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A party seeking a court order compelling arbitration must offer evidence that the other party had actual notice of the arbitration agreement, and a company policy to provide customers with the agreement is not sufficient to show actual notice, a federal district court in Pennsylvania held.
In Schwartz v. Comcast Corp., No. 05-2340, 2006 WL 3251092 (E.D. Pa. Nov. 8, 2006), Schwartz brought a class action against Comcast, claiming that Comcast breached its contract to provide uninterrupted high-speed internet service.
Comcast moved to compel arbitration pursuant to an arbitration clause in its subscriber agreement. In opposing the motion, Schwartz argued that he never received a copy of the subscriber agreement and therefore did not agree to arbitration. Comcast attempted to prove that Schwartz received the subscriber agreement by citing company policy that Comcast technicians give the agreement to all customers.
The Court held that the company policy was not sufficient to show that this particular customer received actual notice of the subscriber agreement. The Court also pointed out that Comcast did not produce any evidence to contradict Schwartz’s claim that he did not have knowledge of the arbitration agreement. For those reasons, the Court denied Comcast’s motion to compel arbitration.
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