Judge Steven J. Kleifield, Case 22STCV38513 2023-04-17 Tentative Ruling

Judge: Steven J. Kleifield, Case: 22STCV38513, Date: 2023-04-17 Tentative Ruling

Case Number: 22STCV38513 Hearing Date: April 17, 2023 Dept: 57

Niagara Bottling, LLC (“Niagara”) has moved to compel arbitration of the claims of employment discrimination and wrongful termination that Plaintiff Hector Manuel Quintero has brought against Niagara and Quintero’s former supervisor at Niagara, Saturio Lopez. The Court’s tentative ruling is to grant Niagara’s motion.

Quintero does not dispute that that his claims fall within the ambit of the arbitration agreement that he entered into with Niagara when he began his employment at Niagara. Quintero nevertheless argues that Niagara’s motion to compel arbitration should be denied because (1) he does not speak, read, or write English and thus did not understand the arbitration agreement when he signed it, which means that there could not have been a meeting of the parties’ minds to agree to arbitrate his claims; and (2) the agreement is both procedurally and substantively unconscionable. Both arguments fail.

Quintero’s declaration (which was translated from Spanish, his native language, into English) in support of his contention that there was no meeting of the minds necessary for the formation of the agreement states that a Niagara human resources employee forced him on the day he was hired at Niagara to sign an agreement in English he could not comprehend due to his lack of proficiency with the language; told him that there were no copies of the document in Spanish; and failed to explain to him what the agreement was about. On the other side of the ledger, the same human resources employee, who no longer works for Niagara, submitted a declaration in support of Niagara’s motion to compel arbitration stating that Quintero spoke and understood English on his hiring day and throughout his tenure at the company, and that she offered to translate the agreement for him into Spanish if he wanted that to happen. Another former Niagara employee also submitted a declaration attesting to Quintreo’s facility with the English language.

The Court does not have to resolve the conflict between the parties’ competing declarations in order to decide if there was a meeting of the minds. That is because in the absence of fraud or overreaching, a person who signs a contract written in English may not claim lack of mutual assent as a means to avoid obligations thereunder on the grounds that he or she could not read the contract due to an inability to comprehend English. (Randas v. YMCA of Metropolitan Los Angeles, 17 Cal. App. 4th 158, 160, 163 (1993) (contract written in English bound plaintiff who was literate in Greek but not English). Arbitration agreements are treated no differently in this respect. (Molina v. Scandinavian Designs, Inc. (N.D. Cal. April 21, 2014) 2014 WL 1615177, at * 4 [plaintiff’s “inability to read English does not relieve him of the duty to learn the contents of the [arbitration agreement] before signing”]; Chico v. Hilton Worldwide, Inc. (C.D. Cal. Oct. 7, 2014) 2014 WL 5088240, at *6 [in the absence of fraud, “Plaintiff is deemed to have assented to all of the terms of these agreement [including the arbitration agreement] whether or not he actually understood them or whether or not he could even read them”].) Here, Quintero has failed to provide sufficient evidence of fraud or overreaching on the part of Niagara to overcome this contract formation rule.

Quintero’s reliance on Nunez v. Cycad Management, LLC, 77 Cal. App. 5th 276 (2022), to support the notion that there was no meeting of the minds due to his lack of facility with English is misplaced. The party seeking to avoid arbitration in that case based on a claim of inability to understand English did not argue that the other party’s motion to compel arbitration should be denied for lack of a meeting of the minds. Rather, the party invoked the language deficiency to support a contention that the arbitration agreement was procedurally unconscionable. The Court of Appeal agreed with plaintiff on the procedural unconscionability score, and also agreed that the agreement was substantive unconscionable. The Court therefore affirmed a ruling denying the motion to compel arbitration based on unconscionability. (Id. at p. 285.)

Quintero makes different assertions, not the assertion that he cannot understand English, in support of his claim that the Niagara arbitration agreement is procedurally unconscionable: namely that he was forced to sign the agreement as a condition of employment and that the agreement did not attach a copy of the rules of the American Arbitration Association (“AAA”), the body designated in the agreement as the one conducting the arbitration. A requirement that a prospective employee sign an arbitration agreement as a condition of employment does not render the agreement procedurally unconscionable. (Lagatree v. Luce, Forward, Hamilton, & Scripps (1999) 74 Cal.App.4th 1105, 1121.) Nor does a failure to attach the arbitration body’s rules to the agreement when, as here, the agreement referenced the rules and made no modification to them. (Lane v. Francis Capital Management LLC (2014) 224 Cal.App.4th 676, 690-691.)

Even if Quintero had argued his lack of proficiency in English rendered the arbitration agreement procedurally unconscionable, he still would have to demonstrate the agreement was substantively unconscionable. (Little v. Auto Stiegler, Inc. (2003) 29 Cal.4th 1064, 1071.) Quintero failed to make that showing. His only hook for substantive unconscionability is that the arbitration agreement contains a class action waiver, which, he says, makes the agreement substantively unconscionable. It does not. (Iskanian v. CLS Trans. Los Angeles, LLC, 59 Cal. 4th 348, 360 (2014) (class action waivers in employer-employee arbitration agreements are enforceable), abrogated on other grounds by Viking River Cruises, Inc. v. Moriana (2022) 142 S.Ct. 906.)

Because the Court is granting Niagara’s motion to compel arbitration, proceedings in this Court are stayed pending the outcome of the arbitration. (Code of Civil Procedure Section 1281.4.) The Court is setting a hearing on the status of the arbitration for January 17, 2024 at 8:30 a.m.