Arbitration

Television's "Judge Alex" and his former manager may be headed to arbitration after all. The Supreme Court gave a rough hearing Monday to a lawyer for Alex E. Ferrer, a former judge in Florida who rules on petty disputes in a syndicated television show, "Judge Alex," where his decisions are final. In 2002, Ferrer signed a contract with Arnold M. Preston, a Los Angeles lawyer who said he could help the judge find work in television. The contract said disputes would be handled through arbitration.

The sexual harassment and wrongful termination lawsuit filed by a former employee against American Apparel and its founder, Dov Charney, will be decided by binding arbitration, Charney's attorney said Thursday. Both sides will be bound by the decision of the arbitrator or private judge they select. That means it is unlikely a jury will hear the plaintiff's account of Charney conducting business clad only in his underwear or, occasionally, something even skimpier.

"Judge Alex" lost his case at the Supreme Court on Wednesday when the justices ruled that the star of the syndicated TV show must go before an arbiter to resolve his manager's claim to 12% of his earnings. In an 8-1 ruling, the high court rejected the notion that there was a special rule for the entertainment industry in California that allowed actors to bypass arbitration. Instead, the court said those who signed contracts agreeing to arbitrate must honor that deal and go to arbitration.

One of California's largest for-profit insurers stopped a controversial practice of canceling sick policyholders Friday after a judge ordered Health Net Inc. to pay more than $9 million to a breast cancer patient it dropped in the middle of chemotherapy. The ruling by a private arbitration judge was the first of its kind and the most powerful rebuke to the state's major insurers whose cancellation practices are under fire from the courts, state regulators and elected officials.

An arbitration panel has ordered former Gemstar-TV Guide International Inc. Chief Executive Henry C. Yuen to pay the company $93.6 million in damages, salary and other costs, Gemstar said Monday. The panel also ruled that Yuen was not entitled to collect $30.9 million frozen since the executive was fired in 2003 amid charges that he and other executives were behind a scheme to inflate the company's revenue to meet financial targets.

In a sign of a widening split on the arbitration panel overseeing the doping case against cyclist Floyd Landis, two of the arbitrators, including the one representing the prosecutors in the case, excluded Landis' arbitrator from their deliberations in a key ruling last week. The excluded arbitrator, Bay Area attorney Christopher L. Campbell, vehemently protested in a written dissent that the others had not informed him they intended to confer on the matter before they issued the ruling May 1.

"Did you take testosterone during the Tour de France?" "No." "Any banned substances?" "No." With that simple reply elicited by his attorney, Tour de France champion Floyd Landis declared under oath Saturday the position he has maintained for more than nine months, since the day anti-doping authorities accused him of taking synthetic testosterone to win the marquee cycling event last summer.

The California Supreme Court handed workers a major victory Thursday, allowing them to bring class-action lawsuits alleging labor code violations even if they had signed agreements with their employers requiring them to arbitrate such disputes.

A securities industry organization that regulates stockbrokers proposed arbitration rules Wednesday designed to help individual investors by curbing the ability of brokerages to file motions to dismiss cases. The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority said the rules would "significantly" limit the number of dismissal motions and impose "strict sanctions" on firms that abuse the process.

Credit card disputes settled through arbitration are part of "a rigged game" that overwhelmingly favors companies over consumers, according to a report by a Washington-based consumer advocacy group. Arbitration companies have a financial incentive for siding with credit card issuers, which generate most of the cases they handle, Public Citizen said in a report. Credit card companies track how arbitrators rule and don't choose arbitrators who don't rule for them, the study found.