Employee Arbitration Agreements

25-0983·Petition For Review

Whether a trial court that held hearings on applications to compel arbitration and then issued a notice setting the case for a jury trial, without ruling expressly, implicitly denied the applications, so that the applicants have the statutory right to an interlocutory appeal, or merely deferred the ruling.
If so, whether the underlying lawsuit must be sent back to arbitration because a valid agreement exists, the parties clearly delegated arbitrability to the arbitrator, and no legitimate challenge allows the court to decide it.

25-0988·Petition For Review

The Court sent this case back to the court of appeals to reconsider in light of a new U.S. Supreme Court decision on the Federal Arbitration Act's exemption for transportation workers, without deciding the question itself.

25-0994·Petition For Review

Whether a former employee who says she cannot recall or confirm signing an electronic arbitration agreement raises a genuine fact dispute over contract formation, requiring the trial court to hold an evidentiary hearing before compelling arbitration, when the employer offered its CEO's declaration describing the security procedure for electronic signatures.
Whether the court of appeals applied an unduly rigid reading of Aerotek, Inc. v. Boyd and Business and Commerce Code section 322.009(a) (the Uniform Electronic Transactions Act) in holding the employer had to enumerate every security procedure attending the signing.

25-1073·Petition For Review

Whether a mother's employment arbitration agreement, which covers claims "by or with respect to" her and her children and delegates arbitrability to the arbitrator, binds her unborn son's survival and wrongful-death claims, which his father and mother now assert, even though the child was never a signatory.
Whether the court or the arbitrator decides arbitrability as to the non-signatory unborn child, and if the court, whether any recognized doctrine (parental authority, ratification, or direct-benefits estoppel) binds the child's claims to the agreement.