Buckeye Check Cashing, Inc. v. Cardegna | |
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Argued November 29, 2005 Decided February 21, 2006 | |
Full case name | Buckeye Check Cashing, Inc., petitioner v. John Cardegna et al. |
Citations | 546 U.S. 440 ( more ) 126 S. Ct. 1204; 163 L. Ed. 2d 1038; 2006 U.S. LEXIS 1814 |
Case history | |
Prior | Petitioner's motion to compel arbitration denied in Florida trial court; reversed on appeal, 824 So. 2d 228 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 2002); appeals court decision reversed, 894 So. 2d 860 (Fla. 2005); cert. granted, 545 U.S. 1127(2005). |
Subsequent | On remand, 930 So. 2d 610 (Fla. 2006). |
Holding | |
Where contract contains arbitration clause, arbitrator alone can rule on legality of contract under state law in first instance unless clause itself is challenged, distinguishing between void and voidable. Florida Supreme Court reversed and remanded | |
Court membership | |
| |
Case opinions | |
Majority | Scalia, joined by Roberts, Stevens, Kennedy, Souter, Ginsburg, Breyer |
Dissent | Thomas |
Alito took no part in the consideration or decision of the case. | |
Laws applied | |
Federal Arbitration Act, 9 U.S.C. §§ 1–4 |
Buckeye Check Cashing, Inc. v. Cardegna, 546 U.S. 440 (2006), is a United States Supreme Court case concerning contract law and arbitration. The case arose from a class action filed in Florida against a payday lender alleging the loan agreements the plaintiffs had signed were unenforceable because they essentially charged a higher interest rate than that permitted under Florida law.
The lending agreements called for all disputes between the borrower and lender to be settled in arbitration. The original plaintiffs argued that the entire contract, including the arbitration clause, was invalid because it violated the law. When it was appealed to the High Court, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote for a majority of seven that the Federal Arbitration Act, as previously interpreted by the Court, settled a question that had long been debated by legal scholars and lower-court judges. The opinion distinguished void and voidable contracts, requiring that in the latter an arbitrator rule on all issues including the legality of the contract unless the arbitration clause was itself challenged. [1] The only dissenter was Clarence Thomas, who restated his belief that the Arbitration Act does not supersede state law.
In 1978, the court's Marquette Bank decision, which held that under the National Banking Act of 1863 states could not enforce their anti-usury laws against nationally chartered banks based in other states, opened the door to increased credit card spending by Americans. Other forms of consumer credit, such as title and payday loans, became available for those who could not get even the most restrictive credit cards available. Social activists criticized the banks and companies that engaged in those practices, calling them predatory lenders who targeted the poor with promises of no credit check and easy money that only came at extremely high interest rates, profiting when the loans were extended long beyond the original short term. [2]
Most such lenders had their customers sign credit agreements that included arbitration clauses specifying that all disputes were to be resolved through that process rather than litigation. Arbitration in turn was criticized as a business-friendly forum which furthered the exploitation of consumers most in need of money. [3] Lawsuits over these contracts, however, were increasingly dismissed by lower courts that followed the Supreme Court's Prima Paint Corp. v. Flood & Conklin Mfg. Co. [4] case, which created the separability doctrine, under which all issues in contracts with arbitration clauses, save the clause itself, were to be decided by the arbitrator and not a court, under the 1925 Federal Arbitration Act. [5] In Southland Corp. v. Keating , [6] the Court held the FAA, and thus the separability doctrine, applicable to contracts executed under state law as well.
