On Monday, June 29, 2020 the International Institute of Conflict Protection and Resolution (“CPR”) interviewed Richard D. Faulkner, Esq. and Loree & Loree partner Philip J. Loree Jr. about the U.S. Supreme Court’s denial of certiorari in Monster Energy Co. v. City Beverages, LLC, 940 F.3d 1130 (9th Cir. 2019). To watch and listen to the video-conference interview, CLICK HERE.
On November 18, 2019 we reported on Monster Energy here. The Ninth Circuit addressed the question whether an award should be vacated for evident partiality if: (a) an arbitrator fails to disclose an ownership interest in an arbitration provider; and (b) the arbitration provider has a nontrivial, repeat-player relationship with a party.
The Court, in a 2-1 decision, held that an arbitrator who failed to disclose his ownership interest in an arbitration provider was guilty of evident partiality because the arbitration provider had a nontrivial business relationship with the repeat player party. The business relationship between the provider and the award proponent was nontrivial because the proponent’s form contracts designated the provider as the arbitration administrator, and over a five-year period, the provider had administered 97 arbitrations for the proponent.
Our good friend Russ Bleemer, Editor of CPR’s newsletter, Alternatives to the High Cost of Litigation, did a fantastic job conducting the interview. Heather Cameron, a second-year student at Fordham Law School, and a CPR Institute 2020 Summer Intern, wrote for CPR Speaks an excellent post about Monster Energy and the Supreme Court’s denial of certiorari, which you can read here. The video of the interview is embedded into that post.
A shout-out also to CPR’s Tania Zamorsky, who, among other things, is the blog master of CPR Speaks, and who coordinated the effort to share copies of the video on CPR’s social media outlets.
Photo Acknowledgment
The photo featured in this post was licensed from Yay Images and is subject to copyright protection under applicable law.
Steps and columns on the portico of the United States Supreme Court in Washington, DC.
On Monday, June 15, 2020 the International Institute of Conflict Protection and Resolution (“CPR”) interviewed our good friend and colleague Richard D. Faulkner and Loree & Loree partner Philip J. Loree Jr. about the U.S. Supreme Court’s grant of certiorari in Henry Schein Inc. v. Archer and White Sales Inc., No. 19-963. To watch and listen to the video-conference interview, CLICK HERE.
The petition for and grant of certiorari arose out of the Fifth Circuit’s remand decision from the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Henry Schein Inc. v. Archer & White Sales Inc., 139 S. Ct. 524 (2019) (available at) (“Schein I”).
If you’ve been following our posts about the Schein I and the remand decision, Archer and White Sales Inc. v. Henry Schein Inc., 935 F.3d 274 (5th Cir. 2019) (available at ) (“Schein II”), then you know that the arbitration proponent, Henry Schein, Inc. (“Schein”), petitioned for rehearing en banc of Schein II in fall 2019. (See here, here, here, and here.) In October 2019, while the petition for rehearing en banc was pending, Philip J. Loree Jr. published in Alternatives an article entitled “Back to Scotus’s Schein: A Separability Analysis that Resolves the Problem with the Fifth Circuit Remand,” 37 Alternatives 131 (October 2019).
The Fifth Circuit denied the petition for rehearing en banc on December 6, 2019. But Schein, a Melville, N.Y.-based dental equipment distributor, filed on January 30, 2020 a petition for certiorari, which asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review the Fifth Circuit’s Schein II ruling.
The Petition asks the U.S. Supreme Court to determine “[w]hether a provision in an arbitration agreement that exempts certain claims from arbitration negates an otherwise clear and unmistakable delegation of questions of arbitrability to an arbitrator.” (Petition at I)
We wrote about the Petition in a post CPR Speaks, CPR’s blog, published on February 19, 2020, which was entitled “Schein Returns: Scotus’s Arbitration Remand Is Now Back at the Court.” And we also published in the April 2020 issue of CPR Alternatives an article about the Petition, which was entitled “Schein’s Remand Decision Goes Back to the Supreme Court. What’s Next?,” 38 Alternatives 54 (April 2020) (the “April 2020 Alternatives Article”).
As noted in the April 2020 Alternatives Article, Schein’s filing of the petition for certiorari prompted Archer & White Sales Inc. (“Respondent” or “Archer & White”), a Plano, Texas, distributor, seller, and servicer of dental equipment, to file a conditional cross-petition (the “Cross Petition”), which in the event the Court granted the Petition asked the Court to determine “[w]hether the parties clearly and unmistakably agreed to arbitrate arbitrability by incorporating the AAA Rules into their contract.”
The Cross-Petition ultimately prompted Rick Faulkner and Phil Loree Jr. to co-author a two-part article for Alternatives entitled “Schein’s Remand Decision: Should Scotus Review the Provider Rule Incorporation-by-Reference Issue?” Part I was published in the May 2020 issue of Alternatives. Part II was published in the June 2020 issue.
The two-part article argued that, if the Court granted the Petition, it should also grant the Cross-Petition, and address the issue whether the parties, by agreeing to arbitrate “in accordance with” the American Arbitration Assocation’s Commercial Arbitration Rules, clearly and unmistakably agreed to arbitrate arbitrability issues.
But as it turned out, the Court granted the Petition, but denied the Cross-Petition, one of the issues addressed in the interview.
