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What You Sign is What You Agree To
- by M. Laurie Murphy
When you sign a contract, you expect to be bound by its terms. But what happens when several contracts all relate to one transaction, and they differ slightly in some details – for example, on whether disputes are subject to arbitration?
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If You Say It in Your Trust, You’d Better Mean It
- by Lynda I. Chung
It’s not unusual for a potential beneficiary to question the wording of a will or trust, claiming that the document doesn’t mean what it says. But it is much less common for the person questioning the wording to be the person who created the document.
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You Can’t Give Away Rights That Are Not Yours
- by M. Laurie Murphy
When you are asking a court to deprive someone of a fundamental constitutional right, saying that you “believe” the person “likely” agreed to that surrender isn’t a very persuasive argument.
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How Much Authority Does an Authorized Representative Have?
- by M. Laurie Murphy
When Mom has dementia and her daughter, as her authorized representative, is handling her health care decisions, does the daughter have the power to sign a residential care facility’s arbitration clause on Mom’s behalf?
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Employer Mistakes In Moving To Compel Arbitration: A Retrospective
- by David Krol
In the latter half of 2021, the California Court of Appeal issued two published decisions denying employers’ petitions to compel arbitration of employment disputes. These decisions provide important guidance as to what employers must do in order to successfully compel arbitration of lawsuits brought by former employees – including mistakes employers can avoid when attempting to meet their burden of establishing the existence of an agreement to arbitrate, and in ensuring that arbitration agreements provide essential fairness to employees.
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Why Business Interruption Insurance Doesn’t Cover COVID Losses
- by M. Laurie Murphy
If a hotel, store, or other commercial building becomes unusable because of contamination by asbestos or noxious or dangerous chemicals, the resulting losses to the building’s owner would probably be covered by property insurance policies. So why are losses linked to COVID-19 any different?