Lee v. American Express Travel Related Services, Inc.
Lee v. American Express Travel Related Services, Inc.
Opinion of the Court
MEMORANDUM
Plaintiffs David Lee and Daniel Lloyd (collectively, “Plaintiffs”)
Standing for Article III purposes generally requires a showing of three elements:
Plaintiffs cannot satisfy the requirements of Article III because they have not yet been injured by the mere inclusion of these provisions in their agreements, nor is the threat of future harm from such provisions sufficiently imminent to confer standing. See Ruckelshaus v. Monsanto Co., 467 U.S. 986, 1019-20, 104 S.Ct. 2862, 81 L.Ed.2d 815 (1984) (challenge to constitutionality of arbitration scheme not ripe for resolution because Monsanto “did not allege or establish that it had been injured by actual arbitration under the statute”); Bowen v. First Family Fin. Servs., Inc., 233 F.3d 1331, 1340-41 (11th Cir. 2000) (“There is at most a ‘perhaps’ or ‘maybe’ chance that the arbitration agreement will be enforced against these plaintiffs in the future, and that is not enough to give them standing to challenge its enforceability.”).
Plaintiffs claim that they want to arbitrate but cannot (for a variety of reasons) and assert that they thus have suffered the loss of the benefit of their bargain. As the district courts recognized, this argument requires a series of assumptions about what might happen if plaintiffs actually did initiate arbitration, and such speculation is too conjectural and hypothetical to support current Article III standing. See Laidlaw, 528 U.S. at 180-81, 120 S.Ct. 693; Bowen, 233 F.3d at 1340.
Plaintiffs also argue that the federal courts — rather than an arbitrator — must rule on certain threshold issues of arbitration clause enforceability under Buckeye Check Cashing, Inc. v. Cardegna, 546 U.S. 440, 126 S.Ct. 1204, 163 L.Ed.2d 1038 (2006), Nagrampa v. MailCoups, Inc., 469 F.3d 1257 (9th Cir. 2006) (en banc), or the terms of the individual credit card contracts.
Similarly, we recently held that pursuant to approval of Proposition 64 by Cali
AFFIRMED. Accordingly, all pending motions are denied as moot.
This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3.
. Lee is a plaintiff in all three cases; Lloyd is not a party to the Capital One suit (OS-15858).
. These cases were consolidated for oral argument and shall remain consolidated for the purpose of this disposition.
. This is a curious argument, of course, because if these claims are not arbitrable, it is difficult to see how the Plaintiffs could have suffered an Article III injury by being denied the ability to arbitrate.
Case-law data current through December 31, 2025. Source: CourtListener bulk data.