Court, not arbitrator, decides if class arbitration is available

Where employers have entered into pre-dispute arbitration agreements with their workers, who decides if the workers can force the company to arbitrate class claims: a judge or an arbitrator? The answer can often drive the entire case. If an arbitrator gets to decide the question, it means the case effectively goes to the arbitrator, even if just for that issue. An employer that entered into an arbitration agreement, which does not permit class actions, finds itself having to arbitrate a class action, or at least having to arbitrate whether it should have to arbitrate a class action.

This was the reasoning by the Eighth Circuit in a recent decision where it observed that sending the case to the arbitrator, if even for just that one issue, would mean “(t)he benefits of arbitration are substantially lessened in a class arbitration proceeding.” Accordingly, the court joined the Third, Fourth and Sixth Circuits, holding that judges in court should decide, as a threshold of any arbitration action, whether any given arbitration agreement permits class actions. This leaves the California Supreme Court the lone holdout for the more plaintiff-friendly position that would send the case to an arbitrator.

Source: Catamaran Corp. v Towncrest Pharmacy

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