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A new weapon in arbitration: sheer volume

nytimes.com

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Re: A new weapon in arbitration: sheer volume

#71

Post by tssva »

Reelin wrote: post #53
tssva wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you sure it was the union which forced the district not to remote teach? I live in an area where teachers are not unionized and the teachers are still getting paid and not teaching. The school district has signed contracts with the teachers which doesn't have any terms which stop payment because the schools close during the year and the district is not requiring remote learning because of equal access issues.

> doesn't have any terms which stop payment because the schools close during the year And so they shouldn't! In many (most?) US states, the public schools are unconditionally funded by the state based on student enrollment figures. Cutting teacher pay during a closure under such a system would be a purely greedy move.

If my comment seemed to imply I thought they shouldn't I didn't mean to. I agree that they should get paid.

I don't know how it works in the majority of states but I know the model of mostly state funding based upon student enrollment is not universal. In my state the majority of funding is from local tax revenues. For example the budget for my local school district is approximately $1.3 billion. $370 million comes from the state and $30 million comes from the federal government. Another $40 million comes from "misc other sources" and $860 million comes from local tax revenue.

Re: A new weapon in arbitration: sheer volume

#72

Post by paulgb »

DannyB2 wrote: post #2

> But a federal judge in San Francisco wasn’t willing to go along with it. The judge, William Alsup, ordered DoorDash in February to proceed with the American Arbitration Association cases and pay the fees. Ah! Gotta love judge Alsup. Back in SCO vs Novell, and in Oracle vs Google. > ... in a hearing, Judge Alsup questioned whether the company and its lawyers really believed that. > "Your law firm and all the defense…

He also taught himself Java to better understand the arguments in Oracle vs. Google. https://www.theverge.com/2017/10/19/16503076/oracle-vs-googl...

Re: A new weapon in arbitration: sheer volume

#73

Post by paulgb »

Animats wrote: post #28

Oh, it's even worse than that for companies. The 9th and 10th circuits have both agreed that if the defense refuses to pay for arbitration, plaintiff can go to court. They're no longer barred from suing at that point. Incidentally, the AAA rules have some useful provisions in consumer disputes. Either party can request to transfer the case to small claims court. At least in California, that's not only cheaper, small…

Typically arbitration clauses have wording that also prohibit class-action cases. It looks like this hasn't been tested, but I guess that would be void too?

Re: A new weapon in arbitration: sheer volume

#74

Post by late2part »

tobinfricke wrote: post #33
maxlybbert wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SCO vs. Novell was in Utah, under Judge Kimball. But Alsup was impressive in Oracle vs. Google, noting that he had some familiarity with programming and calling out Math.max() as the kind of function where scènes à faire and merger probably apply.

> as the kind of function where scènes à faire and merger probably apply. I had to look this up - »Scène à faire (French for "scene to be made" or "scene that must be done"; plural: scènes à faire) is a scene in a book or film which is almost obligatory for a genre of its type. In the U.S. it also refers to a principle in copyright law in which certain elements of a creative work are held to be not protected when the…

This was a holding argument in the CISCO v. ARISTA lawsuits. You can't trademark "show interface" for example.

Re: A new weapon in arbitration: sheer volume

#75

Post by caseysoftware »

Animats wrote: post #28

Oh, it's even worse than that for companies. The 9th and 10th circuits have both agreed that if the defense refuses to pay for arbitration, plaintiff can go to court. They're no longer barred from suing at that point. Incidentally, the AAA rules have some useful provisions in consumer disputes. Either party can request to transfer the case to small claims court. At least in California, that's not only cheaper, small…

Either way, they end up having to fight on a thousand little battlefields all over the place and likely do not have the interest or ability to fight each and every one. This is the sort of thing that can tie up legal teams for years and drain reserves in no time.

I was involved in a mass-arbitration last year. The NDA bars any details from being released for 2 years but in the meantime, we can say we reached "a resolution, not a settlement" in the dispute.

Re: A new weapon in arbitration: sheer volume

#76

Post by gamblor956 »

paulgb wrote: post #73
Animats wrote: post #28

Oh, it's even worse than that for companies. The 9th and 10th circuits have both agreed that if the defense refuses to pay for arbitration, plaintiff can go to court. They're no longer barred from suing at that point. Incidentally, the AAA rules have some useful provisions in consumer disputes. Either party can request to transfer the case to small claims court. At least in California, that's not only cheaper, small…

Typically arbitration clauses have wording that also prohibit class-action cases. It looks like this hasn't been tested, but I guess that would be void too?

