Judge: Gregory Keosian, Case: 23STCV02470, Date: 2023-06-22 Tentative Ruling
Case Number: 23STCV02470 Hearing Date: June 22, 2023 Dept: 61
Defendant
Dollar Tree Stores, Inc.’s Motion to Compel Arbitration is DENIED.
I. OBJECTIONS
Plaintiff Estefania Sanchez
(Plaintiff) offers objections to the materials submitted by Defendant Dollar
Tree Stores, Inc. (Defendant) in its motion to compel arbitration. Plaintiff’s
objection to the declaration of Ronald Dibianca is OVERRULED, as DiBianca may
testify to the absence of a record. Plaintiff’s objections to the declaration
of Vincent Votta are likewise OVERRULED, as his testimony is adequate to
authenticate as an initial matter Plaintiff’s electronic signature on the
agreement in question. (See Espejo v. Southern California Permanente Medical
Group (2016) 246 Cal.App.4th 1047, 1062.) Plaintiff’s objection to the
declaration of Jonathan Cobb are likewise OVERRULED, as Cobb may testify to the
workings of Defendant’s “Ops Center” communications system, and this testimony
renders the completion of the arbitration task referenced in paragraph 8
admissible as a business record under Evidence Code § 1271.
Defendant’s objections to the declarations of Plaintiff and
Lizeth Perals are OVERRULED. The objection to the declaration of Santa Aguilar
Sanchez is SUSTAINED, as it is a document translated from Spanish without the
required certification under oath by an interpreter. (See CRC Rule
3.1110, subd. (g).
II.
MOTION TO
COMPEL ARBITRATION
On petition of a
party to an arbitration agreement to arbitrate a controversy, a court must
order the petitioner and respondent to arbitrate the controversy if it
determines the arbitration agreement exists, unless (1) the petitioner has
waived its right to arbitrate; (2) grounds exist for the revocation of the
agreement; or (3) “[a] party to the arbitration agreement is also a party to a
pending court action or special proceeding with a third party, arising out of
the same transaction or series of related transactions and there is a
possibility of conflicting rulings on a common issue of law or fact.” (Code
Civ. Proc., § 1281.2.)
“[T]he party moving
to compel arbitration bears the burden of establishing the existence of a valid
agreement to arbitrate, and the party opposing arbitration bears the burden of
proving by a preponderance of the evidence any fact necessary to its defense.
The role of the trial court is to sit as a trier of fact, weighing any
affidavits, declarations, and other documentary evidence, together with oral
testimony received at the court’s discretion, to reach a determination on the
issue of arbitrability.” (Hotels Nevada
v. L.A. Pacific Center, Inc. (2006) 144 Cal.App.4th 754, 758.)
Defendant Dollar
Tree Stores, Inc. (Defendant) presents two arbitration agreements that it
claims bind Plaintiff Estefania Sanchez (Plaintiff) and her claims in this
action. The first is an arbitration agreement electronically signed by
Plaintiff in 2014, as she was onboarded into employment with Defendant, which
applies to “all claims or controversies . . . arising out of or related to
Associate’s employment (or its termination.” (Votta Decl. Exh. C.) The 2020
agreement, which purports to replace the first, applies to “all claims or
controversies arising out of or related to Associate’s application for
employment, offer or denial of employment, prospective employment, employment
or its termination, and/or related to or arising out of acts or omissions
occurring on Company’s premises, at Company events or on Company travel.”
(Dibian Decl. Exh. A.) This latter agreement is not signed by Plaintiff, but
was sent by mail to Defendant’s employees, who by its terms may accept the
agreement by continuing in employment with Defendant, which Plaintiff did after
the operative date. (Dibianca Decl. ¶¶ 2–3, Exh. A.)
Plaintiff in
opposition denies signing the 2014 agreement. She contends that when she began
her position with Defendant in October 2014 (around the Halloween holiday), she
was immediately assigned to a store other than the one she applied for, and for
this reason was unable to complete the onboarding process with her supervisor,
who told her to record her hours on notes of paper and send them to him.
(Plaintiff Decl. ¶¶ 3–4.) Although the electronic record purports to have
been electronically signed on October 29, 2014, Plaintiff contends that the
onboarding process described by Defendant did not apply to her at all, that she
had no access to the online portal during that time, did not create a login ID
for the system, and “for about a week after I was told I was not in the system,
and I could not clock in or out as I was not given an employee id number.
