For some veteran plaintiff lawyers, opportunities could be rarer to serve on arbitration panels for disputes between investors and brokers. That will be true if the Securities and Exchange Commission approves a rule change proposed this summer by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority. The SEC has extended a comment period until Oct. 1 on the FINRA proposal.
With that possible rule change and others in the same proposal, FINRA, a broker-dealer self-regulating body, has misconstrued the notion of what constitutes impartiality among arbitrators, according to Houston’s Tom Ajamie and other members of the Public Investors Arbitration Bar Association (PIABA).
