David N. Cinotti Quoted in Bloomberg Law “Supreme Court’s Arbitration Ruling Invites Even More Litigation”

David N. Cinotti, partner at Pashman Stein Walder Hayden P.C., was recently quoted in a Bloomberg Law article titled “Supreme Court’s Arbitration Ruling Invites Even More Litigation.” The article discusses a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision, Bissonnette, that revived a proposed wage-and-hour class action by baked-goods delivery drivers and helps set the stage for more judicial showdowns over which classes of workers are subject to mandatory arbitration agreements. In Bissonnette, the Court ruled that that a worker who engages in foreign or interstate commerce doesn’t need to be employed by a company in the transportation industry to be exempt from the Federal Arbitration Act, which contains a carveout for the employment agreements of transportation workers engaged in foreign or interstate commerce. The article further discusses additional issues not resolved by the Court, including the standard for determining which workers are engaged in foreign or interstate commerce (for example, if they do not themselves transport goods or people across state lines).  That issue is important to companies like Amazon, Walmart, Uber, and others.

These “are harder questions the decision left open,” and will have a more sweeping impact on the exemption inquiry, said Cinotti.

The Bissonnette ruling wasn’t sweeping because [a prior Supreme Court decision] Saxon, already held that the FAA exemption inquiry must focus on whether the workers’ job duties render them transportation workers, said Cinotti. “It clearly follows, and it was just an application of Saxon,” he said.

Cinotti has a wealth of experience in litigating issues under the Federal Arbitration Act and has written extensively on the statute, which you can read more about here.

To read the full Bloomberg Law article, click here.