'Is a Recent Ninth Circuit Opinion a Wake-Up Call For Sophisticated Parties When Drafting Contractual Language?'

[Editor's note: K. Renee Schimkat is a Professor of Legal Writing and Lecturer in Law at University of Miami School of Law. In addition to teaching legal writing and communication, she teaches an upper-level writing course on Electronic Discovery and has taught courses on insurance law.]

Sophisticated business entities, especially reinsurers and insurers, should be mindful of a recent Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals opinion where the court bound a party to an arbitration clause that it neither received nor agreed to. That opinion, especially when compared to a 2018 opinion by the First Circuit Court of Appeals on a …