“The sword of Damocles is hanging over class arbitration now,” says F. Paul Bland of Public Justice, a Washington, D.C.–based public interest law firm. “I think you are about to see a huge battle begin for what the implications of the case are. Consumer and employee advocates are going to take a view very, very different from what you’re going to see from the defense bar.”
Bland predicted that defendants in more than 100 class action arbitration cases will seek supplemental briefing to argue that all state laws that have been used to strike down bans on class arbitrations are now preempted by the high court’s ruling in Stolt-Nielsen S.A. v. AnimalFeeds International Corp.
