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Website by Webstract Marketing. Call us at or Submit your case to schedule a free consultation. Do You Have A Case? San Fernando Valley Phone: South Bay Phone: San Bernardino County Phone: Riverside County Phone: Santa Ana Phone: Orange County Phone: San Diego Phone: An arbitration differs from a court case in several ways, and many of these differences work against employees.
Most important, an arbitration is heard and decided by an "arbitrator" -- a private citizen often a retired judge who is paid by one or both sides to listen to the evidence and witnesses.
That means you won't have a jury hear your story -- and juries are often sympathetic to employees. In addition, the arbitration process limits the amount of information each side can get from the other.
In employment cases, this generally hurts the employee, because the employer is usually the one in possession of most of the documents and information relating to the employee's case. Finally, an arbitration usually cannot be appealed, which makes arbitration awards more final than court verdicts.
If you think the arbitrator's decision is unfair or wrong, you won't get a second chance to argue your case before a higher court -- a second chance that you might have gotten had you gone to a court trial. An arbitration does have some advantages over a court trial. Arbitrations are less formal than court trials, and this informality can make the process easier for all involved, especially employees who are not used to litigation.
Also, cases in arbitration are heard and decided much more quickly than court cases, which can take several years from start to finish. Employees often sign arbitration agreements unintentionally. How can this happen? Some employers give new employees piles of paperwork to fill out on their first day, and some employees, in turn, sign documents without reading them. Although many employers are straightforward and present the arbitration agreement to employees openly in a separate contract, others bury arbitration agreements in other documents, such as an employment contract, a hiring letter, or an employee handbook.
When you sign a contract, letter, handbook acknowledgment form, or any other document from your employer, you agree to all the terms of the document -- even the ones that you may not have read. This is a particular problem with handbooks, which might be very long.
To protect yourself from unwittingly giving up your rights, don't sign any document acknowledging you've read something unless you actually have read it and understood it completely. And don't sign any document that says you agree to the terms unless you have read all of the terms and do in fact agree to them. If your employer asks you to sign an arbitration agreement, you can refuse, but that may put your job in jeopardy. Usually, an employer can rescind an employment offer if a prospective employee refuses to sign the arbitration agreement.
And an employer can fire an at-will employee who refuses to sign one. Therefore, declining to sign the agreement could jeopardize your job. Some employers will negotiate this point, however, especially if they are more excited about you than they are about arbitration. If you are a highly sought after prospect, or if you are a valued employee in your company, your employer may allow you to refuse to sign rather than give you up.
Another option is to agree to sign, but only if you can negotiate an agreement that is fair to you, as described below. If your employer won't let you outright refuse to sign, it may allow you to negotiate certain terms of the agreement to make it more fair to you.
Although an employer may not agree to your requests, it is not likely to fire you for asking. Negotiating your agreement to arbitrate is no different from discussing your salary or benefits. You can choose your arbitrator — If you include this as part of your arbitration agreement, you can have the ability to choose the arbitrator who will be determining the outcome of the dispute at hand.
This can be a very helpful component if you want to try to find someone who may have some specific experience dealing with the type of dispute you have or someone who has a bit of experience in your field and can better understand what is happening as a result. As an employer, you can refuse to hire someone who does not sign the arbitration agreement — You have the option of refusing to hire someone if they do not abide by your rules and sign your agreements.
The arbitration agreement is part of that. This can also be related to not hiring another company to do work for you if they refuse to sign it. If you have something like this in place, you will want it to be active for everyone you do business with anyway. You can avoid including a jury — When you have an arbitration agreement, you will not use a jury to help determine any disputes. A jury can be very beneficial in many situations, but they can also be very stressful in a situation where there is a business dispute or even in business matters.
It does not usually make sense to use a jury and you can make sure you avoid the entire thing by having an arbitration agreement in place for all of your business relationships. It can help you to avoid hostility — When a case goes to court, there is more of a likelihood that there will be constant disputes and fighting on every single issue. This added hostility may never go away and may even make it difficult for you to do business with others later on.
However, arbitration is a much more relaxed kind of environment, and while there is an existing conflict, it can be a lot easier to manage without hostility because there is an arbitrator present. Both parties will have to cooperate with each other in order to reach a mutual agreement.
This can lead to less hostility and can help keep the reputation of both parties intact. These are some of the main disadvantages: You cannot appeal an arbitration decision — Once a decision has been made in the matter by the arbitrator, you cannot fight it any further.
This means that you cannot then decide to take the matter to court and you cannot try arbitration again with another arbitrator simply because you did not like the decision that was made.
You cannot opt for a jury trial — By definition, arbitration does not include any other parties other than the two parties with their lawyers and the arbitrator or arbitrators. You cannot have a jury decide the matter, and if your case has to do with an employment dispute, this is something you want to avoid anyway because jury members tend to side with the employee more often than not. The exchange of information between parties is limited — In arbitration, you may find that it is more difficult to form a case against the other party simply because there is more of a limitation on the exchange of information than if you were to go to court.
In situations where the other party has more documentation and information, you may be at a disadvantage because they may not be required to share all of their information with you for the arbitration. If you have this agreement before a dispute, it can be hard to determine if you want to arbitrate later — This is simply a matter of signing this agreement before there is ever a dispute.
You may not ever have a dispute, but if you do and you decide that you do not want to arbitrate, then you will have no other option if you have already signed this agreement. If you try to go against it and void the agreement, you will likely spend a lot of money on legal fees in the process.
The arbitration agreement has the potential of being one sided — If you are not the party that has written the agreement, you may find out later that it was written in a way that favors the party who initially wrote it. Before you sign any arbitration agreement that you have not written, you should look for any signals that the other party will have an advantage.
Ideally, you want to only sign an arbitration agreement that provides each party with an equal voice and will not limit you in the process.
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