In three cases in recent months, courts have found that plaintiffs who did not sign an arbitration agreement (non-signatories) are not obligated to arbitrate. In all three cases, a key issue was that the plaintiff’s claims in court did not rely on the contract containing the arbitration clause.

In the most interesting and widely applicable case, the Fifth Circuit found that a spouse is not necessarily bound by an arbitration agreement signed by her spouse. Zinante v. Drive Electric, LLC, 2014 WL 4567762 (5th Cir. Sept. 16, 2014). After a defective electric golf cart allegedly caused a fire in Mrs. Zinante’s home, she sued the seller of the cart. The seller moved to compel arbitration, based on a clause in the purchase agreement that only her husband executed. The seller first argued that Mrs. Zinante was equitably estopped from avoiding arbitration. The Fifth Circuit disagreed, because Mrs. Zinante’s claims were not based on the purchase agreement nor “intertwined” with the purchase agreement (she claimed negligence). The seller also argued that Mrs. Zinante was a third party beneficiary of the purchase agreement. Without even cracking a joke, the court noted there was “no evidence that [husband] intended for his spouse [] to benefit from the purchase of the golf cart.” [Couldn’t there have been a funny footnote about how she didn’t even golf? Or how the husband kept the cart in the neighbor’s garage so the wife couldn’t use it?] In sum, the court found “the spousal relationship alone does not make Zinante a third party beneficiary to the contract.”

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