Supreme Court Breathes Some (Perhaps Limited) Life Into Class Arbitration

The relationship between class actions and arbitration has been a recurrent issue at the Supreme Court in recent years.  The Court has appeared to substantially limit consumers' ability to bring class actions in court against defendants with which they have an arbitration agreement, as well as to bring class arbitrations when the arbitration agreement does not expressly provide for class claims. 

In Stolt-Nielsen S.A. v. AnimalFeeds International Corp., decided in 2010, the Court held that an arbitration panel "exceeds its powers"—a basis to vacate an arbitration award under Section 10 of the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA)—by ordering class arbitration when the parties' arbitration clause does not reflect an agreement to resolve claims on a classwide basis.  In that case, the parties had agreed that their arbitration clause said nothing at all about class arbitration, and there was no finding by the arbitrators that the law that governed the arbitration clause