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Full-Text Articles in Legal Writing and Research
The Uncertain Status Of The Manifest Disregard Standard One Decade After Hall Street, Stuart M. Boyarsky
The Uncertain Status Of The Manifest Disregard Standard One Decade After Hall Street, Stuart M. Boyarsky
Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)
The Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) enables parties to obtain quick and final resolution to disputes without incurring the costs, delays, and occasional publicity of litigation. Indeed, section 10 of the FAA enumerates four specific grounds on which courts may vacate arbitral awards: corruption, fraud, impartiality, and misconduct or incompetence. Yet over the past 60 years, a debate has raged over the existence of an additional ground: the arbitrator’s manifest disregard of the law.
The Supreme Court first enounced this standard in dicta in its 1953 decision in Wilko v. Swan. Over next four decades, every federal circuit court slowly …
Recalibrating Cy Pres Settlements To Restore The Equilibrium, Michael J. Slobom
Recalibrating Cy Pres Settlements To Restore The Equilibrium, Michael J. Slobom
Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)
Class action settlement funds become “non-distributable” when class members fail to claim their share of the settlement or the cost of distribution exceeds the value of individual claims. Before 1974, parties had two options for disposing of non-distributable funds: escheatment to the state or reversion to the defendant. Both options undermine unique objectives of the class action—namely, compensating small individual harms and deterring misconduct.
To balance the undermining effects of escheatment and reversion, courts incorporated the charitable trust doctrine of cy pres into the class action settlements context. Cy pres distributions direct non-distributable settlement funds to charities whose work aligns …