(Plaintiff ¶ 5.) Plaintiff contends that if an account was created in the
online “Career Launch” system in her name “it was not created by me.”
(Plaintiff Decl. ¶ 5.)
As to the 2020
agreement. Plaintiff denies that any such agreement was mailed to her. She
claims that she was aware of other employees receiving the mailers, but
believed that the reason she had not received one was because she had never
signed a previous arbitration agreement. (Plaintiff Decl. ¶ 7.) Plaintiff
recalls seeing a posting in the store breakroom containing notice of a new
arbitration agreement, and her store manager Nicole Inman demanded the employees
sign the agreement. (Plaintiff Decl. ¶ 8.) However, Plaintiff recalls informing
her manager that refused to sign the agreement, and “told Nicole I didn’t
believe that agreement applied to me because I was not given one of those
agreements before and she did not challenge my refusal to sign and/or my belief
that the arbitration agreement did not apply to me, all she said was ‘Okay.’”
(Plaintiff Decl. ¶ 8.)
Plaintiff has
presented persuasive evidence that she never signed the 2014 arbitration
agreement, and is therefore not bound by it. “[A]rbitration is a matter of contract
and a party cannot be required to submit to arbitration any dispute which he has not
agreed so to submit.” (Bruni v. Didion (2008) 160 Cal.App.4th 1272,
1284.) Defendant’s evidence that Plaintiff signed this agreement consists of an
electronic record of Plaintiff’s signature through the creation of a unique
login ID. (Votta Decl. ¶ 6.) Plaintiff persuasively rebuts this evidence
through her detailed testimony concerning her first week on the job, in which
she went through no online onboarding process, and was in fact unable to clock
in or out for lack of integration into Defendant’s personnel system during that
first week. (Plaintiff Decl. ¶¶ 3–5.) This is unlike the case cited by Defendant
in reply, Slade v. Empire Today, LLC (S.D. Cal. 2021) 2021 WL 2864813,
in which the plaintiff denied signing an arbitration agreement, despite
acknowledging that “he logged onto an online portal and filled out
‘volumes of documents and pre-employment forms ... as quickly as he could.’” (Id.
at p. 4.) Plaintiff here states that she was never involved in any such
process, at least during the time in question. Defendant’s attempts to rebut
Plaintiff’s testimony in reply do not cast doubt on her testimony; they only
address the sufficiency of Defendant’s efforts to authenticate Plaintiff’s
electronic signature. (Reply at pp. 2–4.)
The 2020 agreement involves a
closer question. It is undisputed that Plaintiff never signed this agreement. But
Defendant claims it applies to her by virtue of the following language
contained an a memorandum that accompanied the agreement: “If you are employed
by the Company on December 10, 2020, you will be bound by the new Arbitration
Agreement, without any further action on your part. There is no need to sign
the new Agreement.” (DiBianca Decl. Exh. A.) Although Plaintiff denies
receiving the mailer, she acknowledges that the agreement or notice thereof was
posted in the workplace, and that she attended a meeting in which it was
discussed. (Plaintiff Decl. ¶ 8.) If the facts ended there, then Plaintiff
would be bound by the agreement without controversy: “[W]hen an employee
continues his or her employment after notification that an agreement to
arbitration is a condition of continued employment, that employee has impliedly
consented to the arbitration agreement.” (Diaz v. Sohnen Enterprises
(2019) 34 Cal.App.5th 126, 130.) However, upon receiving notice of the
agreement, Plaintiff not only refused to sign it when told to do so by her
store manager, but told her manager that the new agreement did not apply to her
by virtue of her lack of a prior arbitration agreement. (Plaintiff Decl. ¶ 8.)
Although an at-will employee cannot abrogate a unilaterally promulgated
arbitration policy by the mere raising of objections or complaints (Diaz,
supra, 34 Cal.App.5th at p. 131), Plaintiff here did not
merely raise objections, but obtained her manager’s “okay,” both for her
refusal to sign when requested and her understanding that she was not bound by
the agreement. (Plaintiff ¶ 8.) This is unlike the facts of Diaz, in
which the plaintiff was informed that she did not need to sign the arbitration
policy to be bound, and had all of her post-hoc objections rebuffed with
continued assertions that her employment alone bound her to the policy. (Diaz,
supra, 34 Cal.App.5th at p. 128.)
Accordingly, neither arbitration agreement binds Plaintiff
here. The motion to compel arbitration is therefore DENIED.