PBGC Adopts AAA's Amended Withdrawal Liability Arbitration Rules

Beginning January 1, 2020, the American Arbitration Association (AAA) will: (i) reduce filing fees charged to parties initiating arbitrations of withdrawal liability disputes; (ii) change how costs of arbitrations are allocated among the parties to the disputes; and (iii) amend the process for resolving arbitrator selection disputes.

The new filing fees are modest in comparison to the fee schedule proposed to the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) by the AAA in 2013—which imposed a flexible and final fee schedule that in some cases could result in filing fees that were higher by tens of thousands of dollars than the AAA's original 1986 filing fees.

Although the PBGC had not approved the AAA's 2013 request to increase fees, the AAA has been applying the 2013 fee schedule to this point. After the PBGC received commentary that was critical of the AAA's 2013 fee schedule, the AAA submitted a revised proposal containing a filing fee schedule (removing the