California Court of Appeal

In this case, plaintiff sued her former employer and related individuals and entities alleging claims arising from her employment, including wrongful termination, harassment, and defamation. The trial court granted defendants' motion to stay the litigation until completion of binding arbitration based on an arbitration agreement that plaintiff signed when she was first hired by defendant Balco Properties Ltd. The arbitrator ultimately found in defendants' favor on all issues and the trial court granted defendants' petition to confirm the arbitration award and entered judgment in their favor. The judgment in defendants' favor is affirmed, where: 1) under the sliding scale approach, because the degree of procedural unconscionability is minimal, the agreement is unenforceable only if the degree of substantive unconscionability is high; 2) because the substantively unconscionable attorney fees provision was severed by the trial court before arbitration was commenced, no substantive unconscionability has been shown; and 3) the trial court therefore did not err in compelling plaintiff to arbitrate her employment-related claims.

Appellate Information

• Decided 03/16/2015
• Published 03/16/2015

Judges

• Ruvolo

Court

• California Court of Appeal

Counsel