I found interesting a recent blog post by Claire Wilkinson of the Insurance Information Institute (III) reporting that:
In a new record, nearly 520,000 insurance claims disputes valued at more than $2.4 billion were resolved via arbitration in 2011, Arbitration Forums Inc reports.
According to AF, the nation’s largest provider of inter-insurance dispute resolution services…
On January 30, I published a blog post about a Southern District of New York decision holding that an arbitration clause barring class actions was unenforceable because the costs of an individual arbitration effectively would preclude the plaintiff from pursuing her statutory rights under the Fair Labor Standards Act. The Second Circuit has now reached…
One of the interesting open questions after AT&T v. Concepcion was decided by the Supreme Court is to what extent an arbitration clause must be plaintiff-friendly in order for a ban on class actions to be fully enforceable. A recent opinion by Judge Kimba M. Wood of the Southern District of New York addressed this…
Earlier this week I attended the ABA’s national webinar entitled “The Future of Class Actions,” part of its Premier Speaker Series. The panelists were Paul Bland of Public Justice, Mark Perry of Gibson Dunn and Judge Lee Rosenthal of the Southern District of Texas. Here is what I found most interesting:
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As I’ve noted in prior posts regarding the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in AT&T Mobility, LLC v. Concepcion (see, for example, my August 22, 2011 post), the insurance industry is in a somewhat unique position with respect to the use of arbitration clauses as a mechanism of avoiding class action exposure. One reason for…
Several notable recent class action filings against insurers have come across my desk (or computer screen) and seem worthy of interest to readers of this blog. I will summarize and comment briefly on them. If you’d like a copy of any of the complaints, just e-mail me.
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There has been a lot written about what impact the Supreme Court’s decision in AT&T Mobility, LLC v. Concepcion will have on the future of class actions (if you haven’t followed this closely, see my prior posts about the Supreme Court’s decision, opinions by the Colorado federal court and Northern District of California applying…
In my prior post about the Supreme Court’s decision in AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion, I made some preliminary observations about how insurance companies might take advantage of the opportunity provided by that decision to potentially reduce class action exposure through the use of arbitration clauses that bar class arbitrations. I’ve given some further thought…
Following the Supreme Court’s decision in AT&T Mobility, LLC v. Concepcion (see my prior blog post), a key battleground is going to be what defenses to arbitration of a named plaintiff’s claim remain viable. We know that the mere fact that the arbitration provision does not allow a class arbitration is not enough to…
A recent Second Circuit decision suggests that there may be a loophole in the Supreme Court’s decision in Stolt-Nielsen, S.A. v. AnimalFeeds International Corp., 130 S. Ct. 1758 (2010), which may allow arbitrators to decide, in some circumstances, whether an arbitration agreement permits class arbitration where it does not expressly provide for it.
In…
