Aircraft Firms Face Skeptical Panel in Worker Arbitration Appeal

Two aviation services companies urging the Ninth Circuit to throw out a ruling applying the transportation worker arbitration exemption in a wage case faced a skeptical panel on Monday, with tough questions about the role of precedent.

A district judge allowed a worker who fuels planes at Los Angeles International Airport to use the Federal Arbitration Act exemption—which applies to classes of workers engaged in foreign or interstate commerce—to keep his wage-and-hour allegations in court.

But that ruling is an “aberration from every other court decision that has ever taken on” the carveout, Christopher Ward, the Foley & Lardner ...