question claims separately in individual arbitrations rather than jointly in class action arbitrations, the Supreme Court in AT&T Mobility LLC v. Concepcion entrenched a potent structural and systemic bias in favor of defendants. The bias arises from the parties' divergent stakes in the outcome of the common question litigation in individual arbitrations: each plaintiff will only invest to maximize the value of his or her own claim, but the defendant has an incentive to protect its entire exposure and thus will have a classwide incentive to invest more in contesting common questions. …


What The Awards Tell Us About Labor Arbitration Of Employment Discrimination Claims, Ariana R. Levinson Apr 2013

What The Awards Tell Us About Labor Arbitration Of Employment Discrimination Claims, Ariana R. Levinson

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This Article contributes to the debate over mandatory arbitration of employment-discrimination claims in the unionized sector. In light of the proposed prohibition on union waivers in the Arbitration Fairness Act, this debate has significant practical implications. Fundamentally, the Article is about access to justice. It examines 160 labor arbitration opinions and awards in employment-discrimination cases. The author concludes that labor arbitration is a forum in which employment-discrimination claims can be-and, in some cases, are-successfully resolved. Based upon close examination of the opinions and awards, the Article recommends legislative improvements in certain cases targeting statutes of limitations, compulsory process, remedies, class …


Protecting The Right Of Citizens To Aggregate Small Claims Against Businesses, Paul D. Carrington Jan 2013

Protecting The Right Of Citizens To Aggregate Small Claims Against Businesses, Paul D. Carrington

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Two years ago I ranted against the Supreme Court's subversion of the Rules Enabling Act and its opposition to the benign aims of the twentieth-century progressive law reformers expressed summarily in Rule 1 of our Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. I observed then that the majority of the Justices of the Supreme Court appeared to have joined the Chamber of Commerce, aligning themselves also with Vice President Dan Quayle's 1989 Council on Competitiveness that denounced effective civil procedure as an enemy of economic development. I was then commenting adversely on what the Court had done to transform Rule 8. I …


A Presumptively Better Approach To Arbitrability, John A. E. Pottow, Jacob Brege, Tara J. Hawley Jan 2013

A Presumptively Better Approach To Arbitrability, John A. E. Pottow, Jacob Brege, Tara J. Hawley

Articles

One of the most complex problems in the arbitration field is the question of who decides disputes over the scope of an arbitrator's purported authority. Courts in Canada and the United States have taken different approaches to this fundamental question of "arbitrability" that necessarily arises when one party disputes the contractual validity of the underlying "container" contract carrying the arbitration clause. If arbitration is a creature of contract, and contract is a product of consensual agreement, then any dispute that impugns the underlying consent of the parties to the container contract implicates the arbitration agreement itself (i.e., no contract, no …


The Boundaries Of Most Favored Nation Treatment In International Investment Law, Tony Cole Apr 2012

The Boundaries Of Most Favored Nation Treatment In International Investment Law, Tony Cole

Michigan Journal of International Law

Contemporary international investment law is characterized by fragmentation. Disputes are heard by a variety of tribunals, which often are constituted solely for the purpose of hearing a single claim. The law applicable in a dispute is usually found in a bilateral agreement, applicable only between the two states connected to the dispute, rather than in a multilateral treaty or customary international law. Moreover, the international investment community itself is profoundly divided on many issues of substantive law, meaning both that the interpretation given to international investment law by a tribunal will be determined largely by those who sit on it, …


Dispute Resolution As A Part Of Your Merger Or Your Acquisition Agreement, Kenneth Mathieu, Vincent (Trace) P. Schmeltz Iii Jan 2012

Dispute Resolution As A Part Of Your Merger Or Your Acquisition Agreement, Kenneth Mathieu, Vincent (Trace) P. Schmeltz Iii

Michigan Business & Entrepreneurial Law Review

Often overlooked until invoked, the dispute resolution provisions of an acquisition agreement frequently mirror the terms of a lawyer’s last deal. Yet such provisions—including purchase price adjustment clauses, the terms of governing earn-out disputes, and the contract sections outlining the indemnification claims process—often have long-term economic ramifications on the buyers and sellers. In working with corporate lawyers over the years, we have noted that corporate lawyers understand (and give intense thought to) the leverage their clients have, what their clients hope to accomplish in a transaction, and what makes long-term economic sense in drafting an agreement and negotiating more advantageous …


