concluding that under the parties’ agreement, “the question — whether the agreement forbids class arbitration — is for the arbitrator to decide [because] [t]he parties agreed to submit to the arbitrator ‘[a]ll disputes, claims, or controversies arising from or relating to this contract or the relationships which result from this contract’ ” (alteration in original) (emphasis omitted) (quoting arbitration clause)
How later courts described this case
- concluding that under the parties’ agreement, “the question — whether the agreement forbids class arbitration — is for the arbitrator to decide [because] [t]he parties agreed to submit to the arbitrator ‘[a]ll disputes, claims, or controversies arising from or relating to this contract or the relationships which result from this contract’ ” (alteration in original) (emphasis omitted) (quoting arbitration clause)
- reasoning that such procedural issues are not among the “limited” types of questions— such as “whether the parties have a valid arbitration agreement at all” — generally intended for judicial resolution, and that “[ajrbitrators are well situated to answer” such procedural issues because they turn on “contract interpretation and arbitration procedures”
- finding that the parties’ dispute about what the arbitration agreement meant fell within the broad scope indicated by the language in the agreement that “[a]ll disputes, claims, or controversies arising from or relating to this contract or the relationships which result from this contract” would be “resolved by binding arbitration”
- stating that “[t]he South Carolina Supreme Court’s determination, that the contracts are silent in respect to class arbitration raises a preliminary question.... And we must deal with that argument at the outset, for if it is right, then the South Carolina court’s holding is flawed on its own terms.”
Written by the judges who cited it.
Later courts went against this
Questioned by JetBlue Airways Corp. v. Stephenson, 88 A.D.3d 567 (2011)
The Supreme Court, in discussing the propriety of the arbitrators’ having considered the issue in the first place, called into question the extent to which both parties, in maintaining that the question was for the arbitrators, should rely on Bazzle.
Questioned by Chesapeake Appalachia, LLC v. Suppa, 91 F. Supp. 3d 853 (2015)
Then, taking note of the plurality opinion in Bazzle, it observed that “[subsequent Supreme Court decisions '... cast doubt on the Bazzle plurality’s decision.
Questioned by Henderson v. U.S Patent Commission, Ltd., 188 F. Supp. 3d 798 (2016)
068 n. 2 (“Stolt-Nielsen made clear that this Court has not yet decided whether the availability of class arbitration is. a question of arbitrability.”); Dell Webb Cmtys., Inc. v. Carlson, 817 F.3d 867, 877 (4th Cir.2016) (characterizing Bazzle.as a “thin reed” and declining to rely on it); Opalinski v. Robert Half Int’l Inc., 761 F.3d 326, 331 (3d Cir.2014) (“Subsequent Supreme Court decisions ... cast doubt on the…
Distinguished
Distinguished by In Re John M. O'Quinn, P.C., 155 S.W.3d 195 (2003)
539 U.S. 444, 123 S.Ct. 2402, 156 L.Ed.2d 414 (2003) is inapplicable here.
The opinion
Justice Stevens,
concurring in the judgment and dissenting in part.
The parties agreed that South Carolina law would govern their arbitration agreement. The Supreme Court of South Carolina has held as a matter of state law that class-action arbitrations are permissible if not prohibited by the applicable arbitration agreement, and that the agreement between these parties is silent on the issue. 351 S. C. 244, 262-266, 569 S. E. 2d 349, 359-360 (2002). There is nothing in the Federal Arbitration Act that precludes either of these deter *455 minations by the Supreme Court of South Carolina. See Volt Information Sciences, Inc. v. Board of Trustees of Leland Stanford Junior Univ., 489 U. S. 468, 475-476 (1989).
Arguably the interpretation of the parties’ agreement should have been made in the first instance by the arbitrator, rather than the court. See Howsam v. Dean Witter Reynolds, Inc., 537 U. S. 79 (2002). Because the decision to conduct a class-action arbitration was correct as a matter of law, and because petitioner has merely challenged the merits of that decision without claiming that it was made by the wrong decisionmaker, there is no need to remand the case to correct that possible error.
Accordingly, I would simply affirm the judgment of the Supreme Court of South Carolina. Were I to adhere to my preferred disposition of the case, however, there would be no controlling judgment of the Court. In order to avoid that outcome, and because Justice Breyer’s opinion expresses a view of the case close to my own, I concur in the judgment. See Screws v. United States, 325 U. S. 91, 134 (1945) (Rutledge, J., concurring in result).