{"id":9608,"date":"2019-05-23T00:41:58","date_gmt":"2019-05-23T00:41:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.steinberglawfirm.com\/?p=9608"},"modified":"2019-07-15T19:29:16","modified_gmt":"2019-07-15T19:29:16","slug":"the-u-s-supreme-court-further-restricts-the-availability-of-class-arbitration-lamps-plus-inc-v-varela-no-17-988-587-u-s-___-april-24-2019","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.steinberglawfirm.com\/es\/blog\/the-u-s-supreme-court-further-restricts-the-availability-of-class-arbitration-lamps-plus-inc-v-varela-no-17-988-587-u-s-___-april-24-2019\/","title":{"rendered":"El Tribunal Supremo de EE.UU. restringe a\u00fan m\u00e1s la disponibilidad del arbitraje colectivo"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In its 2010 decision in Stolt-Nielsen<\/em>, the United States Supreme Court held that a court may not compel class arbitration when an arbitration agreement is silent on whether class arbitration is permitted.1<\/sup><\/a><\/sup> The Court reasoned that class arbitration fundamentally alters the nature of arbitration and therefore, is not permitted unless a court can conclude the parties specifically agreed to class arbitration. In its recent Lamps Plus, Inc. v. Varela<\/em>, No. 17-988, 587 U.S. ____ (April 24, 2019) decision, the Court has now gone one step further and held that even where an arbitration agreement is ambiguous as to the availability of class arbitration, rather than merely silent, class arbitration is not available. The Court made clear that class arbitration is only available where the parties expressly agreed to class arbitration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\ncase arose from a data breach of employee records at Lamps Plus. \nAfter the data breach, a fraudulent tax return was filed for an\nemployee. The employee then filed a class action suit against Lamps\nPlus. The employee had signed an arbitration agreement when he began\nhis employment with Lamps Plus, and based on that agreement, Lamps\nPlus moved to compel arbitration on an individual basis and dismiss\nthe class action suit. The district court granted Lamps Plus\u2019\nmotion to compel arbitration but rejected the request for individual\narbitration and permitted class arbitration. The Ninth Circuit\naffirmed and reasoned that the arbitration agreement did not\nexplicitly refer to class arbitration and was ambiguous on whether\nclass arbitration was permitted, and therefore, construing the\nambiguity against the drafter, the agreement permitted class\narbitration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nSupreme Court majority viewed the issue in the case as a contest\nbetween the state law principle that ambiguity is construed against\nan agreement\u2019s drafter and the Federal Arbitration Act\u2019s\nprinciple that arbitration is \u201ca matter of consent, not coercion.\u201d\n The Court reasoned the central principle in applying arbitration\nagreements is to give effect to what the parties intended. The Court\nthen looked to the \u201cfundamental difference\u201d between class and\nindividual arbitration and its presumption that given such\ndifferences it should doubt the parties\u2019 intent to permit class\narbitration absent an express consent to class arbitration. The\nCourt concluded something more than silence or ambiguity on the issue\nof class arbitration is required for an agreement to permit class\narbitration: \u201cLike silence, ambiguity does not provide a sufficient\nbasis to conclude that parties to an arbitration agreement agreed [to\nclass arbitration].\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ironically\nand as pointed out by Justice Kagan in her dissent, to support the\nright of businesses to force consumers and employees into\narbitration, the Court rejects a neutral rule of state law and\ncreates a special rule for arbitration agreements, whereas in the\ncontext of the enforceability of arbitration agreements the Court has\nrepeatedly held state laws cannot create special rules for\narbitration agreements and only neutral rules of state law can render\narbitration agreements unenforceable. Additionally and as Justice\nKagan highlights, the Court has previously applied the contract\ninterpretation principle of interpreting an ambiguous contract\nagainst its drafter to an arbitration agreement, and therefore, we\nare now left, at least in relation to class arbitration, adrift as to\nhow and whether standard contract interpretation principles apply to\narbitration agreements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Also\nnotable is that Justice Thomas joined the majority opinion despite\nhis longstanding aversion to implied preemption of state law by\nfederal law. He authored a concurrence expressing his reservations\nabout implied preemption, but stating he joined the majority decision\nbecause it \u201ccorrectly applies our FAA precedents.\u201d While\ncryptic, his concurrence appears to indicate he joins the majority\npurely as a result of stare\ndecisis<\/em>, and not\nbecause he agrees with all of the underlying legal reasoning applied.\n Given that the majority\u2019s decision is nothing more than an implied\npreemption application of the FAA to a state contract law, his\nconcurrence leaves one to wonder whether had the preemption issue\nbeen directly raised he might have reached a different result. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Justice\nThomas\u2019 concurrence is also important and confusing because Justice\nThomas appears to rely on an entirely different rationale\u2014that the\narbitration agreement expressly bars class arbitration\u2014than that\nrelied on by the majority, and the majority rejects Justice Thomas\u2019\nrationale. In other words, the result appears to actually be a\nplurality decision, yet Justice Thomas joined the majority opinion. \nThis point heightens the importance of whether Justice Thomas may\nhave reached a different result if the preemption issue was clearly\nraised.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In\nmost respects, the Lamps\nPlus<\/em> decision\nappears to have killed off class arbitration except where an\narbitration agreement expressly permits class arbitration. \nArbitration agreements permitting class arbitration are therefore\npresumably like unicorns, i.e.<\/em>,\nthey don\u2019t exist. However, the Lamps\nPlus <\/em>decision does\nnot close off the possibility of class arbitration for one group of\narbitration agreements. Some arbitration agreements expressly\nprovide that the arbitrator is to decide all arbitrability issues,\nand that puts the issue of whether class arbitration is permitted to\nthe arbitrator to decide. The arbitrator could decide that the\nagreement provides for class arbitration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1<\/a>\u0002<\/sup>\n\tStolt-Nielsen S.A. v. AnimalFeeds Int\u2019l Corp.<\/em>, 559 U.S. 662\n\t(2010).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

En su decisi\u00f3n de 2010 en Stolt-Nielsen, el Tribunal Supremo de los Estados Unidos sostuvo que un tribunal no puede obligar a un arbitraje colectivo cuando un acuerdo de arbitraje no dice nada sobre si el arbitraje colectivo est\u00e1 permitido.1 El Tribunal razon\u00f3 que el arbitraje colectivo altera fundamentalmente la naturaleza del arbitraje y, por tanto, no est\u00e1 permitido a menos que un tribunal pueda concluir...<\/p>","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[289],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-construction-defect-case-law"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.steinberglawfirm.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9608","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.steinberglawfirm.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.steinberglawfirm.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.steinberglawfirm.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.steinberglawfirm.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9608"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.steinberglawfirm.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9608\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.steinberglawfirm.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.steinberglawfirm.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.steinberglawfirm.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}