California Appellate Court Upholds Denial of Motion to Compel Arbitration in Sex-Trafficking Claim Against Ford Models CEO
Plaintiff Jane Doe was a model and a minor when she landed a modeling assignment working for Ford Models, Inc. (Ford) in 2012. In 2017, when she was twenty-one, she boarded a private jet flying to London, along with defendant Gerald Banks, a/k/a Guerman Aliev, Ford’s CEO, and a photographer.
As detailed in an unpublished opinion in Banks v. Doe, she alleges that Mr. Banks made a series of requests, clearly sexual in nature, culminating in an invitation that she and another model accompany the men to Paris on what she thought might be a date. Fearing that she was being targeted for sex, she called her agency. The agency instructed her to leave, and she booked a flight back to California. She then filed a civil complaint against Ford, Mr. Banks, and the photographer, citing two California statutes and alleging, among other things, false imprisonment and sex trafficking. Ford’s motion to compel arbitration under the California Arbitration Act (CAA) was denied. Mr. Banks filed a separate motion to compel arbitration under the CAA, which was also denied.
In the case linked to above, the California District Court of Appeals affirmed the denial of the motion to compel arbitration against Mr. Banks. The trial court had refused to compel arbitration because there was no arbitration clause in effect with respect to the photographer, and splitting the action would defeat the purpose of the CAA.
On appeal, the Court of Appeals agreed with Mr. Banks that the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA), not the CAA, applied. Even assuming that Mr. Banks can invoke an arbitration agreement to which he was not a signatory, the arbitration agreement does not “clearly and unmistakably” delegate the issue of the validity of the arbitration agreement to the arbiter. Mr. Banks argued that the “clear and unmistakable” standard is met when the agreement incorporates by reference the rules of the American Arbitration Association (AAA). That would be enough, were the parties sophisticated, but Plaintiff was a minor when she entered into her agreement with Ford. The trial court was thus empowered to decide the issue, and it decided the issue correctly, said the Court of Appeals.
The trial court’s determination was correct because Mr. Banks’s alleged conduct was far removed from the scope of the employment agreement Plaintiff contemplated when she signed on with Ford. Ford had specifically asked Plaintiff to contact her agency because he did not want to have to pay her agency fee during the proposed trip to Paris. The court was unpersuaded by Mr. Banks’s arguments that the allegations relate to a modeling job. There was no modeling job. As alleged in the complaint, the modeling job was a ruse justifying a trip that had a very different object.