ADR Prof Blog

Despite increasing pressure on the SEC to exercise its Dodd-Frank-granted explicit authority to ban mandatory securities arbitration, SEC Commissioner Elisse Walter stated earlier this week, according to a report in Reuters, that the Commission won’t have time to address the issue until 2014, in light of the other mandates of Dodd-Frank.  It’s a shame that the [...]

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Responding to substantial pressure from regulators and the investing public, the brokerage firm Charles Schwab reversed itself and eliminated the class action waiver clause from its pre-dispute arbitration clause in its customer account agreements. See news coverage here. Readers of this blog know from my previous posts that in early 2012 FINRA brought a disciplinary [...]

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Once again, a bill to ban mandatory arbitration of consumer, employment and civil rights disputes has been introduced into both houses of Congress. It is sponsored by Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) and Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA). The text is not yet available, but the press release states the following: “What the Arbitration Fairness Act Does: [...]

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Yesterday I blogged about stepped-up political pressures on the Securities and Exchange Commission to outlaw mandatory arbitration agreements in customers’ account agreements with their brokerage firms.  The pressures are not coming just from politicians.  Last week, a Tennessee appellate court refused to enforce a pre-dispute arbitration clause in a brokerage firms’ account agreement with a customer [...]

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In the wake of a FINRA disciplinary hearing panel decision not to enforce its own rules against broker-dealer Charles Schwab barring class action waivers in customer-broker account agreements because of the Federal Arbitration Act (see my previous blog posts about that decision here and here), investor rights advocates have stepped up their efforts to press the Securities [...]

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