Vazquez v. SaniSure, Inc., 101 Cal. App. 5th 139 (2024)

Jasmine Vazquez began working at a pharmaceutical company through a staffing agency and was later hired by the company as an at-will employee. At the time of initial hire, Vazquez agreed that claims she had against the company would be submitted to and determined exclusively by binding arbitration and that she would bring any claim individually, waiving her right to pursue a class or collective action. Two years into her first period of employment she terminated her employment but then returned to the company a few months later and negotiated a new employment agreement. The parties did not discuss whether she would need to sign an arbitration agreement again or whether her claims related to her employment would be subject to arbitration. Her second period of employment with the company ended less than a year later.

After her second period of employment, Vazquez filed a class action in which she alleged the company failed to provide proper wage statements during her second period of employment. The employer moved to compel the complaint to arbitration. The trial court denied the motion to compel arbitration, holding that the parties did not agree to arbitrate claims arising from Vazquez’s second stint of employment, nor did the employer “show the existence of an implied agreement to submit claims arising from that second stint to arbitration; the agreement covering [plaintiff’s] first stint of employment terminated in May 2021, and there was no evidence that the parties intended it to apply thereafter.” The Court of Appeal affirmed the trial court’s decision as the employer “failed to carry its ‘almost impossible’ burden of showing that the trial court erred as a matter of law when it denied the motion to compel arbitration.”