Arbitration
Maximizing the advantages of arbitration across a wide range of disputes
Clients look to Munger, Tolles & Olson to help guide sensitive matters to an efficient resolution. Drawing on our experience before the American Arbitration Association, as well as other arbitral institutions and ad hoc panels, we manage arbitrations from the outset to reduce expenses, control proceedings and move quickly, helping clients avoid unpredictable results — and discovery-related challenges — in a wide range of disputes.
We have successfully enforced arbitration agreements and achieved favorable results in arbitration matters across a wide spectrum of industries, including telecommunications, insurance, life sciences and pharmaceuticals, media and entertainment and utilities. We have also helped clients use arbitration to decertify potential class actions and avoid litigation on a range of matters, such as employment, product defects, fraud, breach of contract, patents, intellectual property and other disputes.
Clients
Most of our arbitration clients are confidential. A limited list of our publishable clients follows:
- Abbott Laboratories
- Alpha Edison
- Amgen
- Bechtel National, Inc.
- GardaWorld
- Lyft
- Morgan Stanley
- PayPal
- Service Employees International, Inc.
- Snap
- Southern California Edison
- Verizon Wireless
- Warner Bros.
- Wells Fargo & Company
Team
Our arbitration team includes our firm’s Chair, Brad D. Brian, and some of our highest-profile litigators:
Related Practices
Experience
- The Estate of Etsuko Toguri in obtaining a $30 million award of compensatory damages, punitive damages, and interest, in a complete win for the estate of a physician and businesswoman who was the victim of a massive real estate fraud involving the sale of a 32-acre parcel in the heart of downtown Rancho Cucamonga, a city east of Los Angeles. The award was named a Top Verdict of the Week by the Daily Journal.
- DoubleLine Capital and its CEO, Jeffrey Gundlach, against an action brought by former partners in JAMS arbitration, achieving a complete defense award as well as victory on counter-claims that significantly reduced the value of the partners’ outstanding equity after a two phase, multi-week hearing.
- Lyft in two successful appeals, Cunningham v. Lyft and Rogers v. Lyft, that raised the important issue of the scope of the transportation-worker exception to the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA), which excludes classes of workers engaged in interstate commerce from the FAA’s coverage. We successfully argued that rideshare drivers’ work transporting passengers to and from interstate hubs such as airports does not constitute engagement in interstate commerce within the meaning of the FAA exemption, pointing to a long line of Supreme Court decisions treating such transport as separate from any interstate trip that passengers or goods may take or have taken.
- Warner Bros. and HBO, among other representations of major entertainment companies, in litigation and arbitrations involving film and television profit participation, production and distribution disputes.
- Bechtel National Inc. and affiliated entities against former and current Bechtel employees claiming misclassification before the American Arbitration Association.
- An online marketplace for travel and booking services in a putative class action filed on behalf of a proposed class of its hosts challenging its decision to refund guest reservations due to the pandemic. We moved to compel arbitration pursuant to its terms of service.
- A global engineering company in a consulting and advisory role in an ICC arbitration in Singapore relating to delays in the construction of a power plant at a liquefied natural gas facility in Australia.
News
Munger, Tolles & Olson Partner Katherine Forster to Speak on Arbitration Panel at 44th Annual Labor & Employment Law Symposium
Munger Tolles’ $30 Million Victory for Estate Named Top Verdict of the Week
