A party may not be compelled under the Federal Arbitration Act to submit to class arbitration unless there is a contractual basis for concluding that the party agreed to do so, according to a recent decision from the United States Supreme Court. The parties in the case stipulated that the arbitration provision was silent on the issue of whether an arbitration could be brought on a class-wide basis, and they had reached “no agreement” on that issue. On this basis, the Court concluded that the parties could not be compelled to submit their dispute to class arbitration. The decision is based on the long-standing principle that arbitration is a matter of consent, not coercion, that private agreements to arbitrate are enforced according to their terms, and that arbitrators must give effect to the contractual rights and expectations of the parties. The Court noted that class arbitration “changes the nature of arbitration to such a degree that it cannot be presumed the parties consented to it by simply agreeing to submit their disputes to an arbitrator.”
The decision also clarifies the Supreme Court’s decision in Green Tree Financial Corp. v. Bazzle (2003). The Court confirmed that “Bazzle did not yield a majority decision,” and that the parties wrongly believed “the judgment in Bazzle requires an arbitrator, not a court, to decide whether a contract permits class arbitration.” In fact, Bazzle did not establish the rule to be applied in deciding whether class arbitration is permitted. Stolt-Nielsen S.A. v. AnimalFeeds International Corp., No. 08-1198 (U.S. Apr. 27, 2010).
This post written by Brian Perryman.