Unreported / Non-Citable
Background
Arianna Marino brought putative class claims against Aven Financial under the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act and California’s Consumer Credit Reporting Agencies Act. Aven moved to compel arbitration under the parties’ agreement. The agreement delegated disputes about arbitrability—the threshold question whether a claim belongs in arbitration—to an arbitrator, while excluding claims involving home-equity loans or products from the definition of arbitrable disputes.
The district court denied Aven’s motion. Marino maintained that her claims fell within the home-equity carveout and that the Dodd-Frank Act prevented arbitration. Aven appealed from the refusal to compel arbitration.
The Court’s Holding
The Ninth Circuit reversed in an unpublished memorandum. It distinguished the scope question—whether Marino’s claims actually fall within the home-equity carveout—from the antecedent question of who decides that issue. The agreement clearly assigned disputes about arbitrability to an arbitrator, so the arbitrator must interpret and apply the carveout.
The delegation also covered Marino’s contention that federal law invalidated the arbitration provision. A court may decide a challenge directed specifically at the delegation clause, but Marino’s statutory argument attacked arbitration more generally and did not explain why the delegation provision itself was invalid. The panel remanded with instructions to grant the motion to compel, without deciding whether the underlying claims ultimately must be arbitrated.
Key Takeaways
- A contractual carveout from arbitration does not itself establish that a court decides whether the carveout applies.
- Clear language delegating arbitrability can send both scope and statutory-preclusion questions to the arbitrator.
- A party seeking judicial review must direct its enforceability challenge specifically to the delegation clause.
- The ruling compels an arbitral decision on arbitrability; it does not decide the ultimate merits or scope of arbitration.
Why It Matters
Financial-services agreements often combine broad arbitration language with product-specific exclusions. This decision shows why drafting the delegation provision separately and clearly can control the forum even when the parties vigorously dispute an exclusion.
For California class-action lawyers, the pleading and briefing lesson is equally important: a general attack on an arbitration agreement may leave a delegation clause untouched. Challenges should explain independently why the delegation itself is invalid or inapplicable.