Court Opinion

ID: 9462074
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 22:31:16.441453+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:37:23.357368
License: Public Domain

BAUER, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
I must respectfully dissent.
The majority opinion, it seems to me, does violence to some very fundamental concepts of contract law. While I am most willing to agree that “parties to a contract may agree to submit to the jurisdiction of a particular court and may also agree as to the method and manner of notice” as recited in the majority opinion, I am unwilling to agree that a signature on an “order form” without any indication as to what was ordered constitutes a “contract.”
In order to arbitrate, or select a forum to try, issues arising from disagreements over a contract, I would suggest that there must be a contract. In its very simplest terms a contract has always been described as a “promise for a promise” or, even more elementary, “a meeting of the minds”. The document relied upon in this case leaves to total imagination the number of catalogs to be delivered or paid for. It totally lacks the essential requisites for the existence of a contract. There is no possible way, by examining the document, that anyone can tell what performance is called for by either of the signing parties. Nor is there any document in existence in *1215which the parties agree to buy or sell any particular quantity of catalogs.
The majority opinion discusses the “separability” of arbitration agreements and quotes at length from the Matter of Weinrott, 32 N.Y.2d 192, 344 N.Y.S.2d 848, 298 N.E.2d 42. It is interesting to note that Weinrott involves a defense of fraudulent inducement — a defense which admits a prima facie valid contract. In such a case, I agree that an arbitration agreement can be binding irrespective of the merits of the defense. In the instant ease, the document relied on is not a contract in any sense and there is therefore nothing to arbitrate or adjudicate. The doctrine of separability has no application because there is nothing to separate. There is nothing required to be delivered, nothing required to be paid, and nothing to arbitrate. We need not inquire into the validity of the “contract” — there is no “contract”.
The judgment of the district court should be reversed and the case dismissed.