Originally from Alternatives to the High Cost of Litigation

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A long-running Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals arbitration case is now before the U.S. Supreme Court on a petition for certiorari, after four visits at the New York federal appeals court.

In its latest decision in the case in November, the Second Circuit reaffirmed its deferential view of an arbitration agreement between the parties and the reviewability of arbitral decisions. Specifically, in reversing a U.S. District Court decision, the Second Circuit disagreed with a trial court that an arbitrator had exceeded her authority in including absent class members in a class arbitration certification.

Instead, the panel states, ‘We hold that the arbitrator was within her authority in purporting to bind the absent class members to class proceedings because, by signing the operative arbitration agreement, the absent class members, no less than the parties, bargained for the arbitrator’s construction of their agreement with respect to class arbitrability.”