Minnesota vs. National Arbitration Forum

The National Arbitration Forum and the Attorney General of Minnesota have reached an agreement under which NAF will cease accepting new arbitration cases involving consumers, including collection actions by credit card companies. The consent decree (dated July 17, 2009) does not apply to ICANN domain name disputes nor to certain other types of arbitration matters currently administered by NAF.

See also the AG's press release, her earlier complaint against NAF, and NAF's statement on the settlement.

The Attorney General has also asked the American Arbitration Association to exit the consumer arbitration field. (Another company, JAMS, also offers consumer arbitration services, but apparently has not been approached by the AG.)

Update, 7/22/09: The American Arbitration Association says it will stop handling consumer debt collection cases "until some standards or safeguards are established." Wall Street Journal, July 22, 2009, page A1 (full text of story here). See also Deepak Gupta's take in CL&P Blog. Governor Steve Beshear of Kentucky is seeking to seize more than one hundred gambling-related domain names. A judge initially rejected the governor's bid and has scheduled a hearing for October 7. See coverage in the Louisville Courier-Journal, DomainNews, and The Iconoclast.

John Levine's take on the issue sounds right to me. I doubt very much that Kentucky has adequate grounds for jurisdiction over the domain names, the registrants, the registrars, or the registries. Any registrar that voluntarily forfeits a domain name on behalf of a registrant is likely asking to be sued.