Validity and scope of mandatory arbitration provision.

The plaintiff was employed by TruGreen as a sales and telemarketing technician for approximately four months. Following his termination, he applied for and was hired by Terminix. Terminix and TruGreen are subsidiaries of ServiceMaster Corporation. On two separate occasions during his employment with Terminix, the plaintiff was provided with the ServiceMaster Corporation Associate Handbook, which included an arbitration obligation for all employment-related disputes. After the plaintiff resigned his employment from Terminix, he commenced a discrimination and wrongful termination claim against TruGreen. TruGreen sought to dismiss the claim based upon the arbitration provision in the ServiceMaster handbook executed during the subsequent period of employment. In affirming the trial court's denial of TruGreen's motion to dismiss, the Appellate Division concluded that the language of the ServiceMaster arbitration agreement did not reflect an unambiguous intention to arbitrate a claim that the plaintiff had against his former employer, and the fact that both Terminix and TruGreen were subsidiaries of ServiceMaster did not make the handbook's terms applicable to an earlier period of employment.

Case Law Alert, 3rd Quarter 2013