The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit held that nonsignatories to arbitration agreements may be compelled to arbitrate under the New York Convention. In Todd v. Steamship Mutual Underwriting Association (Bermuda) Limited, No. 09-30177 (5th Cir. March 18, 2010) Anthony Todd was injured in Louisiana while working as a chef aboard the steamship American Queen, owned and operated by the Delta Queen Steamboat Company (“Delta Q

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Last March The Joint Commission announced its long awaited, revised medical staff standard (MS) 01.01.01, which will replace MS 1.20. The new MS 01.01.01 becomes effective March 31, 2011, to allow facilities and medical staffs to prepare for implementation. The intent of the MS 01.01.01 is, inter alia, to establish a conflict management process in the event of a conflict between/among the medical staff, medical executive committee, and the govern

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By Holly Hayes The American Health Lawyers Association (AHLA) Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) Service has posted a complimentary Conflict Management Toolkit to facilitate early management of disputes in health care organizations. The toolkit includes The Joint Commission (TJC) standards on conflict management and the sentinel event alert on disruptive physicians as well as sample guidelines, checklists and policy. (the toolkit is available h

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By Kent B. Scott and Cody W. Wilson This series of posts will pose questions that clients have about mediation. We have found that mediation is most successful when attorneys and clients work through these questions together and map out a plan to achieve their objective—an agreed settlement rather than a resolution imposed by a judge, jury or arbitrator. The questions clients have about mediation are tools that can be used to design a successful

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Today, the U.S. Supreme court granted certiorari to AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion, No. 09-893. The Ninth Circuit opinion is available here. The question presented is: Whether the Federal Arbitration Act preempts States from conditioning the enforcement of an arbitration agreement on the availability of particular procedures–here, class-wide arbitration–when those procedures are not necessary to ensure that the parties to the arbitra

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Last week, Diane Levin at the Mediation Channel had an interesting post with resources for mediators (thanks for the cite!). You can find the post here. As readers may know, Diane also maintains the impressive World Directory of ADR Blogs at ADRblogs.com where she lists dispute resolution blogs from all over the world. On a related note, Diane’s Mediation Channel received recently the ABA Journal Blawg Award for 2009. Congratulations Diane!

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By Holly Hayes The American Medical News published this week Jazz offers lessons for doctor-patient interaction. This article discusses the use of jazz music to help physicians hone their patient communication skills. Dr. Paul Haidet, president-elect of the American Academy on Communication in Healthcare says”Jazz is all about harmony in communication. When jazz musicians play, they play in a way that goes along with [how] the rest of the b

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For those interested in discovery, Dr. S.I. Strong, Professor of Law at the University of Missouri and contributor to this blog, wrote recently an excellent article entitled “Jurisdictional Discovery in United States Federal Courts.” The piece appears in 67 Washington and Lee Law Review 489 (2010). Here is the abstract: Jurisdictional discovery ties together three principles central to federal civil procedure: the right to broad disco

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The international law firm of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP has just published its Spring/Summer 2010 Newsletter. This edition has several interesting articles, including “Enforcement of Non-Domestic Arbitral Awards in China.” Here is an excerpt: The ability of parties to international contracts to enforce Hong Kong arbitral awards in China is crucially important to Hong Kong’s future as a leading regional arbitration c

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By Don Philbin As a student of decision errors in litigation, I was happy to see another empirical study come out this week confirming what we already know with increasing confidence – even well-trained lawyers are subject to the cognitive errors that throw humans’ calibrations off target. We all have to be confident to get out of bed. Parties assigned to buy or sell a house, car, or lawsuit reach different valuations depending simply on which si

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