Aldea-Tirado v. PricewaterhouseCoopers, LLP

101 F.4th 99
CourtCourt of Appeals for the First Circuit
DecidedMay 10, 2024
Docket22-1806
StatusPublished

This text of 101 F.4th 99 (Aldea-Tirado v. PricewaterhouseCoopers, LLP) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the First Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Aldea-Tirado v. PricewaterhouseCoopers, LLP, 101 F.4th 99 (1st Cir. 2024).

Opinion

United States Court of Appeals For the First Circuit

No. 22-1806

JENNIFER D. ALDEA-TIRADO,

Plaintiff, Appellant,

v.

PRICEWATERHOUSECOOPERS, LLP,

Defendant, Appellee.

APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF PUERTO RICO

[Hon. Jay A. García-Gregory, U.S. District Judge]

Before

Barron, Chief Judge, Thompson and Montecalvo, Circuit Judges.

Maricarmen Almodóvar-Díaz, for appellant. Jacob T. Spencer, with whom Jason C. Schwartz, Pedro J. Torres-Díaz, Ana B. Rosado-Frontanés, Jackson Lewis LLC, and Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP were on brief, for appellee.

May 10, 2024 BARRON, Chief Judge. In this appeal, Jennifer D. Aldea-

Tirado ("Aldea-Tirado") challenges an order to compel the

arbitration of her federal and Puerto Rico law claims against her

employer, PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP ("PWC"). We affirm.

I.

In November 2021, Aldea-Tirado filed suit against PWC in

the United States District Court for the District of Puerto Rico.1

Her complaint set forth claims under Title VII of the Civil Rights

Act, 42 U.S.C. § 2000-e, the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978

("PDA"), Pub. L. No. 95-555, 92 Stat. 2076, and Puerto Rico law.

The claims pertained to her employment at PWC, which began in 2013

when she started working as an associate accountant at the

company's San Juan office. The claims alleged, among other things,

that she was subjected to an adverse employment action on account

of her gender and pregnancy and that she was retaliated against

for filing a complaint with the United States Equal Employment

Opportunity Commission alleging that PWC had violated her rights

under Title VII.

The parties agree that Aldea-Tirado's employment

contract with PWC, when executed on October 9, 2013, did not

1 Because district courts "apply the summary judgment standard to evaluate motions to compel arbitration," Air-Con, Inc. v. Daikin Applied Latin America, LLC, 21 F.4th 168, 175 (1st Cir. 2021), we recite the relevant facts in the light most favorable to Aldea- Tirado, the nonmoving party, see Robinson v. Town of Marshfield, 950 F.3d 21, 23 n.2 (1st Cir. 2020).

- 2 - contain an arbitration clause. Soon after Aldea-Tirado filed this

suit, however, PWC provided her and her counsel with an arbitration

agreement (the "Agreement") that PWC asserted had been sent to her

and to which she had consented.

The Agreement provided that "all disputes, controversies

and claims relating to or arising out of [Aldea-Tirado's] . . .

employment with [PWC]" would be arbitrated. The Agreement further

provided that, "[b]y continuing [her] employment with [PWC] on or

after [July 1, 2014], [Aldea-Tirado] will be deemed to have

accepted this Agreement, and [Aldea-Tirado] and [PWC] will be bound

by its terms."

Aldea-Tirado denied having received the Agreement and

declined to submit her claims to arbitration. On January 3, 2022,

PWC moved to compel arbitration pursuant to the Federal Arbitration

Act ("FAA"), Pub. L. No. 68-401, 43 Stat. 883. In support of the

motion, PWC alleged that it had notified Aldea-Tirado of the

Agreement by sending the Agreement: (1) as an attachment to an

email that was sent to Aldea-Tirado's work email on March 31, 2014,

at 12:11 p.m.; and, (2) in a letter that was sent by first-class

mail to Aldea-Tirado's correct home address on March 31, 2014, via

Heffler Claims Group, LLC, a notification-services firm that PWC

had retained to mass-mail the Agreement to its employees.

Aldea-Tirado filed her opposition to PWC's motion to

compel on January 18, 2022. She attached to her filing an

- 3 - affidavit in which she asserted that (1) she had never been

notified of a modification to her employment contract; (2) she had

never received any verbal or written notice of the Agreement; and

(3) she had learned of the Agreement only after the initiation of

her suit. She also produced evidence that the email to which PWC

asserted the Agreement had been attached did not comport with the

formatting of other emails that PWC had sent to her before on

similar personnel-related matters.

The District Court granted PWC's motion on September 30,

2022, after determining that PWC had established the existence of

a valid agreement between PWC and Aldea-Tirado to arbitrate her

claims. The District Court further determined that Aldea-Tirado

had tacitly consented to the Agreement by continuing to work for

PWC after having received the Agreement through both regular mail

and email. In so ruling, the District Court determined that Aldea-

Tirado's contention that the Agreement had been "sent to the wrong

email [was] belied by the record" and that she had failed to show

that she had not received the Agreement via regular mail because

she had failed to rebut the presumption that a properly mailed

letter that is not returned is considered to have been received.

Aldea-Tirado then timely brought this appeal.

II.

The FAA provides that a "written provision in . . . a

contract . . . to settle by arbitration a controversy thereafter

- 4 - arising out of such contract . . . shall be valid, irrevocable,

and enforceable." 9 U.S.C. § 2. Thus, courts must "treat

arbitration as 'a matter of contract' and enforce agreements to

arbitrate 'according to their terms.'" Air-Con, Inc. v. Daikin

Applied Latin America, LLC, 21 F.4th 168, 174 (1st Cir. 2021)

(quoting Henry Schein, Inc. v. Archer & White Sales, Inc., 139 S.

Ct. 524, 529 (2019)).

Parties are not obliged to arbitrate, however, "when

they have not agreed to do so." Rivera-Colón v. AT&T Mobility

P.R., Inc., 913 F.3d 200, 207 (1st Cir. 2019) (quoting Volt Info.

Scis., Inc. v. Bd. of Trs. of Leland Stanford Jr. Univ., 489 U.S.

468, 478 (1989)). Thus, "the party seeking to compel arbitration

bears the burden of demonstrating 'that a valid agreement to

arbitrate exists, that the movant is entitled to invoke the

arbitration clause, [and] that the other party is bound by that

clause.'" Air-Con, Inc., 21 F.4th at 174 (quoting Soto-Fonalledas

v. Ritz-Carlton San Juan Hotel Spa & Casino, 640 F.3d 471, 474

(1st Cir. 2011)).

"[S]ection 4 [of the FAA] . . . commands that district

courts ordinarily apply the summary-judgment standard" in

adjudicating a motion to compel arbitration. Rodríguez-Rivera v.

Allscripts Healthcare Solutions, Inc., 43 F.4th 150, 168 (1st Cir.

2022). Accordingly, district courts must review the record in the

light most favorable to the non-moving party and draw all

- 5 - reasonable inferences in that party's favor. See Air-Con, Inc.,

21 F.4th at 175.

If the non-moving party "puts forward materials that

create a genuine issue of fact about a dispute's arbitrability,"

id. (citation omitted), then the district court "shall proceed

summarily" to trial to resolve that question, 9 U.S.C.

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