Washington, DC, March 17, 2003 - Terrie Dort, President of the National Council of Chain Restaurants (NCCR), announced today that NCCR had filed briefs in two cases that will be decided by the Supreme Court of the United States.

The first case, Green Tree Financial Corp. v. Bazzle, involves the use of arbitration in commercial settings, but the decision will likely have application in the employment context, where employers and employees agree to use arbitration to resolve employment disputes. The second case, Breuer v. Jim's Concrete of Brevard, will likely resolve the issue of whether Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) lawsuits filed in state court are removable to federal court. According to Dort, "Both cases have tremendous potential to impact the chain restaurant industry."

In Green Tree, NCCR urged the Court to honor employer-employee arbitration agreements and to prevent lower courts and arbitrators from applying class action procedural remedies in arbitration settings. "The Supreme Court may establish the law of the land as it relates to an employer's ability to require single-plaintiff arbitration of employment disputes," said James Coleman, NCCR's General Counsel.

According to Coleman, most employers that have been sued under the FLSA, which governs federal minimum wage and overtime requirements, would prefer to have the case decided by a federal, rather than a state, court. The Supreme Court's ruling in Breuer will decide whether a defendant employer has a right to remove cases brought under the FLSA, the Family and Medical Leave Act, and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act from state court to federal court. "As multi-state employers attempting to comply with federal statutes governing employment in all fifty states, NCCR member companies have little to gain by allowing a multitude of state courts to impose their own, possibly unique, interpretations of the federal statute,' said Coleman.

The National Council of Chain Restaurants (NCCR), a division of the National Retail Federation (NRF), is a national trade association representing forty of the nation's largest multi-unit, multi-state chain restaurant companies. These forty companies own and operate more than 50,000 restaurant facilities. Additionally, through franchise and licensing agreements, another 70,000 facilities are operated under their trademarks. In the aggregate, NCCR's member companies and their franchisees employ more than 2.8 million Americans. For more information about NCCR, visit www.nccr.net. For more information about NRF, visit their web site at www.nrf.com.