A new U.S. Supreme Court ruling makes it less burdensome for employers to compel arbitration. In a 5-4 decision on June 23, the Supreme Court ruled that a district court must stay its proceedings while an appeal on the question of arbitrability is ongoing.
"If the district court could move forward with pre-trial and trial proceedings while the appeal on arbitrability was ongoing, then many of the asserted benefits of arbitration—efficiency, less expense,
less intrusive discovery and the like—would be irretrievably lost," Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in the majority opinion in Coinbase Inc. v. Bielski.
The ruling will "relieve the parties of the cost and burdens of engaging in litigation while they wait for a decision from an appeals court," said Samia Kirmani, an attorney with Jackson Lewis in Boston. The case "underscores that value proposition of employment arbitration agreements."
Background
Coinbase Inc. v. Bielski combines two class-action lawsuits filed in federal district court in California against Coinbase, a San Francisco-based currency exchange and transaction platform. Coinbase's users agreed to arbitrate disputes with the company on an individual basis.
The first lawsuit involves a user who sued Coinbase for violating the Electronic Fund Transfer Act and the accompanying Regulation E after he allegedly was scammed and lost $31,039 of cryptocurrency from his digital wallet. The plaintiffs in the second lawsuit sued Coinbase after participating in a...
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