Midland Funding Granted Arbitration in Consumer Class Action

A debt purchaser is one step closer to resolving a consumer protection class action out of court, after the Third Circuit concluded that the question of whether a debtor agreed to arbitrate a dispute must be decided by an arbitrator.

The case involves the “‘mind-bending issue’ of arbitration about arbitration,” the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit said. The normally clear question of whether there’s a valid arbitration agreement “can become very murky when parties agree to delegate questions of arbitrability to arbitrators,” it said.

Questions about the making of an arbitration agreement generally are for courts to ...