The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) [official website] announced [press release] a new rule Monday, banning mandatory arbitration clauses in consumer agreements. The CFPB explained that mandatory arbitration agreements can prevent class action lawsuits and perpetuate harmful practices. The new rule will enforce the consumer’s right to take part in group lawsuits.
On Monday, the United States Supreme Court (“USSC”) will hear arguments in a matter fundamental to how employers and their employees and contractors argue about rights and entitlements. The USSC can, in these matters, equip employers with powerful tools to shut down cases that look like the currently raging Uber class action and the important Microsoft class action (2000), the latter of which resulted in thousands of contractors becoming employees and receiving benefits and equity. …
The first was filed in Indiana by Maurice Bradley, formerly an hourly worker in Menards’ manufacturing division. He alleges that Menards used a “compensation scheme” of requiring workers to clock out for any amount of time spent in breaks, including the mere minutes it takes to use the bathroom, get a drink of water, or smoke a cigarette. Menards would then subtract wages accordingly, violating …
A key Obama administration official who is still in office argued Tuesday that consumers should be able to sue banks as a group, and should be freed from financial contracts that prevent them from doing so. “[M]any contracts for products like credit cards and bank accounts have mandatory arbitration clauses that prevent consumers from joining group lawsuits, forcing them to go it alone,” wrote …
Uber’s co-founder Travis Kalanick fired back at investor Benchmark, saying its lawsuit seeking to oust him from the ride-hailing company’s board is based on “a fabrication” and accused the firm of threats and intimidation. Upping the ante on his fight with the venture capital firm, which holds a 13% stake in Uber, Kalanick said that Benchmark waged a secret campaign to remove him …
Travis Kalanick’s “brother from another mother,” Anthony Levandowski, has officially stepped down from leading Uber’s self-driving car division. Levandowski is a key player in a lawsuit filed by his former employer, Google, that claims he stole tech that Uber is incorporating into its cars. This isn’t a minor legal proceeding.
Attorneys for Uber worked Thursday morning to convince a federal judge that a case brought by rival Waymo over the alleged theft of trade secrets from the company should be dealt with in arbitration and not in a public trial, the latest twist in the high-stakes legal battle over the future of autonomous cars. Uber argued inside a federal courtroom in San Francisco today that Waymo’s claims relate to Uber engineer Anthony Levandowski, who it says committed the theft while still a Google employee (Google parent Alphabet Inc. owns Waymo), making the issue a violation of his contract and therefore a matter to be resolved through private arbitration. Waymo, created last year to commercialize Google’s robotic car software and hardware, insisted that’s not the basis of its suit. …
Amazon.com, Inc. won’t have to face its delivery drivers’ wage and hour claims until the fall of 2017 or later. That’s when the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to decide if arbitration agreements that waive class actions are enforceable (Rittmann v. Amazon.com, Inc., 2017 BL 90916, W.D. Wash., No. …
This article was co-authored by Allyson B. Baker and Joseph Leonard Robbins. It originally appeared on Venable.com and is republished here with permission. In a putative nationwide consumer class action against an online marketplace lender and its bank partner, Bethune v. LendingClub Corp., et al., a federal judge in the Southern District of New York recently granted defendants’ motion to …
AT&T wireless customers are asking a federal appeals court to revive their class-action lawsuit alleging that the company advertised “unlimited data,” only to throttle users who exceeded a monthly cap. The lawsuit was sent to arbitration last year, after U.S. District Court Judge Edward Chen in the Northern District of California found that AT&T’s terms of service required arbitration of …