Jay-Z's ADR Problems

• Author: Darlene Ricker
• Pages: 9-10

Jay-Z’s case brought attention

to the lack of African -American

neutrals on the rosters of a rbitra-

tion organizations.

Jay-Z’s ADR

Problems

Opening

Statements

EDITED BY LIANE JACKSON

LIANE.JACKSON@AMERICANBAR.ORG

PHOTO BY KEVIN MAZUR/GETTY IMAGES FOR PARKWOOD ENTERTAINMENT

MAY 2019 ABA JOURNAL || 9

THE LACK OF DIVERSITY in a rbitration and

mediation has drawn i ncreasing attention in

legal circles, but it took someone with a huge

audience and a lot of money at stake to propel

the issue into the headli nes.

In a dispute stemming f rom the $200 mil-

lion sale of his clothing line, rapper a nd entre-

preneur Jay-Z (whose real name is Shawn

Carter) in November challenged an arbitra-

tion clause as discr iminatory, stating it would

force him to select an a rbitrator from a list

nearly devoid of his ethnic group. Only t hree

of 200 arbitrators on the large and c om-

plex case roster provided by t he American

Arbitration Associa tion identifi ed themselves

as Afric an-American, and one of them had a

confl ict, he a rgued.

Jay-Z recently reached a compromise

with the A AA, which o ered him add itional

Africa n-American arbitrators to choose from

and expressed w illingness to implement other

means of improving diverse repre sentation

in future arbitrations . The wider controversy,

however, is far from over.

“The Jay-Z case brought this [issue] to

the fore, and we were very pleased t o see

that he took those steps,” says Linda Warren

Seely, director of the ABA Se ction of Dispute

MOGUL’S CASE

SPOTLIGHTS LACK OF

DIVERSE ARBITRATORS