Missouri Supreme Court Rules Against Amway - Quixtar Arbitration

This is huge breaking news.

Does this mean that the Amway/Quixtar Arbitration does not cover the tools business?

Does this also mean that "stuff" previously hidden behind closed doors in arbitration will now be aired in open court? 

Link is below with more to come. 

SC86854: Nitro Distributing, Inc., et al., Respondents, v. Jimmy V. Dunn, et al., Appellants.

The scope of the Amway arbitration agreement does not cover the disputes that are the subject of Nitro and West Palm's petition against the Amway defendants. The clause is clear on its face and cannot be stretched to cover Nitro and West Palm's lawsuit. It is not a suit against Amway, their claims are not brought pursuant to any Amway distributorship, they make no allegation pertaining to the Amway sales and marketing plan, and they do not allege the Amway defendants violated any part of the Amway agreement. Rather, the suit's entire focus is that the Amway defendants allegedly conspired to misappropriate Nitro and West Palm's BSM businesses. In fact, Amway has a separate BSM arbitration agreement for use by the independent BSM businesses in lieu of the arbitration clause in the Amway rules of conduct.

Comments

[David Robison]

Maybe, I'm reading it wrong.

It appears that this ruling does not rule AGAINST the Amway Arbitration process, it rules that another process applies among the parties in this lawsuit.

Breaking news would be that the Amway Arbitration process or the arbitrators, JAMS; were wrong or unfair to IBOs.

It also seems that the legal hoo-ha is more about how Stewart represented him self as a "party" separately and as a business entity; rather than the issues of pro and con of selling BSMs.

But then again, I don't know my "habeus" from my "corpus"

Dave