Opinion ID: 3160802
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Concerted misconduct estoppel

Text: The district court’s rejection of concerted misconduct estoppel was not an abuse of discretion. No applicable authority supports the use of that theory in this case. First, the Supreme Court of Texas has clearly rejected the use of concerted misconduct estoppel to compel a non-signatory to arbitrate. See In re Merrill Lynch Trust Co. FSB, 235 S.W.3d 185, 191–95 (Tex. 2007); In re Labatt Food Serv., L.P., 279 S.W.3d 640, 644 (Tex. 2009). The Agents also rely on our decision in Grigson, where we held that a signatory was estopped from attempting to avoid arbitration by strategically suing only non-signatory 8 Case: 15-10117 Document: 00513298704 Page: 9 Date Filed: 12/08/2015 No. 15-10117 defendants. The claims in Grigson involved allegations of interdependent and concerted misconduct by both the signatories and non-signatories and relied on the agreement containing the arbitration clause. 210 F.3d at 527–28. Assuming arguendo that we could even apply Grigson in these circumstances, 7 it does not mandate compelling USHealth to arbitrate. In Grigson, we kept a signatory to an arbitration agreement from avoiding that agreement when suing non-signatories would have required the involvement of the other signatory to the arbitration agreement because of allegedly concerted misconduct. Id. at 527–28, 530–31. Principles of estoppel were applied against signatories to the arbitration agreement to prevent unfair gamesmanship. Since then, we have approvingly cited other courts’ determinations that this version of estoppel only applies to keep a signatory from avoiding its arbitration agreement. See Bridas, 345 F.3d at 361. We specifically noted that the reverse does not hold true: a signatory may not use the same logic to estop a non-signatory from avoiding arbitration. Id. Grigson does not support compelling the non-signatory, USHealth, to arbitrate in this case.