In recent months, three federal circuit courts have confronted this question: can a defendant compel arbitration even in the absence of a signed written agreement containing an arbitration clause? The answers were yes, no, and maybe, but the analysis in all three turns on whether the party resisting arbitration should reasonably have known that an arbitration clause was part of the deal.
At first blush, two personal jurisdiction decisions, issued on the same day by different federal circuit courts, seem at odds with one another. The defendants in both lived in Canada and had no connections with the forum states other than a few discrete electronic interactions. Yet in one, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit affirmed dismissal for lack of personal jurisdiction, while in the other, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit found personal jurisdiction to be present,...
