Jules Lobel, a lawyer for one of the eight soldiers, described the central complaint this way: They were fraudulently induced to sign up, Mr. Lobel said, because nothing in their enlistment contract mentioned that they might be involuntarily kept on.

The Raiders are suing the City of Oakland and Alameda County, contending that the team was fraudulently induced to move back with promises of sellouts.

"The tribal leaders were not fraudulently induced," Mr. Cummis said.

It thus provided the buyer with a private cause of action, the choice to sue in any state or federal court and put the burden of proof on the seller if the buyer argued the purchase was fraudulently induced.

The ground on which relief was sought was that the appellant had fraudulently induced the respondent to lend the 65,000l. by misrepresentations as to the true value of the security.

The jury concluded that Xerox had fraudulently induced Ms. Layman to relocate to California and then refused to provide her with a job.

"The remarkable thing is that the jury was not permitted to learn that the Raiders were suing the City of Oakland, saying they were fraudulently induced to move," the league lawyer Gregg Levy said.

It hadn't been discussed in the lower courts, "and that's a major problem in this whole arbitration area," Downey claimed, since it could only have been brought up if the contract was challenged as fraudulently induced.

Since that company had represented itself as solvent during the negotiations only to go bankrupt shortly after signing the deal, Prima argued, the contracts had been fraudulently induced and thus the arbitration clauses by extension could not be enforced.

In the 1967 Prima Paint case the Court had opened the door to more widespread use of arbitration when it adopted the separability principle, compelling arbitration of a claim that a contract had been fraudulently induced.