Restatement (Second) of Contracts § 207 (“In choosing among the reasonable meanings of a promise or agreement or a term thereof, a meaning that serves the public interest is generally preferred.”). In short, on any fair reading, the above-quoted sentences cannot be read to preclude an arbitrator, as part of a final award, from awarding attorney’s fees to a prevailing plaintiff. Alternatively, even if one were to assume, contrary to fact, that the clause did preclude Herrera from recovering attorney’s fees, the proper remedy would be to sever the invalid provision of the arbitration clause and compel arbitration of the underlying dispute, rather than to invalidate the entire arbitration clause as plaintiff urges. See DeGaetano v. Smith Barney Inc., 983 F.Supp. 459, 470 (S.D.N.Y.1997) (<HOLDING>); Beletsis, 2002 WL 2031610 at *5 (noting that
holding exhaustion clauses to be void as against hawaiis public policy holding that prospective waivers of claims are void as against public policy holding that an arbitration award involving the appellants challenge to the failure of the insurance company to ensure that he had read and understood a signed waiver and to attach the waiver to the insurance policy as contrary to public policy is not reviewable by the courts because there is no challenge to a provision or term of the policy the appellant never claimed that the waiver or policy language itself was contrary to the public policy of this commonwealth holding similar agreement void on public policy grounds holding that where agreement prohibits recovery of attorneys fees in civil rights case the relevant portions of the arbitration policy are therefore void as against public policy