Our colleague Stuart M. Gerson at Epstein Becker Green recently posted an article on LinkedIn that will be of interest to our readers: “SCOTUS Today: Class Action Ambiguity Finds No Shelter Under the Federal Arbitration Act.”

Following is an excerpt:

In a 5-4 opinion (divided on expected conservative/liberal lines), authored by the Chief Justice, the Supreme Court has ruled in the case of Lamps Plus, Inc. v. Varella, No. 17-988, that under the Federal Arbitration Act (“FAA”), an ambiguous agreement cannot provide the necessary contractual basis for concluding that the parties agreed to submit to class arbitration.

This reverses the decision of the Ninth Circuit concerning a case relating to the unauthorized disclosure of personal tax information of employees of Lamps Plus after a hacker tricked an employee into divulging that information. The Supreme Court had held in Stolt-Nielsen S.A. v. AnimalFeeds Int’l Corp., 559 U. S. 662, that a court may not compel class-wide arbitration when an agreement is silent on the availability of such arbitration. Lamps Plusextends that holding to agreements that are ambiguous. In so doing, the Court’s majority stressed the FAA mandate that arbitration is a matter of consent, and is yet another example of the conservative majority of the Court, led particularly by Chief Justice Roberts, acting to limit the flow of employment and commercial disputes into the federal courts by strongly enforcing the FAA against various policy arguments made by labor unions and other employee groups and organizations on the jurisprudential left. See most recently Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis, 584 U. S. ___ (2018). ...

Read the full article here.

Back to Wage and Hour Defense Blog Blog

Search This Blog

Blog Editors

Related Services

Topics

Archives

Jump to Page

Subscribe

Sign up to receive an email notification when new Wage and Hour Defense Blog posts are published:

Privacy Preference Center

When you visit any website, it may store or retrieve information on your browser, mostly in the form of cookies. This information might be about you, your preferences or your device and is mostly used to make the site work as you expect it to. The information does not usually directly identify you, but it can give you a more personalized web experience. Because we respect your right to privacy, you can choose not to allow some types of cookies. Click on the different category headings to find out more and change our default settings. However, blocking some types of cookies may impact your experience of the site and the services we are able to offer.

Strictly Necessary Cookies

These cookies are necessary for the website to function and cannot be switched off in our systems. They are usually only set in response to actions made by you which amount to a request for services, such as setting your privacy preferences, logging in or filling in forms. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not then work. These cookies do not store any personally identifiable information.

Performance Cookies

These cookies allow us to count visits and traffic sources so we can measure and improve the performance of our site. They help us to know which pages are the most and least popular and see how visitors move around the site. All information these cookies collect is aggregated and therefore anonymous. If you do not allow these cookies we will not know when you have visited our site, and will not be able to monitor its performance.