Court of Appeal Provides Guidance to Employers on Preparing Enforceable Employee Arbitration Agreements
By Gene Williams, The Maloney Firm, APC
 

The 1st District Court of Appeal shot down an employee arbitration agreement that was egregiously one-sided toward the employer and was forced upon the employee with no time to review it. In finding the agreement unconscionable and unenforceable, the Court set forth a number of guidelines that should help employers create employee arbitration agreements, or modify existing agreements, that stand up to judicial scrutiny and will be held enforceable.
 

In Carlson v. Home Team Pest Defense Inc., 2015 DJDAR 9447 (Aug. 17, 2015), the Court of Appeal upheld the trial court’s denial of the defendant’s motion to compel arbitration. The plaintiff, Julia Carlson, accepted an offer of employment from defendant Home Team Pest Defense. On her first day, Carlson was given access to the company’s electronic system that contained the company policies, including the agreement to arbitrate. However, Carlson was not given access to the dispute resolution policy, which set forth the arbitration terms. When Carlson complained that she did not have access to the policy, and that she did not feel comfortable signing the agreement without seeing the policy and negotiating the terms, she was told that she could call a telephone number “in a couple of weeks” to see if someone had a copy of the policy. She was advised, however, that she could not wait to review the policy before signing the agreement to arbitrate, and that refusal to sign would be considered a refusal to accept the job offer. Fearful of losing the potential job, as well as her unemployment benefits, Carlson agreed to sign the agreement.
 

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