Court Looks At Evolution Of Class Action Waiver Law In California For Help Construing Meaning Of The Contractual Language.
In 2011, AT&T Mobility LLC v. Concepcion, 563 U.S. 333 (2011) held the Discover Bank rule, invalidating a class arbitration waiver, had been preempted by the Federal Arbitration Act. After Concepcion, employers frequently insert class arbitration waivers in their employment agreements and dispute resolution policies.
But that’s not what happened in Licon v. Wish-I-Ah Skilled Nursing & Wellness Centre LLC, F070304 (Fifth Dist. 6/15/16) (Hill, Kane, Franson) (unpublished), where the Employment Dispute Resolution (EDR) Program was written before Concepcion was decided. Instead, the EDR Program provided that it “covers only claims by individuals and does not cover class or collective actions.” (italics in the Court’s opinion). Construing the plain meaning of the words, the Court of Appeal agreed with the trial judge that the arbitration agreement excluded class and collective actions from its scope, so plaintiffs were not required to arbitrate class or private attorney general claims.
Of course, the employer argued “other language in the EDR program booklet demonstrates an intent to arbitrate all claims on an individual, nonclass basis . . . “
The Court found it helpful to consider the extrinsic evidence of how the employer’s EDR policy had evolved from before to after Concepcion, for after Concepcion, the employer changed the wording of its EDR policy to take advantage of Concepcion’s evisceration of the Discover Bank rule. The Court concluded that the pre-Concepcion ERP, which governed the situation, meant what it said, because it had been drafted at a time when the employer “had to be concerned with the possibility a court would invalidate a class action or class arbitration waiver.”
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