Now that we know the Supreme Court is not going to be addressing non-signatories’ ability to compel arbitration this term (at least not in the Toyota case), we can take a moment to look at what lower courts are doing with that issue.   In short, the trend is for courts to clarify that it is very difficult for defendants who do not have an arbitration agreement with the plaintiff (non-signatories) to use equitable estoppel to compel arbitration of the plaintiff’s claims based on the plaintiff’s arbitration agreement with another party.

In Rajagopalan v. NoteWorld, LLC, 718 F.3d 844 (9th Cir. 2013), an engineer who could not repay his school loans signed up with a company offering debt solutions.  His contract with the debt solutions company contained an arbitration clause.  When the debt solutions did not materialize, the engineer sued a third party, NoteWorld, which had withdrawn money from his bank account as part of the debt solution program and refused to refund it.  NoteWorld had no agreement to arbitrate with the engineer, but sought to compel arbitration anyway, relying in part on equitable estoppel.  With respect to the equitable estoppel doctrine, the Ninth Circuit made clear that there is a nearly insurmountable burden for a non-signatory defendant to meet to compel arbitration.  “We have never previously allowed a non-signatory defendant to invoke equitable estoppel against a signatory plaintiff, and we decline to expand the doctrine here.”

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