Six years after Colorado legislators last attempted to pass arbitration reform, the subject is back up for debate at the General Assembly. And to frame the discussion on this week’s episode of “Colorado Chamber Office Hours,” I bring in one of the sponsors of House Bill 1236, which seeks to add more guardrails to arbitration, as well as an attorney who specializes in the practice.
Rep. Yara Zokaie, D-Fort Collins, offers reasons why she and Rep. Javier Mabrey, D-Denver, are running the bill, which had been scheduled to go for its first committee hearing Tuesday but since has been pushed back to an unknown date. She discusses why she believes mandatory arbitration enforced through employer-employee contracts and consumer-merchant contracts is so problematic and how HB 1236 tries to ensure that arbitrators are fair and that proceedings don’t cost too much.
Julian Ellis, a partner at First and Fourteenth, argues in return that courts repeatedly have asserted that states cannot usurp federal oversight of arbitration and that HB 1236 will sow confusion about how the practice can proceed in Colorado. Ellis also presents his case that arbitration is preferable to pushing every dispute into the court system and says that the bill appears to be attempting to minimize use of the practice.
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