Our good friend Russ Bleemer, Editor of Alternatives, conducted the interview, and did a great job editing the articles Rick and I wrote about Schein for Alternatives. He also wrote for the CPR Speaks Blog an excellent summary of where things stand in light of the Court’s grant of the Petition. The video of the interview is embedded into that blog post. You can request copies of the articles Rick and Phil wrote about Schein by emailing CPR at alternatives@cpradr.org.
We also shout-out CPR’s Tania Zamorsky, who, among other things, is the blog master of CPR Speaks, and who coordinated the effort to share copies of the video on CPR’s social media outlets.
Photo Acknowledgment
The photo featured in this post was licensed from Yay Images and is subject to copyright protection under applicable law.
On August 28, 2014 we posted an article discussing the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit’s decision in Opalinski v. Robert Half Int’l Inc., 761 F.3d 326 (3rd Cir. 2014), which held that the question of consent to class arbitration was one of arbitrability. Prior to Opalinski the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ruled in Reed Elsevier, Inc. v. Crockett, 734 F.3d 594 (6th Cir. 2013), “that the question whether an arbitration agreement permits classwide arbitration is a gateway matter, which is reserved for judicial determination unless the parties clearly and unmistakably provide otherwise.” 734 F.2d at 599 (quotation and citation omitted).
Opalinski “join[ed] the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in holding that the availability of class arbitration” is a substantive gateway question rather than a procedural one[,]” and thus “is a question of arbitrability.” 761 F.3d at 335. The Third Circuit’s decision turned on “the critical differences between individual and class arbitration and the significant consequences of that determination for both [a] whose claims are subject to arbitration[;] and [b] the type of controversy to be arbitrated.” Id. (emphasis and bracketed letters added). Where, as in Opalinski, the arbitration agreement did not “mention” class arbitration, the Court “believ[ed] the parties would have expected a court, not an arbitrator, to determine the availability of class arbitration[,]” and that was “especially so given the critical differences between individual and class arbitration and the significant consequences” of the class-arbitration-consent determination as respects “whose claims are subject to arbitration and the type of controversy to be arbitrated.” 761 F.3d at 335.
As we explained in our prior post, both Opalinski and Reed Elsevier followed on the heels of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2013 decision in Oxford Health Plans LLC v. Sutter, 133 S. Ct. 2064 (2013), which in footnote pointed out that the award-challenger in Oxford had unreservedly submitted to the arbitrator the issue of whether class arbitration consent was one of arbitrability, but that the case before it would have been “different” had Oxford “argued below that the availability of class-arbitration is a so-called ‘question of arbitrability.’” 133 S. Ct. at 2068 n.2. The Oxford Court said that Stolt-Nielsen, S.A. v. AnimalFeeds Int’l Corp., 559 U.S. 662, 680 (2010) “made clear that this Court has not yet decided” whether class-arbitration-consent presents a question of arbitrability. But “Oxford agreed that the arbitrator should determine whether its contract with Sutter authorized class procedures[,]” and “Oxford submitted that issue to arbitrator not once, but twice and the second time after Stolt-Nielsen flagged that it might be a question of arbitrability.” 133 S. Ct. at 2068 n.2. (emphasis added)
Had Oxford opted to request the Supreme Court to determine whether class-arbitration consent presented a question of arbitrability, and had the Court determined that it was such a question, then the Court would have determined “independently, that is, without deferring to the arbitrator’s decision” whether the parties consented to class arbitration. See BG Group plc v. Republic of Argentina, No. 12-138, slip op. at 6 (U.S. March 5, 2014); First Options of Chicago, Inc. v. Kaplan, 543 U.S. 938, 942 (1995). And we doubt that a majority of the Supreme Court would have upheld the Oxford award had it reviewed the class-arbitration-consent determination de novo. See, e.g., Oxford, 133 S. Ct. at 2071 (Alito, J., concurring) (“If we were reviewing the arbitrator’s interpretation of the contract de novo, we would have little trouble concluding that he improperly inferred “[a]n implicit agreement to authorize class-action arbitration. . . from the fact of the parties’ agreement to arbitrate.”) (quoting Stolt-Nielsen, 559 U.S. at 685).
After the Third Circuit denied rehearing en banc, the Opalinsky parties petitioned for certiorari. The petition has been distributed and is set to be considered at the Supreme Court’s March 6, 2015 conference. See Docket, Opalinski v. Robert Half Int’l Inc., No. 14-625.
The United States Supreme Court regularly holds private conferences at which it, among other things, votes on whether to grant particular petitions for certiorari. Four votes is required to grant a petition for cert. The vast majority of the many cert. petitions the Court considers considers are denied. When the Supreme Court grants a petition, it simply means that it has agreed to hear the case, which will then be fully briefed, and in most cases, orally argued. Neither the grant or denial of a petition for certiorari suggests approval or disapproval with the lower court’s decision on the merits.
It will be interesting to see if the U.S. Supreme Court is will agree to hear and determine the important arbitrability question addressed in Opalinski. If it does the Court will have an opportunity to provide some needed, uniform guidance on it, and perhaps even some indirect guidance on the related issue of whether, and if so, under what circumstances, consent to consolidated arbitration may present a question of arbitrability.
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