Yesterday, the California Supreme Court issued a unanimous opinion in Ford Motor Warranty Cases. In each of the consolidated cases, plaintiffs who had purchased Ford vehicles sued Ford, alleging defects in the cars they purchased, violations of express and implied warranties, and fraudulent concealment.
Ford moved to arbitrate on the grounds that the sales contracts between the customers and the dealerships from whom they purchased the cars contained mandatory arbitration clauses, invoking an estoppel theory.
The California Supreme Court rejected this argument, finding that estoppel did not apply because the claims at issue were not “intimately founded in or intertwined with the sales contracts.”
