Courts favor arbitration agreements
It should come as no surprise that courts favor and generally enforce arbitration agreements. The following summary is an example. In 2001 Gonzalez purchased a home from Obra Homes and thereafter filed a class action suit claiming that the sales contract had failed to contain a disclosure statement as required under Texas law. Obra Homes answered the lawsuit and asked the court to compel arbitration because the sales contract contained an agreement to arbitrate “all claims, demands, disputes, controversies and differences.” Gonzalez responded that the arbitration clause did not encompass a class action claim for lack of a state law required disclosure. The Corpus Christi – Edinburg Court of Appeals on June 3, 2010 in the case of Obra Homes, Inc. v. Gonzalez however concluded that arbitration was required as the plaintiff's claims were based on the contract. In fact the court also noted: (1) in the absence of fraud, unequal bargaining power does not defeat a contractual agreement to arbitrate and (2) the arbitrator (not the court) based upon the arbitration agreement, would also make the decision about the class action going forward as a class action or not.