Hunton Employment & Labor Perspectives

On April 10, 2019, the California Court of Appeals, Second District, in Diaz v. Sohnen Enterprises, 2019 S.O.S. 1722, ruled that an employee impliedly consents to an arbitration agreement by simply continuing to work, despite never signing the arbitration agreement and even outright rejecting it.

Prior to distributing arbitration agreements to its employees, Sohnen notified them that it was adopting a new dispute resolution policy requiring arbitration of all claims and specified that continued employment would constitute an implied consent of the agreement’s terms.  One of Sohnen’s employees, Erika Diaz, verbally rejected the arbitration agreement but nevertheless continued working at Sohnen.