Janell Goffe v. Foulke Management Corp; Sasha Robinson and Tijuana Johnson v. Mall Chevrolet (081258) (Camden County and Statewide) (A-3/4-18

Janell Goffe v. Foulke Management Corp; Sasha Robinson and Tijuana Johnson v. Mall Chevrolet (081258) (Camden County and Statewide) (A-3/4-18; 080394) The trial courts’ resolution of these matters was correct and consistent with clear rulings from the United States Supreme Court that bind state and federal courts on how challenges such as plaintiffs’ should proceed. Those rulings do not permit threshold issues about overall contract validity to be resolved by the courts when the arbitration agreement itself is not specifically challenged. Here, plaintiffs attack the sales contracts in their entirety, not the language or clarity of the agreements to arbitrate or the broad delegation clauses contained in those signed arbitration agreements. The Supreme Court’s precedent compels only one conclusion: an arbitrator must resolve plaintiffs’ claims about the validity of their sales contracts as well as any arbitrability claims that plaintiffs may choose to raise.