Why American Express V. Italian Colors Does Not Matter And Coordinated Pursuit Of Aggregate Claims May Be A Viable Option After Concepcion, Gregory C. Cook Jan 2012

Why American Express V. Italian Colors Does Not Matter And Coordinated Pursuit Of Aggregate Claims May Be A Viable Option After Concepcion, Gregory C. Cook

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform Caveat

This Comment suggests that the upcoming decision by the Supreme Court in American Express Co. v. Italian Colors Restaurant will not change the class action landscape. While the plaintiff bar contends that certain public policy goals will be lost as a result of American Express and AT&T Mobility LLC v. Concepcion, this Comment argues that, in the correct circumstances, coordinated individual arbitrations can address at least some of these public policy goals and plaintiff counsel should focus on such coordination efforts (including, for instance, ethically recruiting actually-injured plaintiffs, the use of common plaintiff counsel, the use of common experts, and …


Cruises, Class Actions, And The Court, David Korn, David Rosenberg Jan 2012

Cruises, Class Actions, And The Court, David Korn, David Rosenberg

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform Caveat

As the Carnival Triumph debacle splashed across the national consciousness, lawyers shook their heads. Sensationalist news coverage exposed common knowledge in the legal community: cruise passengers have little recourse against carriers, and, as a result, they often bear the brunt of serious physical and financial injuries. Cruise lines, escaping legal accountability for their negligence, sail off undeterred from neglecting passenger safety on future voyages. While its previous decisions helped entrench this problem, a recently argued case presents the Supreme Court with another opportunity to address it.


Employment Arbitration: The Voice Of (Mostly Vicarious) Experience, Theodore J. St. Antoine Jan 2012

Employment Arbitration: The Voice Of (Mostly Vicarious) Experience, Theodore J. St. Antoine

Book Chapters

At the 1999 Annual Meeting of the National Academy of Arbitrators (NAA), Dennis Nolan gave a provocative, influential address on the Academy’s future. He concluded that if the organization was to survive and remain a vibrant force for workplace justice, to the mutual benefit of employers and employees, it must expand beyond its traditional role in labor arbitration based on collective bargaining. According to Nolan, the Academy should also encompass employment arbitration in the nonunion context. Like many good advocates, he may have slightly overstated his case. Although subsequent changes in admission standards now allow the counting of 10 employment …


Employment Arbitration: Panel Discussion, Theodore J. St. Antoine Jan 2012

Employment Arbitration: Panel Discussion, Theodore J. St. Antoine

Other Publications

The rapid growth of arbitration in nonunion employment settings has provoked endless debate about its advantages and disadvantages for employers, employees, and unions. Often absent from the debate is systematic, reliable information on the extent of employment arbitration and arbitration outcomes. Professor Alexander Colvin of Cornell University has undertaken pioneering work that explores how employment arbitration is working in practice and its impact on the major players. After Professor Colvin presented his latest findings, a panel of leading arbitrators and advocates discussed the implications of his results for the continuing development of employment arbitration.


The Moral Dimension Of Employment Dispute Resolution, Theodore J. St. Antoine Jan 2012

The Moral Dimension Of Employment Dispute Resolution, Theodore J. St. Antoine

Articles

Dispute resolution may be viewed from the perspective of economics or negotiation or contract law or game theory or even military strategy. In this Article, I should like to consider employment dispute resolution in particular from the perspective of morality. I do not necessarily mean "morality" in any religious sense. By "morality" here I mean a concern about the inherent dignity and worth of every human being and the way each one should be treated by society. Some persons who best exemplify that attitude would style themselves secular humanists. Nonetheless, over the centuries religions across the globe have played a …


Adr In Labor And Employment Law During The Past Quarter Century, Theodore J. St. Antoine Apr 2010

Adr In Labor And Employment Law During The Past Quarter Century, Theodore J. St. Antoine

Articles

Two events can serve as bookends for alternative dispute resolution (ADR) in labor and employment law during the past quarter century. The first was the 1991 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Gilmer v. Interstate/Johnson Lane Corp. The Court approved so-called "mandatory arbitration" by holding that an individual stockbroker was bound by a contract with the New York Stock Exchange to arbitrate a claim of age discrimination against his employer, rather than take the case to court. The second event, or set of events, is the current consideration by Congress of the proposed Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) and Arbitration Fairness …


