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Arbitration: Is the Silver Bullet a Dud?
For roughly 25 years franchisors have fought hard in courtrooms, in the lobbies of Congress, and at the bargaining table to ensure that that disputes with franchisees would be resolved by arbitration. In large part, they have succeeded. The Supreme Court has repeatedly reaffirmed both the enforceability of arbitration agreements and the desirability of arbitration itself, despite hostile state statutes and stubbornly recalcitrant state courts. Congress has turned a distracted, if not an entirely deaf ear to the efforts of franchisee- and trial lawyer-pressure groups to take franchise agreements outside the protection of the Federal Arbitration Act for all practical purposes. And arbitration provisions have become a standard term in franchise agreements.
Now, however, on the strength of a substantial body of real-world experience with arbitration as a dispute-resolution norm, many franchisors are asking whether all this effort has really paid off after all ' whether, in fact, their dogged pursuit of arbitration was actually a mistake. Doubts are emerging because the well-known downsides associated with arbitration seem far more worrisome as concrete realities than they did as abstract analytic factors, and because new concerns have appeared as arbitration has become more common in the franchise universe.
New York's Latest Cybersecurity Commitment
On Aug. 9, 2023, Gov. Kathy Hochul introduced New York's inaugural comprehensive cybersecurity strategy. In sum, the plan aims to update government networks, bolster county-level digital defenses, and regulate critical infrastructure.
Law Firms are Reducing Redundant Real Estate by Bringing Support Services Back to the Office
A trend analysis of the benefits and challenges of bringing back administrative, word processing and billing services to law offices.
Bit Parts
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Risks of “Baseball Arbitration” in Resolving Real Estate Disputes
“Baseball arbitration” refers to the process used in Major League Baseball in which if an eligible player's representative and the club ownership cannot reach a compensation agreement through negotiation, each party enters a final submission and during a formal hearing each side — player and management — presents its case and then the designated panel of arbitrators chooses one of the salary bids with no other result being allowed. This method has become increasingly popular even beyond the sport of baseball.