Once the company breaches the arbitration clause by refusing to pay for arbitration, it would open the door to class-actions.

However, you would probably need to file your case separately in court and get it combined with other cases to form a new class action, or join or an existing class action, as the breach would only apply on a case-by-case basis.

Re: A new weapon in arbitration: sheer volume

#77

Post by jpdb »

phd514 wrote: post #29
kenned3 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"a very strong protections of speech" I grew up in Canada, then moved to the US for 5 years before returning home to Canada. It always killed me when my US coworkers said teh same thing about "free speech" as i watched censored TV shows in the US which are not that way back in Canada. I think "free speech" on the US side is highly overrarted and if you look into it more seriously you will find many nations which are…

The FCC has obscenity regulations for broadcast TV in the US under the idea that the broadcast spectrum is owned by the people. Cable television has no such restrictions. That rationale holds up a lot less now than it did in the early days of broadcast television, but it's still a far cry from Canadian hate speech laws in which the expression of certain points of view is deemed a crime.

> a far cry from Canadian hate speech laws in which the expression of certain points of view is deemed a crime.

Can you link to these laws? Because if you're talking about bill C-16, it's very clear that it isn't making it a crime to express certain beliefs, it's making it illegal to discriminate based on gender or gender identity. Just as the US does with regards to certain traits (such as color, religion, marital status, etc)

Re: A new weapon in arbitration: sheer volume

#78

Post by gamblor956 »

jdmichal wrote: post #23
function_seven wrote: post #4

The article mentions 6,000 arbitration cases against DoorDash amounted to $9 million in fees from the American Arbitration Association. That's $1,500 a pop! If you have a dispute with a company, and are bound by an arbitration clause, it seems like you have a $1,500 hammer to hit them with? (Assuming your agreement states that the company will front the fees). What happens if the arbitrator decides the case against y…

> Assuming your agreement states that the company will front the fees. I'm not entirely sure they can agree to not front the fees without also potentially voiding arbitration. While money does mean a lot in court, there's a very strong sentiment that it should not be a barrier to entry. There's at least one case that went to appears where, when the plaintiff ran out of money and arbitration was canceled, the case was…

The arbitration clause is for the company's protection, therefore the arbitration fees are their burden. If they breach the arbitration clause by not paying for arbitration in a timely manner, the plaintiff is entitled to go to court in the 9th and 10th Circuits.

Re: A new weapon in arbitration: sheer volume

#79

Post by bastawhiz »

wool_gather wrote: post #51
Animats wrote: post #28

Oh, it's even worse than that for companies. The 9th and 10th circuits have both agreed that if the defense refuses to pay for arbitration, plaintiff can go to court. They're no longer barred from suing at that point. Incidentally, the AAA rules have some useful provisions in consumer disputes. Either party can request to transfer the case to small claims court. At least in California, that's not only cheaper, small…

This is interesting. Are they only allowed to sue to force going to arbitration , or is the situation opened to allow a lawsuit for whatever the original dispute was?

It would be WILD if you could (as the company) not pay to go to arbitration, forcing the plaintiff to take you to court (at their expense?) to force you to pay to go to arbitration.

A company could simply stick its fingers in its ears and yell "I can't hear your legal complaints!" and essentially get out of all responsibility. Thankfully, it sounds like this is not the case.

Re: A new weapon in arbitration: sheer volume

#80

Post by paulgb »

vsskanth wrote: post #17

I wonder why the issue of being able to waive away your rights - forced arbitration, non-competes, severance packages etc. never come up at the presidential campaign stage. Seems like this is pervasive enough to affect pretty much everyone. Or am I misunderstanding something here ?

I noticed that Pete Buttigieg worked into his stump speech a remark about how "you’re not free if you can’t sue your credit card company even after they get caught ripping you off"[1].

> Seems like this is pervasive enough to affect pretty much everyone.

Sadly, it's one of those things that effects everyone but that they don't know about until it's too late.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/15/us/politics/pete-buttigie...

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