2018-2019 Term SCOTUS Arbitration Cases: What About Lamps Plus?
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On April 24, 2019 in Lamps Plus Inc. v. Varela, 587 U.S. ___, No. 17-998 (April 24, 2019), the United States Supreme Court considered whether whether consent to class arbitration may be inferred from ambiguous contract language.
In a 5-4 opinion written by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. the Court held that ambiguity in and of itself was not enough to infer party consent to class arbitration. Parties would have to clearly express their consent to class arbitration before courts could impose it on them under the Federal Arbitration Act.
Nearly a decade after determining in Stolt-Nielsen S.A. v. AnimalFeeds Int’l Corp., 559 U.S. 662 (2010) that consent to class arbitration was fundamental, the Lamps Plus Court further held that class-arbitration decision makers can’t infer consent using a policy—not intent—based contract construction rule. Lamps Plus overturned a Ninth Circuit decision, which had used the California state default contract construction rule of contra proferentem to interpret against the drafter a contract that was ambiguous on class-arbitration consent.
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