In a published decision issued yesterday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that collective claims for alleged breaches of fiduciary duty under ERISA were not subject to the arbitration agreements in plaintiff employees’ employment contracts. Instead, since those claims were brought for the benefit of the ERISA plans in which the

We’ve been monitoring the appellate battles over the enforceability of class- and collective-action waivers in the employment context since September 2016, when we pondered whether circuit splits would land the issue in the Supreme Court.  Since then, our colleagues in the Labor and Employment practice at McGuireWoods have supplied interim reports on the Supreme

Los Angeles labor and employment litigators Michael Mandel and Amy Beverlin bring us perspective on three class-action waiver cases currently awaiting decision by the Supreme Court, as well as a potential path forward for class-action waivers in employment contracts.

Everyone is talking about the future of class-action waivers in employment arbitration agreements after the Supreme

The long-running battle over collective action waivers in the arbitration clauses of employment agreements continues to rage in the Courts of Appeals.  Two recent decisions (and the cert petitions filed in their wake) may well lead the Supreme Court to consider once again the thorny relationship between the class/collective action mechanism and federal arbitration law.

Rule 68 offers of judgment have been controversial in class action practice for quite some time. Proponents of the tactic believe that it offers a valuable means of limiting frivolous lawsuits: where there are really only a few affected claimants, an offer of judgment can force them to face up to the costs of meritless