Recent Posts

Here in the USA (New York remaining therein until November 2016 and possibly beyond), judicial control over the use of arbitration for class actions is still a hot topic. One aspect of such control, or lack of it, is the question of who (finally) decides — court or arbitrator — whether a particular arbitration clause does indeed permit arbitration to be pursued on behalf of a class of persons alleged by the named Claimant to be in the same circumstances vis-à-vis the Respondent. Not every US corporation has managed to include an enforceable class action waiver in its arbitration clauses…
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We did not really learn very much about arbitration from the U.S. Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision in DirecTV v. Imburgia, 136 S.Ct. 463, 2015 WL 8546242 (Dec. 14, 2015). After all, we knew, even before we were reminded by the New York Times, that companies that sell goods and services to consumers using written contracts, in interstate or international commerce, use arbitration clauses that prohibit class or consolidated actions, doing so to foreclose legal challenge to profitable but perhaps dubious business practices. We also knew that the U.S. Supreme Court has mainly condoned such use of class arbitration waivers by…
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You are only human. You lead a busy professional life, and, while you have a few precious hours to watch American football on Sunday afternoons, you have no time (or patience) to slog through 20 pages of the federal district court decision that vacated the arbitration award of National Football League (NFL) Commissioner Roger Goodell that had (in)famously upheld the four-game suspension imposed on a certain player known to be the husband of a famous fashion model. (National Football League Management Council v.National Football League Players Association, 2015 WL 5148739 (S.D.N.Y. Sept. 3, 2015)). If ever there were a task…
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We are all collection lawyers, more or less. That is, those of us who act as advocates in international arbitration. If you don’t have a good collection plan, enterprising Claimant counsels, maybe don’t start the case until you do. A personal favorite move is to grab real estate in Canada on Day #1 of the arbitration. Vancouver is particularly lovely on the first day of an arbitration, when the demonstrably rogue Respondent owns three homes with substantial equity. But sometimes even the well-heeled international finance types get ahead of themselves, and chart a course to win a battle (a Final…
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Shame on you (!!), subpoena-issuing international arbitrators sitting in Dallas, Texas. Here in NYC, where we have wrestled, maybe not to the ground but mightily, with the problem of arbitral subpoenas, we are reading about your case (Matter of Arbitration Between Tang Energy Group Ltd. and Catic USA, 2015 WL 4692459 (N.D. Cal. Aug. 6, 2015), and asking ourselves: “How ‘Bout Them Cowboys??!!“ Dear colleagues, if a party in your case wants a subpoena for a non-party witness located in San Francisco — even if he is a recognized international arbitration lawyer in San Francisco — then take your hearts,…
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All of us had to start somewhere. A few famous people perhaps reading or perhaps declining the invitation to read this post started in this business, sort of, back in the early/mid ’80s in a case-for-the-ages about an aborted hotel venture near the Pyramids. (Your author was, back in the day, doing legal battle with the Ayatollah K, who took our clients’ condo complex in Teheran by force and made a nice living in the real estate business, for a time). Anyway, more about the Pyramids case (Southern Pacific Properties (SPP) v. Arab Republic of Egypt, for you fussy types;…
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