No Evidence Of Signed Agreement.
Bruno Fleming sued Oliphant Financial for allegedly violating the California Rosenthal Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. Oliphant unsuccessfully petitioned the trial court to compel arbitration. The Court of Appeal affirmed the trial court's order denying Oliphant's petition to compel arbitration. Fleming v. Oliphant Financial, LLC, A165837 (1/1 1/31/23) (Devine, Humes, Margulies).
Oliphant failed to meet its burden of establishing the existence of an arbitration agreement. Fleming had signed a credit card application, but apparently there was a lack of evidence that he had signed an arbitration agreement or that he had received one.
This is pretty basic stuff. Rejecting Oliphant's efforts to finesse the threshold issue, the court addresses a few points.
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- As the party moving to compel arbitration, Oliphant had the burden of proof of establishing that the parties agreed to arbitrate.
- An argument that the arbitration agreement delegates the question of arbitrability to the arbitrator fails if the arbitration agreement doesn't exist.
- Contract formation will be addressed under state law.
- The court, not the arbitrator, gets to decide whether an agreement to arbitrate exists.
- Oliphant's choice-of-law argument that the arbitration agreement requires the application of Delaware law fails if there is no arbitration agreement.
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