Sports Illustrated Teaches Arbitration 101: Football (Kneeling During Anthem) Kaepernick Arbitrator Denies Summary Judgment

Kaepernick alleges NFL teams conspired to keep him out of the league because of controversy surrounding his kneeling during the playing of the national anthem. The arbitrator, Penn Law Professor Stephen Burbank, denied the NFL's motion for summary judgment, so Kaepernick's grievance will proceed to hearing. As Sports Illustrated nicely puts it "the forthcoming trial won’t be a 'trial' as that term is commonly understood. There will be no jury, Burbank won’t be robed as a judge and it will all be conducted in private. This is because Kaepernick’s 'trial' is technically an arbitration hearing. The term 'trial' is used mainly out of convenience and because it will resemble a trial in many ways—evidence will be presented and attorneys for each side will question witnesses, who will testify under oath and swear to tell the whole and complete truth."

Summary judgment and other dispositive motions are generally considered less commonly granted in arbitration than litigation.

Trump Campaign Loses on Scope of Arbitration Clause

The Trump campaign's motion to compel arbitration of a former staffer's harassment suit was denied by a New York judge,  the ABA Journal reports.

The court found the arbitration clause of the staffer's nondisclosure agreement confines arbitration to any dispute "arising under or relating to this agreement,” but “does not require arbitration for any ‘dispute between the parties’ or even ‘any dispute arising out of plaintiff’s employment.”

The court wrote “The arbitration clause could have been written to require any disputes arising out of plaintiff’s employment to go to arbitration or that any claims brought by plaintiff against defendant must be sent to arbitration. But it did not.”

Trump Campaign Begins Arbitration Against Omarosa

Trump's 2020 re-election campaign filed the arbitration against former senior White House adviser Omarosa Manigault Newman, alleging she breached a nondisclosure agreement. CNBC reports the case was filed with the American Arbitration Association in New York City.

Shareholders Bound by Arbitration Clauses in Corporate Charters and By Laws?

Zachary D. Clopton of Cornell Law School and Verity Winship of the University of Illinois College of Law have published A Cooperative Federalism Approach to Shareholder Arbitration
128 Yale L.J.F. 169 (2018).

The abstract:
Arbitration dominates private law across an ever-expanding range of fields. Its latest target, however, may not be a new field as much as a new form: mandatory arbitration provisions built into corporate charters and bylaws. Recent developments in corporate law coupled with signals from the Securities and Exchange Commission suggest that regulators may be newly receptive to shareholder arbitration. What they do next may have dramatic consequences for whether and how corporate and securities laws are enforced.

The debate about the merits of arbitration is well worn, but its application to shareholder claims opens the door to a different set of responses. In particular, the overlapping authority of federal and state actors with respect to corporate law calls for approaches that sound in cooperative federalism. Yet cooperative-federalist approaches have been absent from recent debates about shareholder arbitration. This Essay explains why cooperative federalism is a natural fit for addressing these issues. Moreover, we marshal specific examples of cooperative solutions in this area that could help frame federal-state coordination going forward. Such a cooperative response would avoid unnecessary federal-state conflict and allow policymakers to approach shareholder arbitration with expertise, accountability, and mutual respect.