Court Opinion

ID: 9948687
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2024-03-07 18:00:56.608173+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:25:45.565621
License: Public Domain

NOT FOR PUBLICATION                           FILED
                    UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS                        MAR 7 2024
                                                                      MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK
                                                                       U.S. COURT OF APPEALS
                           FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

ALEXANDRIA MOSLEY, et al.,                      No.    23-55478

                Plaintiffs-Appellants,          D.C. No.
                                                3:22-cv-01976-DMS-AHG
 v.

WELLS FARGO & COMPANY; WELLS                    MEMORANDUM*
FARGO BANK, N.A.,

                Defendants-Appellees.

                  Appeal from the United States District Court
                     for the Southern District of California
                 Dana M. Sabraw, Chief District Judge, Presiding

                          Submitted February 15, 2024**
                              Pasadena, California

Before: BOGGS,*** NGUYEN, and LEE, Circuit Judges.

      Plaintiffs-Appellants Alexandria Mosley, Rejoyce Kemp, Berenice Cisneros,

and Bruce Parker (“Claimants”) are four of nearly four thousand individuals who

      *
             This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent
except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3.
      **
             The panel unanimously concludes this case is suitable for decision
without oral argument. See Fed. R. App. P. 34(a)(2).
      ***
            The Honorable Danny J. Boggs, United States Circuit Judge for the
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, sitting by designation.
filed near-identical individual demands against Wells Fargo with the American

Arbitration Association (“AAA”). Claimants alleged in federal court that Wells

Fargo breached their Arbitration Agreements by substituting class-wide arbitration

procedures for what they claimed were bilateral arbitrations specified in the

Agreements, and stated second and third causes of action in which they repeated

the substantive claims against Wells Fargo that they described in their arbitration

demands. The district court compelled claimants to return to arbitration,

concluding that the parties “clearly and unmistakably” delegated questions about

arbitrability to the arbitrator. We agree.

      This court reviews de novo the decision to grant or deny a motion to compel

arbitration. Bushey v. Credit Suisse First Boston, 360 F.3d 1149, 1152 (9th Cir.

2004); Stover v. Experian Holdings, Inc., 978 F.3d 1082, 1085 (9th Cir. 2020). The

district court’s underlying factual findings are reviewed for clear error, and the

“interpretation and meaning of contract provisions” are reviewed de novo.

Milenbach v. Comm’r, 318 F.3d 924, 930 (9th Cir. 2003); Balen v. Holland Am.

Line Inc., 583 F.3d 647, 652 (9th Cir. 2009).

      We affirm the district court. Because the parties are familiar with the factual

and procedural history of this case, we need not recount it here.

      1. The district court did not err in finding that the Process Arbitrator’s

(“PA”) Order was interlocutory and not subject to judicial review. It is well-settled

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that questions of procedure relating to arbitration are outside of the purview of the

federal courts. Procedural questions involved in arbitration are “submitted to the

arbitrator, either expressly or implicitly, along with the merits of the dispute.”

McKesson Corp. v. Local 150 IBT, 969 F.2d 831, 834 (9th Cir. 1992). Likewise,

procedural questions are “not for the judge, but for an arbitrator to decide.” Stolt-

Nielson S.A. v. AnimalFeeds In’t Corp., 559 U.S. 662, 685 (2010).

      “The basic purpose of arbitration is the speedy disposition of disputes

without the expense and delay of extended court proceedings.” In re Sussex, 781

F.3d 1065, 1072 (9th Cir. 2015). In Sussex, this court noted that most sister circuits

“expressly preclude any mid-arbitration intervention” and that “review of an

arbitration proceeding comes at the beginning or the end, but not in the middle.”

Id. at 1073 (quoting Blue Cross Blue Shield of Mass. v. BCS Ins. Co., 671 F.3d

635, 638 (7th Cir. 2011)). To “permit what is in effect an appeal from an

interlocutory ruling of the arbitrator would frustrate” the purpose of arbitration. Id.

at 1072.

      No Claimant has yet won or lost a claim against Wells Fargo; an arbitration

award has not been given. Instead, Claimants have refused to comply with

information requests from Wells Fargo after months of arbitration and a PA Order

and now seek to circumvent the PA Order in federal court. The PA Order is not a

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final order that invites judicial review, as noted by the district court, and the

“extreme case” exception does not apply.

