Green Tree Financial Corp.-Alabama v. Randolph
Is it still good law? What later courts have actually done to this case.
Status
More on how this was screened
The Supreme Court in American Express Co. v. Italian Colors Restaurant preserved Green Tree's concern about prohibitively high arbitration forum fees but refused to apply it merely because proving an individual statutory claim costs more than the likely recovery. The missing opinions prevent a complete good-law assessment.
1,966 later cases cite Green Tree Financial Corp.-Alabama v. Randolph; 75 of those citations sat close to treatment language and were flagged for reading; 73 of them have been read, and the text of 2 citing opinions could not be retrieved, so those remain unread. Citations that did not sit near treatment language were not flagged and were not read one by one, so a court that weakened this case without using any of that language would not appear here.
Relying on Green Tree Financial Corp.-Alabama v. Randolph?
This page shows what later courts did to it. Ask about your specific facts and see whether it still carries your argument, with citations you can check.
Treatments
Limited
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The Court confined Green Tree's possible cost-based exception to barriers such as arbitration filing and administrative fees, holding that costly proof of a statutory claim alone does not eliminate the right to pursue it.
American Express Co. v. Italian Colors Restaurant · Supreme Court of the United States · filed
And it would perhaps cover filing and administrative fees attached to arbitration that are so high as to make access ... to the forum impracticable. See Green Tree Financial Corp.-Ala. v. Randolph, 531 U.S. 79, 90, 121 S.Ct. 513, 148 L.Ed.2d 373 (2000) ... But the fact that it is not worth the expense involved in proving a statutory remedy does not constitute the elimination of the right to pursue that remedy.
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The Northern District of California confined Green Tree's possible continuing application after Concepcion to costs specific to arbitration, rejecting its use against a class waiver based on expensive proof of an individual claim.
Kaltwasser v. AT & T Mobility LLC · N.D. Cal. · filed
To be sure, Concepcion does not explicitly overrule Green Tree, but it does make it untenable to read Green Tree for a vindication-of-rights principle as robust as Kaltwasser asserts here. If Green Tree has any continuing applicability, it must be confined to circumstances in which a plaintiff argues that costs specific to the arbitration process, such as filing fees and arbitrator’s fees, prevent her from vindicating her claims.
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The Florida Supreme Court declined to extend Green Tree's federal-statutory effective-vindication rule to invalidate a class waiver for state statutory claims.
McKenzie Check Advance of Florida, LLC v. Betts · Supreme Court of Florida · filed
We reject the suggestion that the fact that the Supreme Court did not recede from those cases in Concepcion is indicative of an unstated intent to create an exception to Concepcion when the parties are unable to vindicate rights under a state statute. See Coneff v. AT & T Corp., 673 F.3d 1155, 1158 & n. 2 (9th Cir.2012) (stating that “Mitsubishi [Motors], Gil-mer, Green Tree and similar decisions are limited to federal statutory rights” and rejecting the argument that the tension between the Mitsubishi Motors line of cases and Concepcion “must be resolved by reading an implied exception into Concepcion ” (emphasis added)).
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