Revitch received an automated advertising call from DirecTV to his cell phone, and sued alleging violations of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act. Revitch was a wireless customer of AT&T, so DirecTV moved to compel arbitration under its sibling corporation’s wireless service contract with Revitch. This recent case out of the Northern District of California, Revitch v. DirecTV, LLC, No. 18-cv-01127-JCS, denied the motion, finding that the arbitration clause did not cover claims with DirecTV completely unrelated to the wireless services provided under the AT&T contract.

It was true that the arbitration provision covered affiliates, and it was also true that DirecTV was an affiliate of AT&T, having become sibling companies a few years after Revitch entered into the contract with AT&T. But the court characterized the establishment of this relationship as a “completely fortuitous fact.” The court noted that the intention for wording the clause broadly and including affiliates was typically to cover situations regarding assignments or successors. Nothing of the sort had happened here. No benefits under the contract had been assigned to DirecTV, nor had DirecTV undertaken any obligations under the contract. The calls Revitch was complaining about had nothing at all to do with the wireless service covered by the contract. So the precedent DirecTV tried to rely on was all distinguishable in the view of the court: “The Court concludes that Adams and Andermann, at most, support the conclusion that an entity may become an affiliate subject to the arbitration contract after the time of contracting where that relationship arises from an assignment of the underlying agreement or a related entity becomes a successor to the original contracting entity. That is not the case here.”

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