Judge: Lynne M. Hobbs, Case: 24STCV06352, Date: 2025-04-28 Tentative Ruling

Case Number: 24STCV06352    Hearing Date: April 28, 2025    Dept: 61

PHILLIP PLASENCIA, AN INDIVIDUAL vs PROPERTY MANAGEMENT ASSOCIATES, INC., A CALIFORNIA CORPORATION, et al.

Tentative

Defendant Property Management Associates, Inc.’s Motion to Compel Arbitration is DENIED.

Plaintiff to provide notice.

Analysis

I. 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.)

Defendants Property Management Associates and Brittney Kim (Defendants) present an arbitration agreement electronically signed by Plaintiff Phillip Plasencia (Plaintiff) on August 28, 2019. (Roireau Decl. Exh. A.)

Plaintiff in opposition presents his own declaration, denying that he electronically signed the agreement, or that he used the software at issue — Paycom — to sign any documents, or do anything other than track his time. (Plasencia Decl. ¶¶ 2–3.) Plaintiff argues that Defendants have not adequately authenticated the electronic signature on the agreement. (Opposition at pp. 3–6.) Plaintiff also argues that the agreement is unconscionable as a contract of adhesion that limits his right to conduct discovery. (Opposition at pp. 8–10.)

The case of Ruiz v. Moss Bros. Auto Group, Inc. (2014) 232 Cal.App.4th 836, is instructive as to the adequacy of Defendant’s showing that Plaintiff signed the agreement at issue. In that case, the court described an employer declaration that did not adequately authenticate an employee’s electronic signature on an arbitration agreement:

[The manager] did not explain that an electronic signature in the name of [employee] could only have been placed on the 2011 agreement (i.e., on the employee acknowledgement form) by a person using [employee’s] “unique login ID and password”; that the date and time printed next to the electronic signature indicated the date and time the electronic signature was made; that all . . . employees were required to use their unique login ID and password when they logged into the HR system and signed electronic forms and agreements; and the electronic signature on the 2011 agreement was, therefore, apparently made by [employee] on September 21, 2011, at 11:47 a.m. Rather than offer this or any other explanation of how she inferred the electronic signature on the 2011 agreement was the act of [employee], [manager] only offered her unsupported assertion that [employee] was the person who electronically signed the 2011 agreement. In the face of [employee’s] failure to recall electronically signing the 2011 agreement, the fact the 2011 agreement had an electronic signature on it in the name of [employee], and a date and time stamp for the signature, was insufficient to support a finding that the electronic signature was, in fact, “the act of” [employee]. (Civ. Code, § 1633.9, subd. (a).) For the same reason, the evidence was insufficient to support a finding that the electronic signature was what Moss Bros. claimed it was: the electronic signature of Ruiz. (Evid. Code, § 1400, item (a).) This was not a difficult evidentiary burden to meet, but it was not met here.

(Id. at p. 844.)

In the case of Espejo v. Southern California Permanente Medical Group (2016) 246 Cal.App.4th 1047, the court distinguished Ruiz and found that an employer had adequately authenticated an employee’s electronic signature:

[W]e find the supplemental Tellez declaration offered the critical factual connection that the declarations in Ruiz lacked. Tellez detailed SCPMG's security precautions regarding transmission and use of an applicant's unique username and password, as well as the steps an applicant would have to take to place his or her name on the signature line of the employment agreement and the DRP. Based on this procedure, she concluded that the “name Jay Baniaga Espejo could have only been placed on the signature pages of the employment agreement and the DRP by someone using Dr. Espejo's unique user name and password.... [¶] Given this process for signing documents and protecting the privacy of the information with unique and private user names and passwords, the electronic signature was made by Dr. Espejo” on the employment agreement and the DRP at the date, time, and IP address listed on the documents. These details satisfactorily meet the requirements articulated in Ruiz and establish that the electronic signature on the DRP was “the act of” Espejo (Civ. Code, § 1633.9, subd. (a)), and therefore provide the necessary factual details to properly authenticate the document.

(Espejo, supra, 246 Cal.App.4th at p. 1062.)

The present case is similar to Ruiz, in that the employer’s failure to authenticate Plaintiff’s signature on the agreement is similarly inadequate. The declaration of Jamie Roireau, Defendant Property Management Associates, Inc.’s intermittent Human Resources Director, lacks first-hand knowledge of Plaintiff’s signing of the document, and therefore attempts to authenticate the signature by reference to the employer’s e-signature policies. (Roireau Decl. ¶ 1.)

This is not itself a barrier to arbitration, as explained in the Espejo case. But Roireau’s testimony is only to the effect that Plaintiff was prompted to create a Paycom username and unique password, and that Plaintiff would have used these credentials to sign into Paycom and electronically sign the agreement. (Roireau Decl. ¶¶ 5–13.) Roireau offers no testimony concerning the accessibility of Plaintiff’s username and password to others, the necessity of using the username and password to access his account or the arbitration agreement, or that only Plaintiff could therefore have supplied the signature on the agreement. Just as in Ruiz, this evidence is insufficient to show that the signature on the agreement was “the act of” Plaintiff. (Civ. Code § 1633.9, subd. (a).)

Defendants in reply do not attempt to supplement their deficient evidentiary showing, but instead argue that this case is distinguishable from Ruiz in the detail supplied by Roireau concerning the windows, links, and buttons that must be accessed or clicked for the document to be signed. (Reply at pp. 2–3.) Yet the number of windows opened and links clicked does not add or detract from the material consideration, which is whether the signature on the document was the act of Plaintiff. Against Plaintiff’s flat denial that he signed the document, Defendants’ evidence provides as little basis to conclude that Plaintiff clicked or opened any of these windows as it does for the ultimate proposition that he signed the arbitration agreement that Defendants now seek to enforce.

The motion to compel arbitration is therefore DENIED.