News & Publications

On June 15, 2022, in Viking River Cruises, Inc. v. Moriana, Case No. 20-1573,_ U.S. _ (2022), by an 8-1 majority, the U.S. States Supreme Court held that the Federal Arbitration Act ("FAA") preempts the California Supreme Court's central holding in Iskanian v. CLS Transportation Los Angeles, LLC, 59 Cal. 4th 348 (2014), that actions brought under the California Labor Code Private Attorneys General Act of 2004 ("PAGA") could not be divided into individual and representative claims through [...]

Facts Angie Moriana was hired by Viking River as a sales representative.  She executed an agreement to arbitrate any dispute arising out of her employment.  The agreement contained a “Class Action Waiver” providing that in any arbitral proceeding, the parties could not bring any dispute as a class, collective, or representative PAGA action. The arbitration agreement also contained a “severability clause” specifying that if the class action waiver was found invalid, any class, collective, representative, [...]

As we previously reported, from the end of 2019 through the first few months of 2020, a group of serial ADA plaintiffs barraged New York federal courts with over 200 boilerplate lawsuits alleging that retailers and other businesses violated the ADA and New York state and city laws by failing to offer for sale gift cards in Braille. In 2020, Judge Woods of the SDNY dismissed four of these cases, and plaintiffs appealed to the Second Circuit. On [...]