In 1999, John Cardegna, a Palm Beach County 9-1-1 operator, took out a $337.50 payday loan from a local branch of The Check Cashing Store, a subsidiary of Buckeye Check Cashing, Inc., a Dublin, Ohio-based company (now Checksmart). Later he took out another loan, for $150. Unable to repay either from his paychecks, he kept rolling over his loan by paying the fee to do so. Eventually these came to over $1,000, and with the help of an activist lawyers' group, Trial Lawyers for Public Justice (TLPJ), he filed a class action alleging that the fees he was charged were effectively interest payments at a 1,300% annual rate, well over Florida's legal limit of 45%. [5] The class would eventually be certified to include all the store's customers prior to September 30, 2001, reflecting a change in Florida law which allowed the fees. [7]
The company moved to have the case dismissed and compel arbitration. When that was denied, it petitioned the Florida Fourth District Court of Appeal which ruled that arbitration was required because the entire contract had been challenged, not the severable arbitration clause. [8] But then that decision was appealed to the Florida Supreme Court, which reversed on the grounds that the contract was illegal ab initio and thus the arbitration clause was unenforceable. It read Prima Paint to distinguish between void contracts that could never have legal standing, such as the one at issue, and voidable contracts where that result could come to pass later as a result of dispute resolution but where the contract was legal on its face. [9] One justice of that court, Raoul Cantero, dissented, saying that the majority was ignoring the actual language of the FAA. [10]
Buckeye petitioned the Supreme Court for certiorari , and it was granted in 2005. Since several of the appeals circuits had ruled in favor of arbitration in similar cases, but the Alabama Supreme Court had agreed with its Florida counterpart, the case was closely watched by the arbitration industry and consumer advocates. [10]
Christopher Landau of the Washington firm Kirkland & Ellis, a former clerk to justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, [11] argued for Buckeye Check; Paul Bland of TLPJ represented Cardegna. Many banking and business groups filed amici briefs on the company's behalf. [12]
Landau's brief reiterated much of the argument Florida's Justice Cantero had made in his dissent: that it did not matter whether the claim was that the contract had been fraudulently induced as in Prima Paint or that it was illegal on its face, as it was here. "Whether the underlying contract is good, bad or indifferent is of no legitimate concern to the court," he wrote. "If the parties agreed to arbitrate their dispute, and do not challenge either the arbitration agreement itself or their assent to the underlying contract, that is the end of the matter as far as the court is concerned." Otherwise, arbitration clauses were pointless as anyone could avoid them by filing a suit challenging the contract. [13] Bland argued that an illegal contract cannot exist, much less be enforced in any way:
Under generally applicable principles of Florida law – and that of most other jurisdictions – an agreement to perform a criminal act does not form a contract. There may be an agreement to sell cocaine, for example, but there is no such thing under Florida law as a "contract" to sell cocaine (much less an enforceable arbitration provision in a "contract" to sell cocaine). That principle governs this case. [14]
He also reminded the justices of the heavy presumption against pre-empting state law, [15] particularly in the area of contract formation, and that Prima Paint did not apply to the sections of the FAA under issue. [16]
In a reply brief Landau insisted again that the court's previous jurisprudence made it quite clear that the arbitration clause could only be negated if separately challenged. He accused the respondents of having a covert agenda to overturn the controlling cases. "The reason that Prima Paint and Southland have stood the test of time is no mystery: those decisions are eminently sensible.", he concluded. [17]
Another amicus brief was filed by Theis Research, a California company with a certiorari petition then before the Court in a similar case [18] it had brought against a law firm that had failed to disclose a potential conflict of interest prior to patent litigation in which it represented Theis. While differing on some procedural points with Bland's brief, Theis lawyer Paul Johnson likewise urged the court to rule in Cardegna's favor lest the Arbitration Act become "a Trojan Horse to assault the citadel of police powers vested in the states". [19]
At oral argument, Justices Sandra Day O'Connor (one of two dissenters in Southland) and John Roberts seemed receptive to Bland's argument that no clause of a contract illegal under state law, including an arbitration clause, can be enforced. "The state itself makes a decision that certain contracts can't be entered into", O'Connor said. Ruth Bader Ginsburg likewise was not convinced that Prima Paint, which had arisen from a suit filed in federal court, applied to states as well. Roberts and John Paul Stevens also saw the potential for conflict of interest in an arbitrator ruling on the legality of the contract. "The arbitrator always has an interest in finding that the contract is valid and arbitrable because that's his source of business — arbitrating disputes", said the latter. [10]
On the other side, Anthony Kennedy felt that Prima Paint and subsequent decisions had "certainly displaced the states and state law from this area [to] a very substantial extent". It was up to the Court to resolve confusion similar to that created in the instant case, he added. Antonin Scalia worried that ruling in Cardegna's favor would open the floodgates of litigation. "All you have to do is open the door and you will have litigation in court," Ginsburg agreed, "and then the court will decide what the arbitrator would otherwise decide." [10]
Less than two months after oral argument, the justices ruled 7-1 for Buckeye. O'Connor had retired and been replaced by Samuel Alito, who as he had not seated for oral argument took no part in the decision.
