Green Tree Financial Corp.-Ala. v. Randolph, 531 U.S. 79, 14 (2000)

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92

GREEN TREE FINANCIAL CORP.-ALA. v. RANDOLPH

Opinion of Ginsburg, J.

held that the party seeking to avoid arbitration bears the burden of establishing that Congress intended to preclude arbitration of the statutory claims at issue. See Gilmer, supra; McMahon, supra. Similarly, we believe that where, as here, a party seeks to invalidate an arbitration agreement on the ground that arbitration would be prohibitively expensive, that party bears the burden of showing the likelihood of incurring such costs. Randolph did not meet that burden. How detailed the showing of prohibitive expense must be before the party seeking arbitration must come forward with contrary evidence is a matter we need not discuss; for in this case neither during discovery nor when the case was presented on the merits was there any timely showing at all on the point. The Court of Appeals therefore erred in deciding that the arbitration agreement's silence with respect to costs and fees rendered it unenforceable.7

The judgment of the Court of Appeals is affirmed in part and reversed in part.

It is so ordered.

Justice Ginsburg, with whom Justice Stevens and Justice Souter join, and with whom Justice Breyer joins as to Parts I and III, concurring in part and dissenting in part.

I

I join Part II of the Court's opinion, which holds that the District Court's order, dismissing all the claims before it, was a "final," and therefore immediately appealable, decision. Ante, at 84-89. On the matter the Court airs in Part III,

7 We decline to reach respondent's argument that we may affirm the Court of Appeals' conclusion that the arbitration agreement is unenforceable on the alternative ground that the agreement precludes respondent from bringing her claims under the TILA as a class action. See Brief for Respondent 39-48. The Court of Appeals did not pass on this question, and we need not decide here issues not decided below. Roberts v. Galen of Va., Inc., 525 U. S. 249 (1999) (per curiam).

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