Arbitration & Mediation

Employment Arbitration a "Moral" Hazard?

By Victoria Pynchon

See Lawyers USA News Brief Employees may be at disadvantage in arbitration  by Correy E. Stephenson here.  Excerpt below.

State courts are reversing arbitration awards for employees at a "statistically significant" rate compared to reversing employer-friendly awards, according to a new study.

Professor Michael LeRoy of the University of Illinois College of Law, a professor of labor and employment, recently released his findings after analyzing arbitration awards from an appellate perspective.

The study, published as a paper, "Do Courts Create Moral Hazard? When Judges Nullify Employer Liability in Arbitrations: An Empirical Analysis," looked at 443 state and federal court rulings on arbitration awards from 1975 to 2007.

While federal courts upheld 85.7 percent of employer wins and 85 percent of awards for employees, LeRoy found markedly different results in the state court system.

There, lower level appellate courts affirmed employer awards 87.2 percent and employee wins 77.6 percent of the time, while the upper appellate courts were even more divergent, with 86.7 percent of employer awards affirmed and only 56.4 percent of employee victories upheld.

These findings suggest a "snowballing futility for employees," LeRoy writes, because the options after being reversed on appeal are limited. Either the employee must start over at the beginning of arbitration, "or worse, be stuck with a useless award and no other recourse."

LeRoy terms this trend a "moral hazard" which is "created by risk sharing contracts or public policies that discourage individuals from avoiding costly behaviors."

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Full post as published by Settle It Now Negotiation Blog on May 05, 2008 (boomark / email).