District Court Could Decide Whether Nonsignatory Could Compel Arbitration
Toyota has been enmeshed in arbitration concerning the ABS braking system of its 2010 Prius. In Kramer v. Toyota Motor Corporation, et al., Case No. 12-55050 (9th Cir. January 1, 2013) (Quist, D. J., author 3-0) (published), owners of 2010 Priuses, parties to arbitration agreements with Toyota dealerships, were able to fend off a motion to compel arbitration by Toyota Motor Corporation and Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A., Inc. (Toyota), nonsignatories to the arbitration agreement.
The first issue addressed in Kramer was whether the district court or the arbitrator had authority to decide if Toyota, a nonsignatory, could compel arbitration. This is typically a “threshold issue” determined by the courts, unless the arbitration clause explicitly and clearly delegates the authority to the arbitrator. Here, the arbitration clause provided that it “applies to any claim or dispute about whether a claim or dispute should be determined by arbitration.” Okay, that may work to delegate the authority to decide the issue of arbitrability as to signatories. But as to nonsignatories, “[g]iven the absence of clear and unmistakable evidence that Plaintiffs agreed to arbitrate arbitrability with nonsignatories, the district court had the authority to decide whether the instant dispute is arbitrable.”
Second, Kramer includes a detailed analysis of whether Plaintiffs were “equitably estopped from avoiding arbitration.” To determine whether Toyota, a nonsignatory, could invoke equitable estoppel and require arbitration under the Federal Arbitration Act, the Court looked to California state contract law. In particular, the Court drew on the test in Goldman v. KPMG LLP, 173 Cal.App.4th 209 (2009), whether the claims that the nonsignatory sought to arbitrate were “intimately founded in and intertwined with the underlying contract obligations.” Id. at 221. Without getting deep in the weeds, let’s just say that the Court did not find the Prius owners’ claims against Toyota sufficiently intertwined with the underlying contract obligations between the Prius owners and the dealerships to require arbitration of the claims against the nonsignatories.
The panel affirmed the district court’s order denying Toyota’s motion to compel arbitration.
Blawg Bonus: Theodore J. Boutrous Jr., one of Toyota’s attorneys, was the lead attorney for Wal-Mart in Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Dukes, 131 S.Ct. 2541 (2011), the case resulting in the decertification of a huge class of Wal-Mart female employees.
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