Professor Horton's 'Infinite Arbitration' Research Leads to New State Law

In October, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed California Senate Bill 82, which seeks to end “infinite arbitration clauses,” as outlined in Professor David Horton’s highly influential 2020 University of Pennsylvania Law Review article of the same name.

Horton helped draft the bill, testified in support of it before the state Senate Judiciary Committee in April and the Assembly Judiciary Committee in July and wrote a letter to Newsom explaining companies’ rampant use of arbitration mandates in consumer contracts.

“Businesses do this because they know that plaintiffs’ lawyers regard arbitration as a forum where ‘lawsuits go to die,’” Horton wrote, further noting that such clauses “defy consumers’ expectation and cause absurd results.”

Fair Business Practices and Investor Advocacy Professor of Law David Horton’s primary research and teaching interests are wills and trusts, contracts, and arbitration law. In 2015, his article "In Partial Defense of Probate: Evidence from Alameda County, California" was selected as the winner of the 29th annual Association of American Law Schools (AALS) Scholarly Paper Competition and he was honored with UC Davis School of Law’s Distinguished Teaching Award.