Mandatory Employment Arbitration: Keeping It Fair, Keeping It Lawful, Theodore J. St. Antoine Jan 2010

Mandatory Employment Arbitration: Keeping It Fair, Keeping It Lawful, Theodore J. St. Antoine

Articles

President Obama's election and the Democrats' takeover of Congress, including what was their theoretically filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, have encouraged organized labor and other traditional Democratic supporters to make a vigorous move for some long-desired legislation. Most attention has focused on the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA). As initially proposed, the EFCA would enable unions to get bargaining rights through signed authorization cards rather than a secret-ballot election, and would provide for the arbitration of first-contract terms if negotiations fail to produce an agreement after four months. The EFCA would apply to the potentially organizable private-sector working population; at …


Attorneys As Arbitrators, Adam C. Pritchard, Stephen J. Choi, Jill E. Fisch Jan 2010

Attorneys As Arbitrators, Adam C. Pritchard, Stephen J. Choi, Jill E. Fisch

Articles

We study the role of attorneys as arbitrators in securities arbitration. We find that arbitrators who also represent brokerage firms or brokers in other arbitrations award significantly less compensation to investor-claimants than do other arbitrators. We find no significant effect for attorney-arbitrators who represent investors or both investors and brokerage firms. The relation between representing brokerage firms and arbitration awards remains significant even when we control for political outlook. Arbitrators who donate money to Democratic political candidates award greater compensation than do arbitrators who donate to Republican can-didates. We also study the dynamics of panel interaction. We find that the …


Review Of Staying With Conflict: A Strategic Approach To Ongoing Disputes, Carl E. Schneider Sep 2009

Review Of Staying With Conflict: A Strategic Approach To Ongoing Disputes, Carl E. Schneider

Reviews

Bernie is at it again! And we can be thankful for that. For the past three decades, he has consistently provided leadership in our field. A central part of his work has been his invitation for us to rethink just what our field is. Through his work, he has offered us an expanded definition of our role. This time, in Staying with Conflict, he wants us to consider how misleading and confining our tag line of “conflict resolution” is. So much of what we deal with cannot be resolved! If that is our self-concept, he argues, we will often …


The Sounds Of Silence: Are U.S. Arbitrators Creating Internationally Enforceable Awards When Ordering Class Arbitration In Cases Of Contractual Silence Or Ambiguity?, S. I. Strong Jan 2009

The Sounds Of Silence: Are U.S. Arbitrators Creating Internationally Enforceable Awards When Ordering Class Arbitration In Cases Of Contractual Silence Or Ambiguity?, S. I. Strong

Michigan Journal of International Law

Before outlining the structure of this Article, it is useful to clarify two matters regarding definitions and scope. First, in the context of this Article, an "international class award" is an award resulting from an international class arbitration. There are three different types of international class arbitrations: (1) a class arbitration that includes at least one defendant from a country other than the seat of the arbitration, which means that enforcement of an award will have international implications; (2) a class arbitration that involves defendants that may be based in the arbitral forum but that also hold significant foreign assets …


From Court-Surrogate To Regulatory Tool: Re-Framing The Empirical Study Of Employment Arbitration, W. Mark C. Weidemaier Jul 2008

From Court-Surrogate To Regulatory Tool: Re-Framing The Empirical Study Of Employment Arbitration, W. Mark C. Weidemaier

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

A growing body of empirical research explores the use of arbitration to resolve employment disputes, typically by comparing arbitration to litigation using relatively traditional outcome measures: who wins, how much, and how quickly. On the whole, this research suggests that employees fare reasonably well in arbitration. Yet there remain sizeable gaps in our knowledge. This Article explores these gaps with two goals in mind. The first and narrower goal is to explain why it remains exceedingly difficult to assess the relative fairness of arbitration and litigation. The outcome research does not account for a variety of 'filtering" mechanisms that influence …


Arbitration Costs And Forum Accessibility: Empirical Evidence, Christopher R. Drahozal Jul 2008

Arbitration Costs And Forum Accessibility: Empirical Evidence, Christopher R. Drahozal

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

In this Article, written for this symposium issue on "Empirical Studies of Mandatory Arbitration," I examine the available empirical evidence on these two questions. I take "mandatory arbitration" to refer to pre-dispute arbitration clauses in consumer and employment (and maybe franchise) contracts. Accordingly, I limit my consideration of the empirical evidence to those types of contracts. I do not discuss empirical studies of international arbitrations, which almost always arise out of agreements between commercial entities. Nor do I discuss empirical studies of court-annexed arbitrations, which may not derive from party agreement and do not ordinarily proceed to a binding award.


