Victory Allows Halunen Client to Proceed in Federal Court

May 16th, 2016

An increasing number of employment agreements include arbitration clauses that prohibit legal action against the employer. While corporations see the benefit of arbitration instead of going to court, employees find that seeking justice in arbitration is a much steeper path. This week, a Halunen client, Richard Messina, represented by attorney Ross Stadheim won a victory in the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, which ruled that his employer, North Central Distributing, waived its right to arbitrate after litigating for over eight months before any mention of arbitration. This ruling means that the case can proceed in federal court.

“This was a huge victory.” says Halunen Law attorney Ross Stadheim ” The Court confirmed what we knew all along — that an out-of-state defendant wanted to play ‘heads I win, tails you lose’ by litigating this case in federal court for months with no mention of arbitration ever. Now after a year of appeals, we can finally get on with the business of fighting for my client’s rights.”

Halunen Law partnered on this appeal with the national organization, Public Justice, which is working on a national scale to eliminate forced arbitration.