Antonin Scalia wrote for the majority. The Florida Supreme Court's distinction between void and voidable contracts was, as Cantero had said, irrelevant under Prima Paint and Southland. The relevant section of the FAA was indeed applicable to the case, he said, since it required that contracts with arbitration clauses be treated like all others, and that its definition of "contract" included those that would or could later be voided since it explicitly mentioned such contracts that might later be revoked. [20]
Clarence Thomas was the lone dissenter. He wrote a single paragraph citing his three earlier dissents in similar cases and restated his belief that the FAA does not pre-empt state law. [21]
After the case was remanded to the Florida courts in which it had originated, the parties eventually settled. In 2008 the company agreed to pay $7 million into a fund. Of that amount, $2.1 million went to pay the plaintiffs' lawyers. The members of the class, potentially 70,000 in number, divided the rest. [7]
The case established a precedent and was seen as expanding the scope of earlier court rulings applying the FAA to the states. The Court itself relied on it in a later opinion, and legal scholars have discussed its impact and implications.
Two years later, the Court heard Preston v. Ferrer , [22] the case brought by the former manager of Alex Ferrer (television's Judge Alex ) against him. Ferrer had moved to bypass arbitration, arguing both that Preston was not licensed by California to work as a talent agent and thus could not legally contract with him for such services, and that that state's Talent Agencies Act required that all such disputes be considered by the state labor commissioner's office first. He argued that this distinguished the case from Buckeye Check.
This time it was Justice Ginsburg who wrote for the 8-1 majority that the FAA compelled arbitration even when state law vested dispute resolution authority in a specific state regulatory body. Again, Thomas wrote a short dissent reiterating his position and this time including Buckeye Check among his prior opinions to this effect. [22]
Proponents of arbitration and other means of alternative dispute resolution have seen in the decision a reassuring reaffirmation of the separability principle that cleared up whether it covered a challenge to the legality of the underlying contract. "While seemingly a mere reiteration of Prima Paint's holding," the International Institute for Conflict Prevention and Resolution (IICPR) wrote, "the Buckeye decision both clarifies and expands an arbitrator's jurisdiction by adding potentially void contracts to an arbitrator’s domain and by unequivocally extending the severability and validity principles into state court." [23] The decision left open the question of whether it was still for the courts to decide if a contract had been properly formed, however, and some lower courts had denied motions to compel arbitration when that was the issue. [23] Lawyers from the international arbitration department at White & Case praised the decision for making U.S. law "consistent with current international arbitration case law and doctrine", under which separability has a stronger foundation than it does in the U.S. "[It] avoids damage to the reputation of the United States as a 'safe' host of international arbitration." [24]
Those who approached from a consumer-rights standpoint were not as solicitous. Texas arbitration expert Alan Scott Rau called Scalia's phrasing "sloppy and unguarded", noting it failed to recognize that some challenges to a contract that the law reserves for courts, such as capacity and forgery, necessarily include the arbitration clause. [25] Stephen Ware of Kansas calls on Congress to repeal the separability doctrine and require that courts be permitted to compel arbitration only after they have heard and rejected any challenges to the validity of the contract itself: "The separability doctrine separates arbitration law from an important part of contract law — the defenses to enforcement — and thus fails to provide the right to litigate with the protection of those defenses." [26]
"[T]he Buckeye decision forces the lower courts to either continue the search for a workable rule or accept the undermining of the moral foundations of contract law," says Timothy Hall of the University of Louisville's Louis D. Brandeis School of Law. [27] "Scalia’s opinion in Buckeye is an astonishing attempt to ... [institute] ... an explicit federal policy imposing arbitration and rejecting judicial resolution of many legal issues." [28] He, too, notes the fundamental contradiction posed by allowing defenses to contract formation to remain adjudicable by courts. Before and after the decision, most state court cases he looked at challenging contracts on those defenses have been very receptive to arguments, particular unconscionability.
The upshot of all this may be that the Court, in attempting to simplify the issue by sending more claims to arbitration, has in fact complicated things by requiring an analysis of the nature of the contract defense alleged, instead of simply hearing the contract defense claim and, if invalid, then sending the underlying claim to arbitration. [29]
He suggests ways both legislative and judicial bodies could remedy this situation.
Arbitration, in the context of the law of the United States, is a form of alternative dispute resolution. Specifically, arbitration is an alternative to litigation through which the parties to a dispute agree to submit their respective evidence and legal arguments to a third party for resolution. In practice, arbitration is generally used as a substitute for litigation. In some contexts, an arbitrator has been described as an umpire.
