“E-Signing Arbitration Agreements in a Remote World”

JD Supra has published this article by Beatrice Nunez-Bellamy of Davis Wright Tremaine, discussing the California Court of Appeal decision in Bannister v. Marinidence OPCO, LLC. In Bannister, the appeals court affirmed the lower court’s determination that an electronically signed arbitration agreement was not enforceable because the employer did not definitively prove that the employee had signed the agreement. Specifically, “although Marinidence presented evidence that knowledge of Ms. Bannister’s social security number, employee identification information, and pin code were required to sign the agreement, Ms. Bannister persuaded the court that the employer also had that information and thus could have signed the document for her.”

The takeway, according to the article, is that “[t]o create an enforceable agreement when using e-signatures, the employee’s signature should also be verifiable, such that only the employee for whom the document applies could have signed the agreement.”