Christopher ALARCON, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. VITAL RECOVERY SERVICES, INC. and Galaxy Asset Purchasing, LLC, Defendants-Appellees.
No. 16-55523
United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit.
Filed December 13, 2017
Argued and Submitted December 4, 2017 Pasadena, California
394
Damian P. Richard, Sessions Fishman Nathan & Israel, LLP, San Diego, CA, for Defendants-Appellees
Before: D.W. NELSON and REINHARDT, Circuit Judges, and STEEH,* District Judge.
MEMORANDUM **
The district court concluded that there was a valid agreement to arbitrate between the parties that encompassed the dispute at issue, see Knutson v. Sirius XM Radio Inc., 771 F.3d 559, 564-65 (9th Cir. 2014), and granted Defendants’ motion to compel arbitration. Although the FAA “embodies the national policy favoring arbitration[,] . . . the liberal federal policy regarding the scope of arbitrable issues is inapposite when the question is whether a particular party is bound by the arbitration agreement.” Norcia v. Samsung Telecommns. Am., LLC, 845 F.3d 1279, 1291 (9th Cir. 2017) (citations omitted). A district court should not decide as a matter of law that the parties entered into an agreement to arbitrate when there is a genuine issue of fact concerning the formation of any agreement. See Three Valleys Mun. Water Dist. v. E.F. Hutton & Co., 925 F.2d 1136, 1141 (9th Cir. 1991); see also Cordas v. Uber Techs., 228 F.Supp.3d 985, 989 (N.D. Cal. 2017). “The district court, when considering a motion to compel arbitration which is opposed on the ground that no agreement to arbitrate had been made between the parties, should give to the opposing party the benefit of all reasonable doubts and inferences that may arise.” Three Valleys, 925 F.2d at 1141 (citation omitted); see also Cordas, 228 F.Supp.3d at 989.
The district court clearly erred in finding that the Defendants met their burden of proving the existence of an agreement to arbitrate by a preponderance of the evidence. See Knutson, 771 F.3d at 565. Defendants provided no facts supporting their assertion that Galaxy had been assigned Beneficial‘s contractual rights and thus was a party to an agreement to arbitrate with Alarcon. Defendants offered only a Declaration by an “authorized representative” of Galaxy that she was authorized to review Galaxy‘s files. The Declaration is both insufficient and inadmissible.
Moreover, the Declaration‘s legal conclusion is inadmissible in any form. Although the Declaration might have served to authenticate actual business records had Defendants attached any, the Declaration itself is not an admissible business record or summary of business records because it was prepared for litigation and not regularly kept as part of the practice of any business.
Because there was no admissible evidence of an agreement to arbitrate between the parties, we REVERSE and REMAND with instructions to reinstate Alarcon‘s complaint and to deny Defendants’ motion to compel arbitration.