11th Circuit Affirms Judge King in Checking Overdraft Arbitration Waiver!

Finally Judge King gets affirmed in a Checking Overdraft arbitration decision, this time in a situation where the bank did not move to compel arbitration until after the Supreme Court's Concepcion opinion:

The district court twice invited Wells Fargo to move to compel arbitration, first in November 2009 and again in April 2010, but Wells Fargo declined those invitations. A year later, Wells Fargo reversed course and moved to compel arbitration soon after the Supreme Court held in AT&T Mobility LLC v. Concepcion, __ U.S. __, 131 S. Ct. 1740, 1753 (2011), that the Federal Arbitration Act, 9 U.S.C. § 1 et seq., preempts state laws that condition the enforceability of consumer arbitration agreements on the availability of classwide procedures. The district court denied the motion based on waiver. Wells Fargo argues that it did not waive its right to compel arbitration because it would have been futile to move to compel arbitration before the Supreme Court decided Concepcion. But we conclude that Concepcion established no new law. Because we conclude that it would not have been futile for Wells Fargo to argue that the Act preempts any state laws that purported to make the classwide arbitration provisions unenforceable, we affirm the denial of its motion to compel arbitration.

Oops!

Hopefully the decision to not seek arbitration was made by Wells Fargo's in house counsel.