Karl Bayer's Disputing Blog

SEC Approves FINRA Plan to Allow All-Public Arbitration Panels

By Beth Graham - February 2, 2011

Yesterday, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) approved a Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) plan to provide investor-claimants with an all-public arbitration panel option. According to Investment News, The approval follows a 27-month pilot program during which Finra gave certain investors the choice of eliminating the industry arbitrator on three-person panels and replace the arbitrator with a public panelist. The Dodd-Fran

Article | FINRA to Propose New Rule For All-Public Arbitration Panels

By Beth Graham - September 30, 2010

Next month, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) will file a rule proposal to expand a two-year-old Public Arbitrator Pilot Program (pilot program) which would allow all investors filing arbitration claims the option of having an all-public arbitration panel. FINRA’s rule proposal will be filed for approval with the Securities and Exchange Commission. If approved, the rule would allow investors to choose an arbitration panel with t

SEC Seeks Comments on FINRA’s Arbitration Rule Change

By Victoria VanBuren - June 3, 2010

Via the ADR Prof Blog, we learned that on May 19, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) published for public comment a FINRA Rule Change Relating to Amending the Codes of Arbitration Procedure to Increase the Number of Arbitrators on Lists Generated by the Neutral List Selection System. Find the text of the proposed rule change here. The comment period expires on June 16, 2010. All Comments should refer to File Number SR-FINRA-2010-02

NASAA’s Statement on FINRA’s Arbitration Pilot Program Expansion

By Victoria VanBuren - October 7, 2009

To follow up on our recent posts on securities arbitration (available here and here) we thought that you would like to know that the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) announced on October 5, 2009 the expansion of its two-year pilot program that gives investors who are filing claims the option to select an arbitration panel composed of three public arbitrators instead of two public and one non-public. Read more about the pilot progra

Comments to Dan Solin’s Post on Arbitration of Securities Disputes at FINRA

By Victoria VanBuren - October 6, 2009

John Fleming sent us the following comments about our post of yesterday (find the post here): I have a beef with the Solin’s approach. FINRA has a new pilot program that allows customers to choose arbitration panels with only non-industry arbitrators. Guess what? In reality customers and their lawyers are actually choosing to have industry arbitrators on the panels in about 50% of the cases, even when they can exclude them. Privately, lawye

Arbitration of Securities Disputes at FINRA

By Victoria VanBuren - October 5, 2009

Our friend John C. Fleming from Hays & Owens, L.L.P sent us the following post: [update: find John C. Fleming’s comment about this post here] A reader of my blogs sent me an e-mail with a Customer Agreement from a major brokerage firm. She asked me to look it over and tell her if she should sign it. The first thing that struck me was this clause: “Brokerage activities are regulated under different laws and rules than advisory acti