By Daryl Joseffer
The U.S. Supreme Court issued a unanimous opinion in Henry Schein, Inc. v. Archer & White Sales, Inc., reaffirming that courts must enforce arbitration contracts according to their terms and thus cannot create unwritten exceptions to the Federal Arbitration Act. The decision rejects the “wholly groundless” exception to enforcement of an arbitration agreement, finding it inconsistent with the terms of the Federal Arbitration Act.
In a welcome development, a case that was supposed to be about cy pres settlements has turned into one about the viability of no-injury class actions. The Supreme Court granted cert. in Frank v. Gaos to consider the permissibility of cy pres settlements, which provide no direct relief to class members but instead benefit charitable entities and enrich class counsel. While observers generally expected the Court to restrict or even bar the use of such settlements, an interesting thing happened: the Court realized that the case presents a serious standing problem and requested supplemental briefing from the parties and the United States on that topic.
The Supreme Court unanimously ruled in favor of Weyerhaeuser in a case concerning whether the government could designate private land in Louisiana as “critical habitat” for an endangered species—the “dusky gopher frog”—even though the land is not currently habitat (we understand no frogs have lived there since 1965) and apparently could not be habitat without significant alteration.
The Fifth Circuit granted the Government’s motion to dismiss its own appeal from the Chamber’s historic 2017 victory against the IRS’s rule under Section 7874 of the Internal Revenue Code that was used to block certain corporate mergers.
The U.S. Chamber, with a coalition of business groups, filed a motion to intervene in support of the EPA in a D.C. Circuit case seeking to vacate a final rule issued by the EPA titled, “Project Emissions Accounting Under the New Source Review [NSR] Preconstruction Permitting Program.”
The Supreme Court issued a favorable 6-3 decision in Lucia v. SEC, holding that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) violated the Appointments Clause of the Constitution in naming administrative law judges (ALJs) to decide enforcement proceedings before the SEC.
The Supreme Court issued a unanimous decision in Animal Science Products, Inc. v. Hebei Welcome Pharmaceutical Co., holding that the lower court erred when it deferred to the assertion by the Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) of the People’s Republic of China that Chinese law required Chinese companies to engage in price fixing of products exported to the United States.
The Supreme Court issued a favorable decision for the business community in China Agritech, Inc. v. Resh, ruling unanimously that a plaintiff may not bring a new class action beyond the applicable statute of limitations period where a previous class action had been dismissed.
The Supreme Court issued its long awaited decision in a trilogy of cases addressing whether the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) bars arbitration provisions in employment contracts that include class action waivers.
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