The United States Arbitration Act, more commonly referred to as the Federal Arbitration Act or FAA, is an act of Congress that provides for non-judicial facilitation of private dispute resolution through arbitration. It applies in both state courts and federal courts, as was held in Southland Corp. v. Keating. It applies in all contracts, excluding contracts of seamen, railroad employees, or any other class of workers involved in foreign or interstate commerce, and it is predicated on an exercise of the Commerce Clause powers granted to Congress in the U.S. Constitution.
In contract law, an arbitration clause is a clause in a contract that requires the parties to resolve their disputes through an arbitration process. Although such a clause may or may not specify that arbitration occur within a specific jurisdiction, it always binds the parties to a type of resolution outside the courts, and is therefore considered a kind of forum selection clause.
Arbitration is a formal method of dispute resolution involving a neutral third party who makes a binding decision. The third party neutral renders the decision in the form of an 'arbitration award'. An arbitration decision or award is legally binding on both sides and enforceable in the courts, unless all parties stipulate that the arbitration process and decision are non-binding.
Prima Paint Corp. v. Flood & Conklin Mfg. Co., 388 U.S. 395 (1967), is a United States Supreme Court decision that established what has become known as the "separability principle" in contracts with arbitration clauses. Following an appellate court ruling a decade earlier, it reads the 1925 Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) to require that any challenges to the enforceability of such a contract first be heard by an arbitrator, not a court, unless the claim is that the clause itself is unenforceable.
Hall Street Associates, L.L.C. v. Mattel, Inc., 552 U.S. 576 (2008), was a United States Supreme Court case that held that state and federal courts cannot, on a motion to vacate or to modify an arbitration award, expand the limited scope of judicial review specified in 9 U.S.C. §§ 10 and 11, including terms that were agreed upon by the parties.
C & L Enterprises, Inc. v. Citizen Band, Potawatomi Indian Tribe of Oklahoma, 532 U.S. 411 (2001), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that the tribe waived its sovereign immunity when it agreed to a contract containing an arbitration agreement.
Southland Corp. v. Keating, 465 U.S. 1 (1984), is a United States Supreme Court decision concerning arbitration. It was originally brought by 7-Eleven franchisees in California state courts, alleging breach of contract by the chain's then parent corporation. Southland pointed to the arbitration clauses in their franchise agreements and said it required disputes to be resolved that way; the franchisees cited state franchising law voiding any clause in an agreement that required franchisees to waive their rights under that law. A 7-2 majority held that the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) applied to contracts executed under state law.
Moses H. Cone Memorial Hospital v. Mercury Construction Corp., 460 U.S. 1 (1983), commonly cited as Moses Cone or Cone Hospital, is a United States Supreme Court decision concerning civil procedure, specifically the abstention doctrine, as it applies to enforcing an arbitration clause in a diversity case. By a 6–3 margin, the justices resolved a complicated construction dispute by ruling that a North Carolina hospital had to arbitrate a claim against the Alabama-based company it had hired to build a new wing, even though it meant that it could not consolidate it with ongoing litigation it had brought in state court against the contractor and architect.
AT&T Mobility LLC v. Concepcion, 563 U.S. 333 (2011), is a legal dispute that was decided by the United States Supreme Court. On April 27, 2011, the Court ruled, by a 5–4 margin, that the Federal Arbitration Act of 1925 preempts state laws that prohibit contracts from disallowing class-wide arbitration, such as the law previously upheld by the California Supreme Court in the case of Discover Bank v. Superior Court. As a result, businesses that include arbitration agreements with class action waivers can require consumers to bring claims only in individual arbitrations, rather than in court as part of a class action.
Arbitration in the United States is governed by the Federal Arbitration Act of 1925, which requires courts to compel parties who agree to arbitration to participate in binding arbitration, the decision from which is binding upon the parties. Since the passage of the FAA, both state and federal courts have examined arbitration clauses, as well as other statutes involving arbitration clauses, for validity and enforceability.
Circuit City Stores, Inc. v. Adams, 532 U.S. 105 (2001), was a United States Supreme Court case that concerned whether the "section one exemption" of the Federal Arbitration Act applied to an employment contract of an employee at Circuit City Stores. The Court held that the exemption was limited to the specific listing of professions contained in the text. This decision meant that general employment contracts, like the one Adams sued under, would have to be arbitrated in accordance with the federal statute.
