Plaintiff Can’t Be Compelled to Arbitrate Her Claims vs. Apptness, Says Her Opposition

The arguments in Apptness Media Group’s Jan. 22 motion to compel Cindy Luchinske’s Telephone Consumer Protection Act claims to arbitration (see 2401240052) are “without merit” and the motion should be denied, said her response in opposition Friday (docket 2:23-cv-00267) in U.S. District Court for Eastern Washington in Spokane. The case presents “a straightforward contract issue,” said the opposition. In asking whether Apptness has proven the existence of a valid and enforceable arbitration agreement between itself and Luchinske, the answer “is a resounding no,” it said. There’s no “meeting of the minds here because there has never been any meeting at all,” it said. The plaintiff has never had any relationship with Apptness, it said. She never visited the websites on which its motion hinges, it said. She didn’t provide false and inaccurate personal information on those sites, and she never made any agreements with Apptness. “In the face of those truths,” all that Apptness can, and “very dubiously,” claim” in its motion is that some unknown user submitted Luchinske’s information, including her phone number, to various websites owned by Apptness or by nonparty C4R Media, it said. But most of that information is “flat wrong,” and the anonymous user wasn’t Luchinske, it said. Against that backdrop, and because the court must give Luchinske “the benefit of all reasonable doubts and inferences” that may arise on the motion, Apptness has “failed entirely” to satisfy its substantial burden to establish the existence of a valid and enforceable arbitration agreement, it said.