Fish Story Weighed On Scales Of Justice Results In 2-1 Opinion.
New Orleans writer and television personality Ronnie Virgets is served the house specialty, ice-cold oysters on the half shell, by Alma Griffin at Casamento's Seafood Restaurant in Uptown New Orleans, Louisiana. Carol M. Highsmith, photographer. Between 1980 and 2006. Library of Congress.
Motions to compel arbitration often turn on the scope of the arbitration clause – and “Scope” is one of this blawg’s sidebar categories. Federal courts look to “general state-law principles of contract interpretation, while giving due regard to the federal policy in favor of arbitration by resolving ambiguities as to the scope of arbitration in favor of arbitration.” Boardman v. Pacific Seafood Group, Nos. 15-35257/15-35504 (9th Cir. May 3, 2016) (Tashima, author; Bea, conc., Gilman, conc. and dissenting in part), quoting Wagner v. Stratton Oakmont, Inc., 83 F.3d 1046, 1049 (9th Cir. 1996)..
In Boardman, Judge Tashima, writing for the majority, concluded that the claims of plaintiffs/fishermen were not within the scope of an earlier resolution agreement, providing that claims about any new agreement requiring Pacific Seafood Group to act as the exclusive marketer of any seafood product produced by Ocean Gold Seafoods would be submitted to a federal district court judge or magistrate for resolution. The new claims were antitrust claims arising from Pacific Seafood’s plan to acquire Ocean Gold’s stock, and Judge Tashima saw a difference between purchase plans and marketing plans.
Judge Gilman agreed with the majority opinion’s holding that the district court’s granting of a preliminary injunction was not an abuse of discretion, but believed that the majority’s conclusion that the fishermen’s claims “clearly and ambiguously fall outside the scope” of the agreement contravened the “emphatic federal policy in favor of arbitral dispute resolution,” citing Mitsubishi Motors Corp. v. Soler Chrysler-Plymouth Inc., 473 U.S. 614.
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