Our first runners-up this week are Andrew Pincus, Archis Parasharami and Daniel Jones of Mayer Brown, who scored a major appellate win for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. A divided Ninth Circuit panel this week affirmed a lower court ruling finding the Federal Arbitration Act preempts AB 51, a California law that effectively barred mandatory arbitration agreements in employment contracts. The ruling marked a rare instance where a judge on the panel—in this case Senior U.S. Circuit Judge William Fletcher—flipped sides after a petition for rehearing following an earlier panel ruling siding with the state. The Chamber had additional counsel from Donald Falk of Schaerr Jaffe as well as Maury Baskin and Bruce Sarchet of Littler Mendelson.
