You represent a business owner who ends up arbitrating a dispute with a supplier.  After spending tons of time and money preparing for the 5-day evidentiary hearing, you look up to hear snoring from the arbitrator – he fell asleep for part of the proceedings!  Surely you’ll be able to get the result vacated by the circuit court on appeal, right?  Well, no – not if you slept on your objection by failing to first specifically raise it with the arbitrator, according to the Wisconsin Court of Appeals’ recent decision in Loren Imhoff Homebuilder, Inc. v. Lisa Taylor, et al., …

Under most of the federal civil rights laws, employers are covered only if they employ 15 or more employees.  See, e.g., 42 U.S.C. § 2000e(b) (Title VII).  Businesses that employ fewer than 15 employees are not subject to the laws, the result of a Congressional policy judgment that requiring smaller enterprises to understand and follow the laws might be too burdensome. Of course, some businesses that employ fewer than 15 employees have sister and parent corporations that also employ workers.  Are those entities subject to the federal civil rights laws? No, said the Seventh Circuit in Prince v. Appleton Auto, …

The Seventh Circuit’s decision in Brickstructures, Inc. v. Coaster Dynamix, Inc., No. 19-2187 (March 11, 2020), highlights the challenges that a party faces when appealing a district court’s finding that it has waived the right to arbitrate.  The parties in Brickstructures entered into a joint-venture agreement to create a LEGO-compatible model rollercoaster kit. When the collaboration fell to pieces, Brickstructures sued Coaster Dynamix. Citing the joint-venture agreement’s arbitration clause, Coaster Dynamix moved to dismiss the complaint on the ground that venue was improper; however, it withdrew the motion after receiving a letter from Brickstructures threatening to seek sanctions for advancing a frivolous…

This week, two federal appellate courts published notable opinions on the intersection between personal jurisdiction jurisprudence and Rule 23 class action procedure. The defendants in both cases face nationwide class actions, and each argued that the Supreme Court’s 2017 decision in Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. v. Superior Court of California, 137 S. Ct. 1773, precludes district courts from exercising specific jurisdiction over the claims of unnamed putative class members from other states. The majority of a D.C. Circuit panel decided to resolve the appeal before it on alternate grounds. But in dissent, Judge Silberman explained why he understands Bristol-Myers’s holding to…

Wisconsin’s Chapter 128 has long been something of a “wild west” of insolvency proceedings. Modeled on the provisions of the federal Bankruptcy Act of 1898, the statute empowers a circuit court to appoint a receiver to administer a debtor’s estate and to issue a protective order enjoining creditors from taking enforcement actions. But it lacks any direction for subjects addressed in detail in the modern Bankruptcy Code, such as the treatment of executory contracts or the operation of a debtor’s business during the pendency of the proceeding. One area where the Legislature has provided some guidance is preference claims. Section …

In 2017, the Wisconsin Supreme Court adopted a new class action rule, modeled after Fed. R. Civ. P. 23, with the avowed purpose of aligning state class-action practice with the federal practice and encouraging resort to the body of case law interpreting the federal rule.  In the first published appellate opinion of which I’m aware that undertakes that charge, written by Judge Kitty Brennan of District I, the Wisconsin Court of Appeals affirmed certification of a class of persons claiming that they had been overcharged by a hospital for copies of their medical records. The decision is Harwood v. Wheaton Franciscan …

Wisconsin’s Supreme Court issued an important decision last week in Marx v. Morris, 2019 WI 34, holding that “[c]orporate principles of derivative standing do not apply to the distinct business form of an LLC.” Id. ¶ 4. In a 4-3 decision written by Chief Justice Patience Roggensack, the court explained that the statutory scheme applicable to LLCs does not distinguish between direct and derivate claims and that the court would not “judicially import” one from the corporation statutes. Id. ¶¶ 40-41. The pass-through nature of LLCs also played a role in the decision; the court observed that there is “a much…