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by StClaire 3384 days ago
Fun thing about Delaware: they have an equity court run by the state that functions as a secret arbitration panel. But instead of ruling in line with the law, they rule in line with what's deemed "fair," hence the name "equity court."

Unfortunately we don't know how they rule so we can't run statistics on it. But if anyone would like to leak a data set, feel free to leave me a message in this thread

3 comments

You're talking about Chancery Court: http://courts.delaware.gov/Chancery/

I'm not sure what you mean by secret. Here are some of its recent opinions: http://courts.delaware.gov/opinions/index.aspx?ag=court%20of...

I got two things confused. They had secret arbitration as part of the Chancery court and but apparently it was shut down by the federal courts

Thanks for pointing that out

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2014-03-24/news/sns-rt-us...

Arbitration proceedings are normally private and confidential, by consent of both parties, so the fact that it was "secret arbitration" isn't surprising. It looks like the news media were describing this as "secret courts", which seems a little sensationalist.

It seems to have been a way for standing court judges to decide arbitration cases. Without knowing anything about the circumstances, that seems better than having other people who are not judges decide arbitration cases, no? What was the problem with it?

This page seems to have more detail: http://apps.americanbar.org/litigation/committees/commercial... - since it was a government-sponsored program, the public has the right of access because courts have a tradition of accessibility.

Delaware Court of Chancery? For completeness, you should explain how other states deal with the issues that the CoC rules on.
very interesting stuff how I get it.