In Reid v. SuperShuttle Int’l Inc., 2010 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 26831 (E.D.N.Y. Mar. 22, 2010), a New York federal court granted a franchisor’s motion to compel arbitration and, in doing so, upheld a waiver in the arbitration clause of the affected plaintiffs’ rights to bring class action claims. A group of SuperShuttle franchisees had brought a class action suit, claiming that they were employees of SuperShuttle rather than franchisees and that they were owed wages and employee benefits under various federal and New York state laws. SuperShuttle filed a motion to compel individual arbitrations and moved to dismiss those plaintiffs’ class action claims.
The court granted SuperShuttle’s motion to compel individual arbitrations, finding that the plaintiffs each had signed a franchise agreement containing an arbitration clause and that the litigation fell within its scope. The court also rejected the plaintiffs’ challenge to class action waiver language in the arbitration provision.
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