Court Opinion

ID: 9885606
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-10-06 13:08:01.63578+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:48:55.328088
License: Public Domain

Desmond, J.
(dissenting). I dissent and vote to affirm.
Whether respondent ever consented to arbitration was, on this record, a question of fact, and the negative answer to that question given by both courts below, leaves us powerless to reconsider it. No one can be forced into arbitration unless by plain language he actually agrees to arbitrate (Matter of Lehman v. Ostrovsky, 264 N. Y. 130, 132), and such an agreement is not established, conclusively and as matter of law, by a showing that he signed a contract Avhich incorporated by reference only and with no mention of arbitration, another document which, although he did not know it, contained a consent to arbitration. Decisions in cases where a party signed a contract without reading it, are not helpful here. Respondent, so it has *89been found as fact by both courts below, never saw the document “ incorporated by reference ” into the contract he did see and sign, never knew that appellant desired an agreement on arbitration, and never in fact knew that the other, or ‘ ‘ incorporated ”, document prescribed arbitration. In legal effect, the situation is identical with that in the two cases cited by the Appellate Division (Matter of General Silk Importing Co. [Gerseta Gorp.], 198 App. Div. 16, and Matter of Bachmann, Emmerich & Co. [Wenger & Co.], 204 App. Div. 282) where the arbitration provision was in the rules of the Silk Association, by which rules the sales involved in the two cited eases were “ governed ”.
Loughran, Ch. J., Conway, Dye and Froessel, JJ., concur with Lewis, J.; Desmond, J., dissents in opinion in which Fuld, J., concurs.
Orders reversed, etc.