Ensuring eSignature Legality for Arbitration Agreement in Canada

How to eSign a document: e-signature legality for Arbitration Agreement in Canada

happy Monday and welcome to another episode of cases that should have gone to the Supreme Court of Canada but didn't today we're talking about arbitration [Music] clauses cases that should have gone to the Supreme Court of Canada but didn't Sharice Petty was suing the Niantic Corporation and one of the Clauses in the user agreement for Niantic products is that you have to agree to binding arbitration in the United States and Miss Petty wanted to file a lawsuit rather than participate in the arbitration process there have been Supreme Court of Canada decisions that have recently confirmed that in some circumstances arbitration clauses are unenforceable but niantic's Clause included a provision that allowed a person to opt out of the arbit ation if they provided notice within 30 days of accepting the user agreement to Niantic that they did not want to participate in an arbitration of process if a dispute arose and unfortunately Miss Petty did not take advantage of this opportunity and this case raises very important issues because certainly one of the steps that corporations are now using to try and get unenforcable arbitration clauses through the door is allowing an opt out provision but those opt out Provisions are often buried in thousands and thousands of words of legal ease that's difficult for an individual user to read in addition most individual users of products don't actually read the terms of service before they click that they want to use the app or the program or whatever it is that they're agreeing to so in the same way that other arbitration clauses that required people to submit to binding arbitration in countries that have no relationship to Canada or to the parties themselves were unenforcable and unreasonable so too should these Clauses be considered as potentially unreasonable and unenforceable and unfortunately the Supreme Court of Canada missed an opportunity to really consider the fairness and the power imbalance between these individuals there's also a preference for litigation to actually take place in courts where issues can be determined with finality because finality of issues actually reduces the amount of dispute that's going to be brought overall there are going to be less arbitration claims made when there is one Court decision that may affect thousands of users and that increases the need for having more access to the courts when it comes to commercial arbitration clauses unfortunately it's going to take another case for the Supreme Court of Canada to consider these issues and to decide whether these Clauses are enforcable cases that should have gone to the Supreme Court of Canada but didn't thank you for tuning in to another episode of cases that should have gone to the Supreme Court of Canada but didn't I'm Kyla Lee at auman law thank you to Brazen Bol creative for putting together these videos please like subscribe and share with your friends