Those Are Not My Electrons!

Fabian v. Renovate N. Am., Inc., No. D075519 (D4d1 Dec. 4, 2019)

This is an appeal of the denial of a motion to compel arbitration, based on the trial court’s finding that the plaintiff didn’t actually electronically sign the contract. Defendant relied only on the signature itself and a declaration stating only that the Plaintiff “entered into the contract.” Plaintiff, however, denied ever having seen or signed the contract. In the absence of more evidence, the trial court held that Defendant didn’t bear its burden to show that the signature was authentic. 

It doesn’t take much to authenticate a digital signature. You just have to show that the appearance of the signature on the document was attributable though some volitional act of the signatory. Often, that takes the form of evidence showing how the e-signature software works. Plaintiff’s signature here was applied through DocuSign, a software that’s often used to e-sign certain documents. But Defendant didn’t offer any evidence of how DocuSign worked, which meant the signature alone wasn’t enough to tie the signature back to some affirmative act of Plaintiff.

Nor was the declaration that the agreement was “entered into” enough. The declaration didn’t actually describe the circumstances under which the document was signed. It didn’t explain how the document was sent to, handled by, or received from the Plaintiff. It didn’t describe how the DocuSign process worked. Absent some actual evidence tying the signature on the document to an act by Plaintiff, that too doesn’t show the document was signed.

Affirmed.