Employee signed an acknowledgement of an employee handbook that contained an arbitration clause. The acknowledgment didn’t specifically call out the arbitration provision—there was no requirement of separate initialing or something like that. Plaintiff now says he’s not bound to the agreement. But that’s wrong. In Sanchez v. Valencia Holding Co., LLC, 61 Cal. 4th 899, 914 (2015) the California Supreme Court held that there is no obligation to highlight an arbitration clause in a contract and that if someone doesn’t bother to read a contract before signing it, it is their problem.
Of course, the context of the signing does go to procedural unconscionability. The fact that a clause is buried in a take it or leave it employee handbook gives rise to at least mild procedural unconscionability. And here, two parts of the agreement were substantively unconscionable—it required an employee to pay its pro rata share of the arbitrator’s fees, and it permits a prevailing employer to recover its attorneys’ fees. Both of those violate Armendariz v. Foundation Health Psychcare Services, Inc., 24 Cal. 4th 83, 112 (2000). The Court of Appeal, however, finds that these terms are severable. So remands for the trial court to sever the unconscionable terms and to otherwise compel the case to arbitration.
Reversed.
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