The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit called Live Nation Entertainment Inc.'s requirement of new procedures for mass arbitration claims unenforceable and rejected the company's bid to keep a proposed class action lawsuit alleging inflated ticket prices out of court.
In the view of many experienced practitioners, arbitration has morphed into a time-consuming process, often as expensive as litigation and has other shortcomings such as the non-appealability of the arbitrator's decision. Not so mediation which may be a materially better form of ADR.
Most companies have experienced or will experience a data breach. Increasingly, companies also face the risks associated with mass arbitration weaponized by the overwhelming volume of claims after a breach.
Actor Alec Baldwin has detailed his account of the October 2021 fatal shooting of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the Rust film production set in an arbitration demand in which he seeks indemnification.
Legal practitioners, as well as in-house counsel and other stakeholders, are making increased use of legal analytics in order to reach data-driven decisions in the context of future or ongoing litigation. Access to data analytics is even more relevant in the context of international arbitration, where the parties and counsel exert a greater degree of control over key features of the dispute resolution process.
Bankruptcy courts are embracing virtual alternative dispute resolution (ADR) processes to handle cases during this extraordinary period. Engaging in online mediation, and arbitration, can expedite Chapter 11 cases toward an equitable conclusion for the parties involved, while ensuring everyone can practice safe social-distancing.
“Baseball arbitration” refers to the process used in Major League Baseball in which if an eligible player's representative and the club ownership cannot reach a compensation agreement through negotiation, each party enters a final submission and during a formal hearing each side — player and management — presents its case and then the designated panel of arbitrators chooses one of the salary bids with no other result being allowed. This method has become increasingly popular even beyond the sport of baseball.
"[T]he bankruptcy court did not abuse its discretion in denying [the debtor's former employees'] motion to compel arbitration" when the dispute turned on the relative priority of their claims, held the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit on Oct. 6, 2016 in In re Lehman Bros. Holdings.
Recently, a Florida bankruptcy court permitted a Chapter 7 trustee to reach back 10 years to unwind a fraudulent transfer, a period of time well beyond the two years that practitioners generally expect.