Shearson/American Express Inc. v. McMahon, 482 U.S. 220 (1987), is a United States Supreme Court decision concerning arbitration of private securities fraud claims arising under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. By a 5–4 margin the Court held that its holding in a 1953 case, Wilko v. Swan, that the nonwaiver provisions of the Securities Act of 1933 prevented the mandatory arbitration of such claims, did not apply to claims under the 1934 Act due to differences in the corresponding language of the two statutes, reversing a decision of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals that had affirmed what had been considered settled law, despite the lack of a precedent. It likewise held that claims under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) were arbitrable, affirming an order from the district court that the Second Circuit had also upheld.
14 Penn Plaza LLC v. Pyett, 556 U.S. 247 (2009), is a United States labor law case decided by the United States Supreme Court on the rights of unionized workers to sue their employer for age discrimination. In this 2009 decision, the Court decided that whenever a union contract "clearly and unmistakably" requires that all age discrimination claims under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 (ADEA) be decided through arbitration, then employees subject to that contract cannot have those claims heard in court.
Mitsubishi Motors Corp. v. Soler Chrysler-Plymouth, Inc., 473 U.S. 614 (1985), is a United States Supreme Court decision concerning arbitration of antitrust claims. The Court heard the case on appeal from the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, which had ruled that the arbitration clause in a Puerto Rican car dealer's franchise agreement was broad enough to reach its antitrust claim. By a 5–3 margin it upheld the lower court, requiring that the dealer arbitrate its claim before a panel in Tokyo, as stipulated in the contract.
Wilko v. Swan, 346 U.S. 427 (1953), is a United States Supreme Court decision on the arbitration of securities fraud claims. It had originally been brought by an investor who claimed his broker at Hayden Stone had sold stock to him without disclosing that he and the firm were the primary sellers. By a 7–2 margin the Court held that the provisions of the Securities Act of 1933 barring any waiver of rights under that statute took precedence over the Federal Arbitration Act's (FAA) requirement that arbitration clauses in contracts be given full effect by federal courts. It reversed a decision to the contrary by a divided panel of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.
Disputes between consumers and businesses that are arbitrated are resolved by an independent neutral arbitrator rather than in court. Although parties can agree to arbitrate a particular dispute after it arises or may agree that the award is non-binding, most consumer arbitrations occur pursuant to a pre-dispute arbitration clause where the arbitrator's award is binding.
Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis, 584 U.S. ___ (2018), was a case decided by the Supreme Court of the United States on how two federal laws, the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) and the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA), relate to whether employment contracts can legally bar employees from collective arbitration. The Supreme Court had consolidated three cases, Epic Systems Corp. v Lewis, Ernst & Young LLP v. Morris (16-300), and National Labor Relations Board v. Murphy Oil USA, Inc. (16-307). In a 5–4 decision issued in May 2018, the Court ruled that arbitration agreements requiring individual arbitration and prohibiting class action lawsuits are enforceable under the FAA, regardless of allowances set out within the NLRA.
Henry Schein, Inc. v. Archer & White Sales, Inc., 586 U.S. ___ (2019), was a case decided by the Supreme Court of the United States on January 8, 2019. The case decided the question of whether a court may disregard a valid delegation of arbitrability—a contract provision stating that an arbitrator should decide whether a dispute is subject to arbitration—when the argument in favor of arbitration is "wholly groundless." In a unanimous (9-0) opinion written by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the court sided with petitioner Henry Schein, Inc., holding that the "wholly groundless" exception to arbitrability violates the Federal Arbitration Act, and therefore a valid delegation of arbitrability should be honored even if a court believes the argument for arbitration to be "wholly groundless." It was Justice Kavanaugh's first Supreme Court opinion.
Lamps Plus, Inc. v. Varela, 587 U.S. ___ (2019), was a United States Supreme Court case regarding the use of class arbitration proceedings. In a 5–4 decision, the Supreme Court reversed the Ninth Circuit’s decision and held that arbitration on a classwide basis could not be compelled based on the provision’s ambiguous language. The Court relied on its previous decision in Stolt-Nielsen S.A. v. AnimalFeeds Int'l Corp. which held that class arbitration procedures could not be compelled without indication that the parties to the arbitration had agreed to these procedures.
Chris served twice as a law clerk at the United States Supreme Court, first to Justice Antonin Scalia (1990-91) and then to Justice Clarence Thomas (1991-92).
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