Dean Witter Reynolds Inc. v. Byrd

Dean Witter Reynolds Inc. v. Byrd, 470 U.S. 213 (1985), is a United States Supreme Court case concerning arbitration. It arose from an interlocutory appeal of a lower court's denial of brokerage firm Dean Witter Reynolds' motion to compel arbitration of the claims under state law made against it by an aggrieved former client. The Court held unanimously that the Federal Arbitration Act required that those claims be heard that way when the parties were contractually obligated to do so, even where parallel claims made under federal law would still be heard in federal court.

Justice Thurgood Marshall wrote for the court, resolving a conflict between the appellate circuits; Byron White added a concurrence in which he noted some issues with the underlying securities law that were not before the Court but, he felt, could in future cases make it harder for parties such as Byrd to claim that federal law always allowed them to litigate private actions for securities fraud. In the aftermath of the decision many district courts followed his opinion, leading to later Supreme Court rulings that greatly favored arbitration over litigation in securities disputes. It has been described as completing the federalization of American arbitration law.

Underlying dispute

In 1981 A. Lamar Byrd, a dentist in Southern California, sold his practice and invested the $160,000 proceeds with Dean Witter Reynolds, a retail brokerage firm. Over the next several months his account lost more than half its value; he alleged that his broker represented to him that the account was profiting.