      This court has reserved the “remote possibility” that a theoretical “extreme

case” exists whereby “severe irreparable injury” and “manifest injustice” would be

done if intermediate judicial review were to be withheld. Aerojet-Gen. Corp. v.

Am. Arb. Ass’n, 478 F.2d 248, 251 (9th Cir. 1973). In Sussex, this court stated,

over 40 years after Aerojet, that the Ninth Circuit has never approved a federal

court intervening in mid-arbitration, before holding that it refused to do so in that

case too. 781 F.3d at 1073. Claimants have not argued that their case falls within

the Aerojet exception in their opening brief and, thus, it has been waived. Tri-

Valley CAREs v. U.S. Dep’t of Energy, 671 F.3d 1113, 1129–30 (9th Cir. 2012).

      2. The district court did not err in concluding that the parties “clearly and

unmistakably” delegated arbitrability. The authority of an arbitrator to “determine

the validity or application of any of the provisions of the arbitration clause” is a

threshold issue. See Momot v. Mastro, 652 F.3d 982, 988 (9th Cir. 2011). When the

parties have “clearly and unmistakably” delegated such issues, the validity of the

arbitration agreement is for the arbitrator, not the court, to decide. AT&T Techs.,

Inc. v. Commc’ns Workers of America, 475 U.S. 643, 649 (1986). Even where

parties agree to delegate gateway issues to the arbitrator, a court may decline to

compel arbitration in some extreme cases where one party defaults or entirely

                                           4
refuses to cooperate in arbitration. Sink v. Aden Enters. Inc., 352 F.3d 1197, 1201–

02 (9th Cir. 2003). In such an instance, compelling arbitration would be

“inconsistent with the structure and purpose of the FAA.” Id. at 1200.

      Here, the Arbitration Agreement provides that AAA will “hear the dispute

between Wells Fargo and you” and defines “dispute” as “any unresolved

disagreement with Wells Fargo and you” including the “Arbitration Agreement’s

meaning, application, or enforcement.” According to the Arbitration Agreement,

disputes about the agreement itself are to go to the “arbitrator” who “will decide

whether it is enforceable.”

      This is not an extreme case. Unlike in Sink, Wells Fargo did not act

improperly or otherwise breach the agreement. In fact, Wells Fargo simply sought

information establishing that each Claimant had a legitimate dispute with them.

Wells Fargo complied with the Arbitration Agreement and paid more than half a

million dollars in arbitration fees over several months of arbitration before

Claimants filed their case in federal court.

      As noted by the district court, the provisions in the Arbitration Agreement

“clearly and unmistakably” delegated the gateway issue of arbitrability to the

arbitrator and the district court was correct in compelling arbitration.

      3. The district court did not err in compelling Claim I. When an arbitration

agreement delegates meaning, application, enforcement, or scope to the arbitrator,

                                           5
the delegation is considered “a mini-arbitration agreement, nestled within a larger

one.” Caremark LLC v. Chickasaw Nation, 43 F.4th 1021, 1029 (9th Cir. 2022). In

Caremark, this court held that “all arguments going to the scope or enforceability

of the arbitration provision are for the arbitrator to decide in the first instance,” and

compelled arbitration.

      In Oracle America, Inc. v. Myriad Group A.G., the question for the court

was whether the parties had “clearly and unmistakably” agreed to delegate

authority to the arbitrator. 724 F.3d 1069, 1076 (9th Cir. 2013). This court held that

they did, even against Oracle’s argument that “a carve-out provision in the parties’

arbitration clause expresses their intent that a court would decide arbitrability.” Id.

      In fact, this court noted that “Oracle’s argument conflates the scope of the

arbitration clause, i.e., which claims fall within the carve-out provision, with the

question of who decides arbitrability.” Id. Oracle’s argument concerned certain

categories of claims to be exempted from arbitration and this court held that “the

decision that a claim [falls within the carve-out provision] constitutes an

arbitrability determination, which the parties have clearly and unmistakably

delegated to the arbitrator.”

      Here, the language of the Arbitration Agreement is clear—all disputes,

including those pertaining to the Arbitration Agreement itself, go to the arbitrator.

Questions about its scope, including whether the carve-out provision applies to

                                            6
Count I, also go to the arbitrator. Even if Claimants are right and the carve-out

provision did apply to Count I, the Arbitration Agreement still delegates to the

arbitrator, not the federal court, the authority to make that decision in the first

instance.

      We therefore AFFIRM the judgment of the district court.

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