Rocket Mortgage’s Arbitration Terms Not ‘Reasonably Conspicuous,’ Says Plaintiff

The U.S. District Court for Arizona in Phoenix should deny Rocket Mortgage’s motion to compel Darren MacDonald’s Telephone Consumer Protection Act claims to arbitration “for the same reason other district courts across the country have denied substantively similar motions by Rocket,” said the plaintiff's response in opposition Friday (docket 2:23-cv-02558). That’s because notice of the website terms containing the arbitration agreement that Rocket seeks to enforce wasn’t “reasonably conspicuous” on the website that Rocket claims MacDonald visited, it said. Drawing all reasonable inferences in MacDonald’s favor, “the only reasonable conclusion” to be drawn from Rocket’s website “is that it was designed to obscure the notice constituting users’ agreement to the terms containing the arbitration agreement,” it said. MacDonald alleges that Rocket places unsolicited calls and sends unsolicited text messages to consumers without their consent, including to numbers listed on the national do not call registry (see 2312120001). He further alleges that company employees have listed cold calling as a core part of the job description in their LinkedIn profiles. Rocket filed concurrent motions last month to dismiss MacDonald’s Dec. 11 TCPA class action and to compel his claims to arbitration (see 2402120008).