The Arbitration Resistance May Look Like This…
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What happens when state courts disagree with SCOTUS’s interpretation of the Federal Arbitration Act? They resist, and they have a thousand different ways of doing so. The Mississippi Supreme Court demonstrated one way to resist recently in Pedigo v. Robertson, Rent-A-Center, Inc., 2017 WL 4838243 (Miss. Oct. 26, 2017). (I neglected to mention the state appellate courts as important actors in last week’s post about what we may see now that the CFPB rule is dead.)
Why do I call this “resistance”? Because there are many cases saying that as part of the federal policy favoring arbitration, courts presume that claims are within the scope of a valid arbitration agreement. The coin is weighted towards “heads.” And here, the agreement explicitly prohibited pawning the TV, and the arbitration clause was about as broad as it could be. Yet the court refused to compel arbitration. The implication of this court ruling seems to be that if a specific claim is not enumerated in an arbitration clause in Mississippi (to show it was contemplated), the claim is not arbitrable. And that just does not fit within the federal precedent.
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