Law Commons^™

Arbitration And Finra's Customer Code: A Tailored Approach To When A Forum Selection Clause May Supersede Finra Rule 12200, Peter Giovine

Fordham Law Review

This Note examines a circuit split concerning whether forum selection clauses supersede Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) Rule 12200, which requires FINRA members to arbitrate customer disputes upon the customer’s request. The U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Second and Ninth Circuits have upheld a waiver of the right to arbitrate even when arbitration is not explicitly mentioned in a forum selection clause. The U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Third and Fourth Circuits, on the other hand, have held that a forum selection clause that does not explicitly mention arbitration does not supersede FINRA Rule 12200. This Note explores …

Catching Up To A New Normal: The Effects Of Shifting Industry Standards On Contract Interpretation, Karen Chen

Fordham Law Review

During the COVID-19 pandemic, industries around the world were forced to adapt to a new way of life dictated by rising public health concerns. The pandemic’s rapid spread left parties struggling to determine whether contractual performance would be excused or reinterpreted. Issues of prevailing industry standards arose and brought into question the point at which parties and courts should define these standards. While some parties argued that industry standards at the time of contract formation are determinative of performance, others claimed that their agreement referenced industry standards that had changed and that, therefore, their performance obligations had changed as well. …

Debunking The Standardized Nature Of Insurance Policies, Elizabeth Sousa

Fordham Journal of Corporate & Financial Law

This article discredits the conventional view of insurance policies as standardized contracts that do not vary across insurance companies and policyholders. Contrary to this view, there are wide variations in policy language in both the admitted and non-admitted insurance markets. These deviations reduce the perceived benefit of insurance policies as standardized contracts intended to promote predictability and lower transaction costs for policyholders by focusing only on the most salient terms. Nowhere is this deviation more apparent than with Commercial General Liability (CGL) policies defendants are turning to in the current opioid litigation.

The opioid epidemic has been plaguing the United …

Lowering The Stakes Of The Employment Contract, Aditi Bagchi

Faculty Scholarship

Every country has to make hard choices about the distribution of entitlements. But employers control the entitlements that individual Americans enjoy to a far greater extent than those in other rich democracies. In this Essay, I argue that, in the absence of the political consensus necessary to deliver state solutions to political questions, employers here are assigned an exaggerated role in employees’ lives. Government incentives for and directives to employers have become a strategy of political deflection. The effect has been to raise the stakes of employment well beyond the scope of those terms and conditions that relate to attracting …

Why The Corporation Locks In Financial Capital But The Partnership Does Not, Richard Squire

Faculty Scholarship

Each partner in an at-will partnership can obtain a cash payout of his interest at any time. The corporation, by contrast, locks in shareholder capital, denying general payout rights to shareholders unless the charter states otherwise. What explains this difference? This Article argues that partner payout rights reduce the costs of two other characteristics of the partnership: the non-transferability of partner control rights, and the possibility for partnerships to be formed inadvertently. While these characteristics serve valuable functions, they can introduce a bilateral-monopoly problem and a special freezeout hazard unless each partner can force the firm to cash out his …