The FINRA All Public Arbitration Panel Revisited

Two months ago, I wrote a post about FINRA All-Public panels and how they don’t seem to make a difference. FINRA has released its statistics through September 2013 here. Guess what? Nothing has changed.

The number of cases decided by both classes of panels has increased. The Majority-Public panel award percentage has held steady at 41% finding for Claimant. The All-Public panels have moved from 42% to 43%. This is insignificant given the number of cases decided. In fact, with the new numbers, if only one more case had been decided in favor of the Respondent, the numbers would be virtually indistinguishable.

So what does this mean? I’m not sure. One thing I take away from it is that I don’t put a lot of stock in all the hand-wringing about arbitration panels being a stacked deck because of the industry panelist. Take away the industry panelist and it looks like the “win” rate is just about the same. So much for the stacked deck.

That’s the “I told you so” view of one arbitration lawyer from lovely Jupiter, Palm Beach County, Florida. I’m Marc Dobin.

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