Opinion ID: 4013252
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Prima Paint Doctrine

Text: As an initial matter, we address D.R. Horton's argument regarding the court of appeals' alleged failure to heed the Prima Paint doctrine.4 In Prima Paint, the Supreme Court held that to avoid arbitration, a party must assert a contractual defense to the arbitration agreement itself, and not to the contract as a whole. See 388 U.S. at 406. Thus, for example, a party must allege that the arbitration agreement is unconscionable, not that the entire contract is unconscionable. See S.C. Pub. Serv. Auth., 312 S.C. at 562–63, 437 S.E.2d at 24. Similarly, in conducting an unconscionability inquiry, courts may only consider the provisions of the arbitration agreement itself, and not those of the whole contract. Here, the parties fundamentally disagree on the application of the Prima Paint doctrine to the Agreement. D.R. Horton asserts that the arbitration agreement is wholly contained in subparagraph 14(g). Therefore, according to D.R. Horton, the Court may not consider any of the remaining subparagraphs of paragraph 14—such as subparagraph 14(i)'s damages limitation—in determining whether the arbitration agreement is unconscionable. We disagree. Like the lower courts, we construe the entirety of paragraph 14, entitled Warranties and Dispute Resolution, as the arbitration agreement. As the title indicates, all the subparagraphs of paragraph 14 must be read as a whole to understand the scope of the warranties and how different disputes are to be handled. The subparagraphs within paragraph 14 contain numerous crossreferences to one another, intertwining the subparagraphs so as to constitute a single provision. Thus, in accordance with the Prima Paint doctrine, we find that in determining whether the arbitration agreement is unconscionable, we may properly consider the entirety of paragraph 14.