Second Circuit Holds Email Notice of Arbitration Agreement
Insufficient   On September 7, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the
Second Circuit held that three plaintiff consumers were not
bound to arbitrate certain claims related to their purchase of a
discount club membership because email notice of the arbitration
clause was insufficient. Schnabel v. Trilegiant Corp., No.
11-1311 WL 3871366 (2nd Cir. Sep. 7, 2012). On appeal of the
district court’s denial of its motion to compel arbitration, the
membership club marketer argued that it provided the plaintiffs
with notice of an arbitration provision (i) through a hyperlink
appearing on the page the plaintiffs would have seen before
enrolling in a service offered by the defendants and (ii)
through an email sent to the plaintiffs after their enrollment.
The Second Circuit disagreed and affirmed the district court’s
decision. According to the court, the email notice containing
the arbitration clause “was both temporally and spatially
decoupled from the plaintiffs’ e