Last year, around this time in fact, we wrote about the Federal Arbitration Act and the effect of AT&T Mobility LLC v. Concepcion, 131 S. Ct. 1740 (2011), on an argument under Wisconsin law about the unconscionability of an arbitration clause that waived a right to classwide proceedings. That case was Cottonwood Financial, Ltd. v. Estes, 2012 WI App 12, and, after an order from Wisconsin’s Supreme Court summarily disposing of the petition for review in the wake of Concepcion, the court of appeals held that the FAA preempted the unconscionability argument, ensuring that those arbitration clauses would be enforceable. Now Wisconsin’s Supreme Court has another opportunity to address Concepcion and FAA preemption in a recent certification from Wisconsin’s court of appeals.Continue reading this entry
Tag Archives: Federal Arbitration Act
Marmet Health Care Center, Inc. v. Brown: Another Lesson in the FAA’s Preemption
Posted in Court of Appeals; Federal Decisions; Supreme Court; Wisconsin DecisionsIgnoring established precedent from a superior tribunal is one way for a court to earn a sharp rebuke from a higher court. And that is precisely what happened in a consolidated decision today in Marmet Health Care Center, Inc. v. Brown, No. 11-391, and in Clarksburg Nursing Home & Rehabilitation Center LLC v. Marchio, No. 11-394, where the Supreme Court of the United States granted writs of certiorari to the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia, vacated that court’s judgments, and remanded for further proceedings — a practice known as a “GVR,” drawn from the first letter of the three words “grant,” “vacate,” and “remand.”