Lewis & Clark Law Review
First Page
1435
Abstract
Significant scholarship has been dedicated to recent jurisprudence on arbitration clauses and class action waivers in modern contracts. Given the difficult landscape of legislation and court decisions favoring arbitration, the availability of the class action model as a vehicle for relief has dwindled. Although the prospects for litigants who wish to bring class claims in courts may be daunting, this Note has discovered some strategies that still may prove useful for future litigation.
I reviewed putative class action cases in which a party moved to compel arbitration between January 1, 2017 and April 1, 2019 to identify recent, effective tactics that attorneys used to keep class claims in court. From this research, I identified a number of instances where creative lawyers have used close analyses of the agreements to develop successful methods of combating arbitration agreements. The strategies used in these cases exhibit imaginative approaches to the fundamentals of contract law and suggest that savvy attorneys can still deliver positive outcomes in the face of difficult challenges. Although many of the strategies used in these examples are fact-specific and thus have limited application, the review of these cases may inspire new approaches for attorneys who wish to help clients keep claims in court.
Recommended Citation
Elizabeth Graves,
So You Are Saying That There’s A Chance: Strategies for Challenging Compelled Arbitration,
23
Lewis & Clark L. Rev.
1435
(2020).
Available at:
https://lawcommons.lclark.edu/lclr/vol23/iss4/9