• Blog Post

    A Beginners Guide to Arbitration – Part 2 Pros and Cons of Arbitration

    Our June 11th blog post broadly discussed arbitration and the upward trend of including mandatory arbitration clauses in agreements.  This week, we analyze the pros and cons of arbitration to elucidate when arbitration clauses are useful and when they are potentially harmful.   In arbitration, individuals and entities bring legal claims against one another outside the public court system.  Although many aspects of arbitration are similar to a civil court trial, arbitration has a number of key differences.   Pros Speed – Arbitration is generally faster than litigation. Whereas litigation often takes years, the arbitration process may only take a few months. However, arbitration can take longer when there are…

  • Blog Post

    A Beginners Guide to Arbitration – Part 1

      Chipotle is currently embroiled in a multi-year wage theft lawsuit. In 2014, approximately 10,000 current and former Chipotle employees filed a class action lawsuit alleging the company failed to compensate employees for work they performed “off the clock”.  The employees further claim these off the clock hours are required by Chipotle to meet company-wide labor and payroll budgets. Chipotle responded that 2,814 of the workers should be dismissed from the lawsuit because their employment contracts include a waiver or their right to join class action lawsuits and an agreement to resolve all disputes via arbitration.  The United States Supreme Court issued a ruling last month which lends support to…

  • Blog Post

    North Carolina Business Court Reaffirms Breadth of Arbitrators’ Authority in Recent Decision

                A recent decision by the North Carolina Business Court (NCBC) re-affirmed long standing precedent that an arbitration award is customarily final and binding, even if it includes an error of fact or law.[1]  In the most recent case, Killian/Simonini, LLC argued the arbitrator exceeded his authority by impermissibly including consequential and punitive damages in his award, which were not provided for in the arbitration clause of their operating agreement.  Killian/Simonini further argued the North Carolina Limited Liability Act controls and limits the remedy for failure to make capital contribution payments to a LLC to the actual amount of the payments.[2]  Therefore, they contended the…