Opinion ID: 216075
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Availability of Remedies Under the Arbitration Agreement

Text: Although the enforceability of an arbitration clause often turns on state contract law, there is, at times, an additional requirement that grows out of the principle that while federal statutory claims can come within an arbitration agreement that is enforceable pursuant to the FAA, some federal statutory claims may not be appropriate for arbitration. Campbell, 407 F.3d at 552 (citing Gilmer v. Interstate/Johnson Lane Corp., 500 U.S. 20, 26, 111 S.Ct. 1647, 114 L.Ed.2d 26 (1991)). Here, the burden is on the party resisting arbitration to show (by means of statutory text, legislative history, or some inherent conflict between arbitration and the statute's purposes) that Congress, in enacting a particular statute, intended to preclude a waiver of a judicial forum for certain statutory claims. Id. (citing Gilmer, 500 U.S. at 26, 111 S.Ct. 1647). This court has previously held that employers and employees may agree to submit Title VII and ADA claims to arbitration and that this does not violate congressional intent. Rosenberg v. Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith, Inc., 170 F.3d 1, 7-12 (1st Cir.1999); Bercovitch v. Baldwin Sch., Inc., 133 F.3d 141, 148-51 (1st Cir.1998). Soto is bound by these holdings. She argues, however, that her arbitration agreement is unenforceable because in her view it impermissibly deprives the arbitrator of power to grant all of the remedies available under Title VII and the ADA. Cf. Awuah v. Coverall N. Am., Inc., 554 F.3d 7, 12 (1st Cir.2009) (If arbitration prevents plaintiffs from vindicating their rights, it is no longer a `valid alternative to traditional litigation.' (quoting Kristian v. Comcast Corp., 446 F.3d 25, 37 (1st Cir.2006))). Soto bases this challenge on the fact that the Spanish language agreement states that if the arbitrator rules in her favor, she may be reinstated or granted another remedy according to the rules of [the] Ritz-Carlton San Juan, and that the arbitrator will be authorized to impose any remedy that the Ritz-Carlton, San Juan rules allow. Soto argues that these provisions allow the Ritz-Carlton to define and limit the remedies available in arbitration. But as Soto does not point to any rules so limiting the remedies and the meaning of these provisions is not otherwise clear on their face, Soto's challenge fails under controlling Supreme Court and First Circuit precedent. The Supreme Court has made it clear that when a party challenges an arbitration agreement on the grounds that the agreement will prevent the party from vindicating his or her statutory rights, and the party's claim turns on a construction of ambiguous terms of the agreement, the challenge does not present a question of arbitrability to be decided by a court, but rather an issue of contract interpretation to be resolved in the first instance by an arbitrator. See PacifiCare Health Sys., Inc. v. Book, 538 U.S. 401, 407, 123 S.Ct. 1531, 155 L.Ed.2d 578 (2003); see also Green Tree Fin. Corp. v. Bazzle, 539 U.S. 444, 452-53, 123 S.Ct. 2402, 156 L.Ed.2d 414 (2003) (plurality opinion) (The question herewhether the contracts forbid class arbitration. . . should be for the arbitrator, not the courts, to decide.); Vimar Seguros y Reaseguros, S.A. v. M/V Sky Reefer, 515 U.S. 528, 541, 115 S.Ct. 2322, 132 L.Ed.2d 462 (1995) (holding that the question must be decided in the first instance by the arbitrator). The Supreme Court's decision in PacifiCare is instructive. There, the Court faced a potential conflict between an arbitration agreement that prohibited punitive damages and statutory language entitling the plaintiff to treble damages. See PacifiCare, 538 U.S. at 403, 123 S.Ct. 1531. The Court rejected plaintiff's claim that this conflict made the agreement unenforceable, explaining that it would not, on the basis of `mere speculation' that an arbitrator might interpret . . . ambiguous agreements in a manner that casts their enforceability into doubt, take upon [itself] the authority to decide the antecedent question of how the ambiguity is to be resolved. Id. at 406-07, 123 S.Ct. 1531. Reasoning that an arbitrator could interpret the agreement to avoid a direct conflict, the Court found no question of arbitrability and compelled arbitration. See id. at 407, 123 S.Ct. 1531 ([S]ince we do not know how the arbitrator will construe the remedial limitations, the questions whether they render the parties' agreements unenforceable and whether it is for courts or arbitrators to decide enforceability in the first instance are unusually abstract. . . . [T]he proper course is to compel arbitration.). In Anderson v. Comcast Corp., 500 F.3d 66 (1st Cir.2007), this court followed PacifiCare, holding that although there were direct conflicts between an arbitration agreement's multiple damages prohibition and a statute's multiple damages provision, the conflicts did not raise a question of arbitrability because one of the conflicts would only emerge under certain factual findings, and the other turned on an interpretation of state law. Id. at 72-75. Likewise, in Kristian, we explained that when a vindication of statutory rights claim is based on an ambiguity in the scope of a remedies limitation of an arbitration agreement, it is the arbitrator who should decide the question of enforceability in the first instance. Kristian, 446 F.3d at 45; see also Skirchak v. Dynamics Research Corp., 508 F.3d 49, 56 (1st Cir.2007) ([W]hen claims are submitted to arbitration, the question of whether class arbitration is forbidden is not a question of arbitrability, but initially a question of contract interpretation and should be decided in the first instance by an arbitrator. (footnote omitted)). [3] Applying this framework, we find that Soto's challenge fails, as what is meant by the contract's references to the rules of the Ritz-Carlton is ambiguous and open to different constructions. These include constructions under which there would be no conflict between the remedies available in arbitration and those provided by the ADA and Title VII. The arbitrator could interpret the agreement's reference to remedies according to the rules of [the] Ritz-Carlton to be the same as the remedies consistent with the laws governing The Ritz-Carlton, which is the language in the original English version. Those laws governing the Ritz-Carlton include the federal laws at issue here. Supporting this interpretation is the Ritz-Carlton's argument that the original English version contains the parties' obligations and that the reference to rules is just a sloppy translation error in translating the English form to Spanish. Further, the arbitrator could read the agreement's reference to the rules of the Ritz-Carlton as invoking the clause of the agreement that states that the arbitration is to be governed by the rules of the American Arbitration Association (AAA). Under Rule 39(d) of the AAA's Employment Arbitration Rules and Mediation Procedures, the arbitrator may grant any remedy or relief that would have been available to the parties had the matter been heard in court. These readings of the ambiguous language would prevent the conflict alleged by Soto. This ends her challenge.