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An appellate court in California held that a law partner's harassing behavior was outside the scope of his employment, so the partner was not entitled to invoke arbitration pursuant to the law firm's mandatory arbitration clause.
In Abou-Khalil v. Miles, No. G037752 No. G037752, 2007 WL 1589456 (Cal. Ct. App. June 04, 2007), Diane Abou-Khalil was an executive assistant at a law firm and Doug Miles was the managing partner. After Miles allegedly subjected Abou-Khalil to harassing behavior, she filed suit alleging several claims which included numerous intentional torts.
Miles moved to compel arbitration. The trial court denied Miles' motion as to the last four claims of Abou-Khalil's complaint, which consisted of the intentional tort claims. Miles appealed.
This Court rejected Miles' argument that the arbitration agreement he had signed with the firm and the arbitration agreement contained within the law firm's employment handbook entitled him to arbitrate claims arising from his employment.
The language of the agreement called for arbitration of disputes arising from the scope of employment with the law firm.
Admittedly, if the dispute had been over something having to do with Abou-Khalil's employment, such as a dispute over salary, the claims would have been found to arise from the scope of Miles' employment. If that were the case, the dispute would have been subject to binding arbitration in accordance with the arbitration agreement.
Here, however, the Court refused to conclude that Mile's purported behavior arose out of his employment with the firm, finding that no evidence existed to indicate that the law firm "intended its partners to sexually assault" its employees.
As such, Miles had no right to demand arbitration of the intentional tort claims against him under the arbitration agreement. The Court affirmed the trial court, holding that Abou-Khalil was not required to arbitrate those specific counts of her complaint.
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