What is an Arbitration?

Simply put, it is a private court.  Several companies provide these services such as JAMS, AAA and several others.  They provide a forum to litigate claims, and the judges are often retired judges or experienced attorneys.

Each arbitration service has its own rules that have to be followed to bring claims and one or both parties have to pay filing fees and the arbitrators. There are also specific rules governing mass arbitrations.  Mass arbitrations are defined by the rules, but it basically means that many cases are being filed by a multitude of people complaining of the same allegedly wrongful acts.

Why Can’t We Just File A Class Action Case?

In an effort to avoid class action litigation, companies throughout the country have required consumers and employees to agree to waive their rights to proceed in court against them and to waive their right to bring class action litigations when they are wronged. This is permitted by the Supreme Court of the United States.

Whether you are downloading a game on your computer, ordering a hotel room or buying almost every service or product, the small print says you agree to arbitrate your claims instead of going to court.

What Does Levetown Law Do?

Levetown Law, PLLC represents clients seeking to arbitrate claims.  We focus mostly on consumer litigations and employment claims and for larger matters, we partner with other law firms to bring and fund these matters. We take these cases on a contingency, which means that we only earn legal fees if we win. 

Today, we are focused on two types of cases:

  • Privacy Litigations
  • Employment Litigation Impacting Large Groups of Employees.

Privacy Cases

Privacy cases involve violations of federal and state laws designed to protect consumers’ privacy. Most of these cases involve online companies that provide consumers with products and services.  We focus on laws with statutory damages and legal fees paid by the defendant. In other words, the damages are set by the law and losing defendants are required to pay reasonable attorney’s fees.  In these matters Levetown Law partners with several firms and attorneys who are privacy experts and technologists. 

Stolen Tips

In terms of the employment cases, Levetown Law partners with Webster Book, LLP to bring cases where restaurant servers’ tips have been wrongfully pooled and shared with cooks and dishwashers and other employees who are prohibited from sharing tips by state and federal laws.  In these cases too, there are statutory damages based on the amount of money wrongfully diverted to other employees. These damages called “liquidated damages” are set by Congress and by state legislators, and, although they vary by state,  they are often significantly larger than the amount of the tips diverted.