Tag: clickwrap

July 26, 2010 Contracts, Litigation

Forum selection clause in clickwrap agreement enforceable

Meier v. Midwest Recreational Clearninghouse, LLC, 2010 WL 2738921 (E.D. Cal. July 12, 2010)

Plaintiffs live in California and bought an RV online from a vendor in Minnesota. The vendor’s website terms of service had a provision requiring that all disputes “arising out of or related to the use” of the website be brought in state court in Minnesota.

When plaintiffs — who were unhappy about the RV — brought a lawsuit in federal court in California, defendants moved to dismiss for improper venue. The court granted the motion.

The court noted that under the Bremen case, forum selection clauses are prima facie enforceable. And the Carnival Cruise Lines case takes that notion even further, giving forum selection clauses this presumption of enforceability in preprinted agreements.

In this case, plaintiffs argued that the court shouldn’t enforce the forum selection clause because it wasn’t freely bargained for. And they claimed that enforcing it would effectively deny them their day in court.

But that did not sway the judge. The court found that there was no bad faith motive that put the forum selection clause in the clickwrap agreement. And even though litigating in Minnesota might be inconvenient for California residents, it was not enough to bar them from the judicial system.

Moreover, just like the Supreme Court noted in Carnival Cruise Lines, the presence of forum selection clauses can reduce the costs of litigation because they cut down on the number of pretrial motions arguing over venue. And they also help consumers — this cost savings should ostensibly be passed on.

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January 5, 2010 Contracts

Browsewrap website terms and conditions enforceable

Major v. McAllister, — S.W.3d —, 2009 WL 4959941 (Mo. App. December 23, 2009)

The Missouri Court of Appeals has issued an opinion that reflects a realistic grasp of how people use the web, and also serves as a definitive nod to self-responsibility. The court refused to accept a website end user’s argument that she should not be bound by the website terms and conditions that were presented to her in the familiar “browsewrap” format.

Click

Ms. Major used a website called ServiceMagic to find some contractors to remodel her home in Springfield, Missouri. Each page she saw during the process had a link to the website terms and conditions. At the point where she submitted her contact information to facilitate the signup process, she was presented with a link to the website’s terms and conditions. We’ve all seen this countless times — the link read, “By submitting you agree to the Terms of Use.”

Major admitted she never clicked on the link and therefore never read the terms and conditions. But had she clicked through she would have read a forum selection clause providing that all suits against ServiceMagic would have to be brought in Denver, Colorado.

When Major sued ServiceMagic in Missouri state court, ServiceMagic moved to dismiss, citing the forum selection clause. The trial court granted the motion and Major sought review. On appeal, the court affirmed the dismissal.

Major relied heavily on Specht v. Netscape, 306 F.3d 17 (2d Cir. 2002). The court in Specht held that end users of Netscape’s website who downloaded a certain application were not bound by the terms and conditions accompanying that download because the terms were not visible on the screen without scrolling down to see them.

But in this case the court found the terms and conditions (including the forum selection clause) to be enforceable. In contrast to Specht, the ServiceMagic site did give immediately visible notice of the existence of the terms of the agreement. Even though one would have to click through to read the terms, the presence of the link was sufficient to place the website user on reasonable notice of the terms, and subsequent use by the end user manifested assent to those terms.

Click image courtesy Flickr user smemon87 under this Creative Commons license.

October 26, 2009 Contracts, Litigation

Court upholds eBay forum selection clause

Tricome v. Ebay, Inc., 2009 WL 3365873 (E.D. Pa. October 19, 2009)

Everyone who signs up to use eBay has to assent to the terms of eBay’s User Agreement. Among other things, the User Agreement contains a forum selection clause that states all disputes between the user and eBay must be brought to court in Santa Clara County, California.

After eBay terminated plaintiff Tricome’s account, Tricome sued eBay in federal court in Pennsylvania. eBay moved to dismiss or to at least transfer the case, arguing that the forum selection clause required it. The court agreed and transferred the case to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

Plaintiff had argued that the court should not enforce the forum selection clause because it was procedurally and perhaps substantively unconscionable. The court found the agreement not to be procedurally unconscionable because Plaintiff did not have to enter into the agreement in the first place — he only did it to increase his online business. Furthermore, eBay did not employ any high pressure tactics to get Plaintiff to accept the User Agreement. Moreover, eBay had a legitimate interest in not being forced to litigate disputes all around the country.

The court likewise found the User Agreement was not substantively unconscionable either. It would not “shock the conscience” for a person to hear that eBay — an international company — would undertake efforts to focus litigation it is involved with into a single jurisdiction. Furthermore, having the forum selection clause would conserve judicial and litigant resources, in that parties and the courts would know in advance where the appropriate place for disputes concerning eBay would be heard. Finally (and rehashing an earlier point regarding procedural unconscionability), Plaintiff had a meaningful choice — he could have decided not to do business on eBay in the first place.

Map photo courtesy Flickr user sidewalk flying under this Creative Commons license.

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