U.S. Supreme Court agrees to hear Coinbase case involving arbitration jurisdiction

The US Supreme Court announced on Friday that it will hear a case involving Coinbase and a dispute over whether a Dogecoin lottery can be resolved through arbitration. According to a December 2022 opinion, US District Judge Sallie Kim in Northern California rejected Coinbase's motion to submit the dispute to arbitration, a decision made nearly a year ago. Arbitration may be favored by the company as it can be less costly and quicker to resolve. The case involves two different contracts, one of which would lead to arbitration and the other to be litigated in a California court. Coinbase user David Suski chose to participate in Coinbase's Dogecoin lottery in June 2021 and agreed to a user agreement that included an arbitration clause. According to that clause, Suski later created separate "official rules" for the lottery, which included a provision that the California court would have "exclusive jurisdiction over any disputes related to the lottery." Coinbase argued that the user agreement should supersede the official rules, but the California judge ultimately disagreed. Jessica Lynn Ellsworth, external legal advisor to Coinbase, said it is not common for a company to have two cases heard by the US Supreme Court in consecutive terms. The Supreme Court made a decision in June to stay a lawsuit involving Abraham Bielski, while a lower court decided whether the case belonged in arbitration or litigation. "They're not going to take a lot of cases, and they're not going to take a lot of cases that involve commercial interests," Ellsworth said. The case is likely to be argued at the US Supreme Court in the spring of 2024. (The Block)