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Sunday Best: Catch Up On the Week’s Top NCBarBlog Posts

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Here’s what NCBarBlog readers found most interesting on our pages this week:

Court of Appeals Allows Section 75-1.1 Claim in Context of Residential Real Estate Transaction

An Untapped Source of Savings for State and Local Government Owners of Property

A 12(b)(6) Motion Asserted As Part Of An Answer Will Not Suffice, At Least Not In The NC Business Court

Launching the Appellate Practice Section Blog with Exciting News!

Say Hello To the Small Firm & Technology Section

A Win For Arbitration in 2018

A Win For Arbitration In 2018

By Tara Muller

This article appeared originally in The Peacemaker, the newsletter of the NCBA’s Dispute Resolution Section.

In the world of public opinion, alternative dispute resolution still struggles to compete with its crusty cousin – the traditional, costly, and lengthy trial process. For years, parties interested in enforcing arbitration provisions in lieu of trial have wrestled with the obstacle of unclear North Carolina appellate precedent as to whether courts would compel mandatory arbitration when the parties engaged in some initial litigation before moving to enforce the arbitration provision.  Fortunately for the up-and-coming arbitration protagonist in this tale, the North Carolina Court of Appeals kicked off 2018 with a bang, clearing up a history of self-described “divergent case law” and handing a win to parties interested in enforcing arbitration provisions.

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The Kissing Defense: Professional Athletes, Drugs and the ‘No Fault/No Significant Fault’ Tests in Arbitration

By Martin Maloney

Arbitration and Reducing a Suspension Under the No Fault/No Significant Fault Tests

In 2014, Major League Baseball (“MLB”) and the MLB Players Association (the “MLBPA”) agreed to a joint drug prevention program aimed at strengthening the detection and enforcement against players’ use of prohibited recreational and performance-enhancing drugs (“PEDs”).[1] As part of the agreement, MLB incorporated a “no fault/no significant fault” tests, whereby an arbitration panel may vacate a player’s mandatory suspension for testing positive to the use of banned substances if the player can demonstrate that “the presence of the Prohibited Substance in his test result was not due to his fault or negligence,” or reduce the length of the suspension if the player can provide “clear and convincing evidence that he bears no significant fault or negligence.”[2] For instance, Raul Mondesi Jr.’s eighty-game suspension for a first time violation of MLB’s drug policy in 2016 was reduced to fifty-games after Mondesi was able to demonstrate that his positive test of a banned substance was inadvertent and the result of taking an over-the-counter cold and flu medicine he had bought while in the Dominican Republic.[3]

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