Court of Appeal Agrees Defendants Failed To Show Plaintiffs Agreed To Specific Arbitration Agreement Submitted To The Court
The lesson from the next case – a published decision – is that employer/employee arbitration documents need to mesh together, and an employer cannot rely on sloppy incorporations by reference. The Court neatly sums up its conclusions:
“Substantial evidence in the record establishes one Plaintiff did not sign any document acknowledging or agreeing to the original arbitration policy. Moreover, she did not impliedly agree to that policy by continuing to work at the hospitals because she did not receive notice of its existence. As for the other seven Plaintiffs, Integrated submitted a confusing patchwork of acknowledgments and other forms these Plaintiffs signed, but none of these documents refer to the specific employee handbook Integrated filed as the source of the arbitration policy. To the contrary, the documents Plaintiffs signed either refer to an entirely different document as the source of the arbitration policy or fail to meet the legal standards for incorporating by reference an arbitration policy or other document. Without sufficient evidence of the actual arbitration policy to which Plaintiffs agreed when they signed the acknowledgments and other documents, we may not enforce the policy against Plaintiffs.”
Avery v. Integrated Healthcare Holdings, Inc., G046202 (4th Cir. Div. 3 July 23, 2013) (Aronson, J., author 3:0).
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