Arbitration's Summer Soldiers: An Empirical Study Of Arbitration Clauses In Consumer And Nonconsumer Contracts, Theodore Eisenberg, Geoffrey P. Miller, Emily Sherwin Jul 2008

Arbitration's Summer Soldiers: An Empirical Study Of Arbitration Clauses In Consumer And Nonconsumer Contracts, Theodore Eisenberg, Geoffrey P. Miller, Emily Sherwin

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

We provide the first study of varying use of arbitration clauses across contracts within the same firms. Using a sample of 26 consumer contracts and 164 nonconsumer contracts from large public corporations, we compared the use of arbitration clauses in firms' consumer and nonconsumer contracts. Over three-quarters of the consumer agreements provided for mandatory arbitration but less than 10% of the firms' material nonconsumer, nonemployment contracts included arbitration clauses. The absence of arbitration provisions in the vast majority of material contracts suggests that, ex ante, many firms value, even prefer, litigation over arbitration to resolve disputes with peers. Our data …


How Bad Are Mandatory Arbitration Terms?, Omri Ben-Shahar Jul 2008

How Bad Are Mandatory Arbitration Terms?, Omri Ben-Shahar

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This symposium was presented in the 2008 Annual Meeting of the Contracts Section of the American Association of Law Schools. Indeed, studying the unconscionability of arbitration terms has become a standard feature of first-year contracts courses. This is perhaps one of the hotter topics in today's contract law and policy. Contractual rights, as they are enforced by contract law, might have substantially different values depending on the venue through which they can be vindicated. It is hard to predict how these values differ, but hopefully this symposium will inform some of these predictions.


Condominum Arrangements In International Practice: Reviving An Abandoned Concept Of Boundary Dispute Resolution, Joel H. Samuels Jan 2008

Condominum Arrangements In International Practice: Reviving An Abandoned Concept Of Boundary Dispute Resolution, Joel H. Samuels

Michigan Journal of International Law

This Article attempts to revive the consideration of condominium as a possible solution to contemporary boundary disputes. Part I describes specific historic instances of condominia and derives relevant lessons from each instance. Part II notes that some critics of condominium have in fact confused condominium with other forms of joint dominion over territory. This Part proceeds, therefore, to distinguish condominium from these other arrangements. Next, Part III discusses how experiences with common property regimes over common resources (such as water supplies) might inform the contemporary use of condominium. Finally, informed by lessons articulated in Parts I through III, Part IV …


Mandatory Arbitration: Why It's Better Than It Looks, Theodore J. St. Antoine Jan 2008

Mandatory Arbitration: Why It's Better Than It Looks, Theodore J. St. Antoine

Articles

"Mandatory arbitration" as used here means that employees must agree as a condition of employment to arbitrate all legal disputes with their employer, including statutory claims, rather than take them to court. The Supreme Court has upheld the validity of such agreements on the grounds that they merely provide for a change of forum and not a loss of substantive rights. Opponents contend this wrongfully deprives employees of the right to a jury trial and other statutory procedural benefits. Various empirical studies indicate, however, that employees similarly situated do about as well in arbitration as in court actions, or even …


How And Why Labor Arbitrators Decide Discipline And Discharge Cases. An Empirical Examination., Theodore J. St. Antoine Jan 2007

How And Why Labor Arbitrators Decide Discipline And Discharge Cases. An Empirical Examination., Theodore J. St. Antoine

Other Publications

Often without attribution, the arbitration literature includes statements about how “most,” “many” or “some” arbitrators decide discipline and discharge cases. Elkouri & Elkouri is probably the best known source of such generalizations. Although statements like these are often consistent with conventional wisdom, empirical support is seldom provided. To illustrate, consider the first of three examples taken from the National Academy of Arbitrators’ The Common Law of the Workplace: Because industrial discipline is corrective rather than punitive, most arbitrators require use of progressive discipline, even when the collective agreement or employment contract is silent on the subject. Based on personal …