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Updated Aug 18, 2026

MassArbitration

Docket

Case Tracker

Seven decisions do most of the work in this area. Each entry sets out the question presented, what the court actually held, and why practitioners cite it.

Stacked slabs rising like a staircase beneath an abstracted colonnade, one slab picked out in amber
DevelopingN.D. Cal. · 2025

Rios v. HRB Digital LLC

No. 3:25-cv-03530 (Chen, J.)

Question
Whether a bellwether-and-batching protocol paired with an asymmetrical tolling provision is enforceable.
Holding
Motion to compel arbitration denied. The clause was procedurally unconscionable — a non-negotiable form contract presented in tax season with an opt-out buried in a long agreement and requiring renewed annual action — and substantively unconscionable, because the tolling provision let the respondent contest notice completeness and then invoke limitations.
Why it matters
The clearest recent statement that batching maths and tolling maths are reviewed together. A protocol limited to twenty-five coordinated claims per round can take well over a decade to clear a two-thousand-claim inventory even with aggressive resolution targets — and a tolling clause the drafter can contest does not cure that.
  • batching
  • tolling
  • unconscionability
  • opt-out
Claims per round
25
Illustrative 2,000-claim runway
~13 years

Coverage

Cert. denied9th Cir. · 2024

Heckman v. Live Nation Entertainment, Inc.

120 F.4th 670

Question
Whether a bespoke mass arbitration protocol — including its delegation clause — is unconscionable, and whether state unconscionability law is preempted.
Holding
Both the delegation clause and the agreement as a whole were procedurally and substantively unconscionable. Applying California unconscionability law was not preempted by the FAA. Certiorari was denied on 6 October 2025 (No. 24-1145), leaving the decision intact.
Why it matters
The judicial ceiling on protocol design. Three confidential bellwether outcomes were to bind every other claimant — including claimants with no right to participate in, or even learn about, the proceedings that decided their case. Courts will now read a protocol as administered, not as drafted.
  • bellwether
  • delegation clause
  • due process
  • Ticketmaster
Protocol trigger
5 cases, common issues
Binding bellwethers
3, confidential

Coverage

Controlling7th Cir. · 2024

Wallrich v. Samsung Electronics America, Inc.

106 F.4th 609

Question
Whether a district court may order a respondent to pay an arbitration provider's administrative filing fees.
Holding
Reversed. Because the agreement incorporated the provider's rules — which give the provider discretion over fee disputes — the district court exceeded its authority in ordering the respondent to pay the AAA's fees.
Why it matters
The single most consequential defence-side win of the era. It converted non-payment from a reputational risk into a viable strategy in the Seventh Circuit: refuse the invoice, let the provider administratively close the file, and force claimants back into court where economics favour the defence.
  • filing fees
  • non-payment
  • administrative closure
Claimants
35,651
Fees demanded of respondent
$4,125,000

Coverage

PersuasiveN.J. Super. Ct. App. Div. · 2023

Achey v. Cellco Partnership

475 N.J. Super. 446, 293 A.3d 551

Question
Whether a batching provision that releases claims in fixed tranches is unconscionable under state law.
Holding
The batching provision was unconscionable on its face: it handed the respondent control over how long batching continued, set no outer time limit, and provided no tolling for claimants stuck in the queue. The arbitration agreement was unenforceable in its entirety.
Why it matters
The first widely cited decision to do the arithmetic on a batching clause. Where twenty-five or more claimants share counsel, ten claims moved at a time — a structure that could leave later claimants waiting well over a century. Achey established that the queue itself can be the defect.
  • batching
  • unconscionability
  • state law
  • Verizon
Trigger threshold
25+ claimants, same counsel
Claims per batch
10

Coverage

PersuasiveN.D. Cal. · 2020

Abernathy v. DoorDash, Inc.

438 F. Supp. 3d 1062

Question
Whether a company that drafted an individual-arbitration clause can resist arbitrating thousands of individual demands filed at once.
Holding
The court compelled arbitration of roughly 5,000 individual couriers' claims, rejecting the company's attempt to avoid the fee consequences of the clause it had drafted.
Why it matters
The decision that put mass arbitration on the map. It established the basic asymmetry defendants now draft around: a clause promising individual arbitration is enforceable against the drafter too, filing fees included.
  • gig economy
  • fee exposure
  • motion to compel
Demands filed
~5,000
ControllingSupreme Court of the United States · 2018

Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis

584 U.S. 497

Question
Whether the NLRA's protection of concerted activity overrides an employment agreement requiring individualised arbitration.
Holding
Agreements requiring individualised arbitration proceedings must be enforced as written; the National Labor Relations Act does not displace the FAA.
Why it matters
Epic Systems extended the Concepcion architecture into the employment relationship. Together the two decisions made individual arbitration the default forum for tens of millions of consumers and workers — and made the per-claim filing fee the pressure point that mass arbitration exploits.
  • employment
  • class waiver
  • foundational
ControllingSupreme Court of the United States · 2011

AT&T Mobility LLC v. Concepcion

563 U.S. 333

Question
Whether the FAA preempts state law that conditions enforceability of an arbitration clause on the availability of classwide arbitration.
Holding
The Federal Arbitration Act preempts state-law rules that stand as an obstacle to enforcing bilateral arbitration agreements, including rules invalidating class-action waivers as unconscionable.
Why it matters
Concepcion is the origin point of the entire phenomenon. By clearing the way for enforceable class waivers, it pushed consumer and employment disputes out of Rule 23 and into one-claimant-at-a-time arbitration — the exact structure that mass filing campaigns later weaponised.
  • FAA preemption
  • class waiver
  • foundational

Citations are given for orientation and are drawn from the sources cited across this site. Verify every citation in a primary source before relying on it. Published for legal professionals. Analysis and summaries only — not legal advice, and no attorney-client relationship is created by use of this site.