NCJ Number
110458
Journal
University of Detroit Law Review Volume: 64 Issue: 4 Dated: (Summer 1987) Pages: 623-660
Date Published
1987
Length
38 pages
Annotation
The problems and uncertainties that result when employers transfer the adjudication of employment disputes from the trial-by-jury system of traditional courts to alternative dispute resolution systems (ADRS) is examined.
Abstract
On the one hand, employees are slow to trust an employer's commitment not to discharge except for just cause if the resolution of the employees' claims is to be decided by an ADR under the employer's direction and control. For their part, employers wonder if courts will see ADRS as exclusive remedies or as merely one of several suggested remedies to consider during adjudication. Because courts would not usually enforce an ADR at common law, the Federal and State governments have enacted statutes enabling specific enforcement of agreements to arbitrate. The use of ADRS is examined, and their relation to the legal concepts of exclusivity, exhaustion, and preclusion in resolving employment disputes from the legal perspectives of contract, tort, and statutory claims is discussed. Because outcome might be influenced depending on whether the ADR was adopted before or after the disputed employment action took place, the timing of ADRS is important. Specific cases are discussed, and the author concludes that courts simultaneously embrace and repel ADRS. While courts recognize precedent upholding ADRS as an exclusive remedy for contract and tort claims arising from the employment relationship, they find it difficult to enforce ADRS in individual cases growing out of Federal statutory claims. 152 footnotes.