MEMORANDUM AND ORDER

MORRISON C. ENGLAND, Jr., Chief District Judge.

On January 3, 2014, Plaintiffs Joel B. Shamitoff, Shamitoff Industries, Inc., Shamitoy Interactive and Universal Interactive, LLC1 (collectively referred to as "Plaintiffs" or "Shamitoff" unless otherwise indicated) filed the instant action against Defendants Geoffrey Richards, Chapter 7 Trustee; Robert Brown, Arbitrator for the American Arbitration Association ("AAA"); and the AAA itself. Plaintiffs sought, through their Complaint, to enjoin the continuation arbitration proceedings conducted under the auspices of the AAA with Defendant Robert Brown presiding as arbitrator.

Plaintiffs initially moved for a temporary restraining order ("TRO") concurrently with the submission of their complaint. That TRO request was denied by Memorandum and Order filed January 17, 2014. Defendants AAA and Brown (collectively referred to as the "AAA" unless otherwise indicated) now move to dismiss the claims against them pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b), arguing both that the action against them is barred under principles of arbitral immunity and, further, is moot in any event since the arbitration has now been concluded and the award confirmed in state court. For the reasons set forth below, the AAA's Motion is granted.2

BACKGROUND

In February of 2005, Jacquelynn Namle Bird, together with her then financial advisor, John Lucero, entered into a number of so-called Retail Development Agreements ("RDAs") with Joel Shamitoff. Under the terms of those RDAs, Bird and Lucero acquired the opportunity to operate shopping mall kiosks that would sell toys, known as Snapables, that had allegedly been developed by Shamitoff.3 Bird and Lucero jointly signed a total of fourteen RDAs at a cost of some $14,000.00 per kiosk. Despite numerous promises that the toys were coming from China, no product ever arrived. Shamitoff refused to return Bird's approximate $390,000.00 investment in the kiosks.

Ms. Bird filed a lawsuit in state court against Shamitoff in 2008, seeking damages, inter alia, for fraud and breach of contract. On May 8, 2009, at Shamitoff's request, the Sacramento Superior Court ordered that matter into arbitration pursuant to provisions contained in the RDA agreements which specified that any disputes be resolved through arbitration. On November 10, 2010, the day before the arbitration hearing was scheduled to commence, Lucero and the business he and Bird formed to manage the RDAs, the LB partnership, filed for bankruptcy protection under Chapter 7. Given those pending bankruptcy proceedings, the arbitration was stayed pursuant to 11 U.S.C. § 362. Thereafter, on or about May 24, 2011, Bird and her husband filed their own Chapter 13 bankruptcy proceeding in the Eastern District of California.4

Once Bird's bankruptcy proceeding was converted to a Chapter 7 proceeding on or about May 16, 2012, Shamitoff sought to remove the stayed state court action to bankruptcy court. The court-appointed Chapter 7 trustee, Geoffrey Richards, immediately moved to remand the case on grounds that the removal was untimely, and the case was subsequently remanded. Shamitoff argued that the removal had terminated any assignment of the case to arbitration, but the Superior Court disagreed.

In the meantime, on or about April 18, 2012, the Chapter 7 Trustee for the LB Partnership, John Roberts, petitioned the court to sell the assets held by the partnership; namely, the 14 RDAs. Universal Interactive, one of the businesses operated by Joel Shamitoff, purchased the RDAs from the LB Partnership's bankruptcy estate for a total sum of $7,500.00. That sale was approved by United States Bankruptcy Judge Christopher M. Klein by order dated June 5, 2012.

Bird's Chapter 7 bankruptcy trustee ultimately decided to resume efforts to collect from Shamitoff pursuant to her previously filed state court lawsuit that had become an asset of her bankruptcy estate. After the AAA determined that the arbitration could resume, Shamitoff filed a motion for preliminary injunction to stay the arbitration, which the Sacramento County Superior Court denied by Minute Order dated April 4, 2012. That court pointed out that it had no jurisdiction to enjoin the arbitrator in a pending arbitration from resuming the arbitration proceedings. See Ex. D to Decl. of William L. Dunbar in Support of Opp'n to TRO, ECF No. 2-1. Then, on October 5, 2012, Shamitoff moved to dismiss Bird's fraud lawsuit and remove it from arbitration on grounds that his purchase of the RDAs extinguished any cause of action in Bird's favor. The Sacramento Superior Court again found it had no jurisdiction to stop the arbitration. Id. at Ex. E. Shamitoff moved to reconsider that ruling which the court denied as improper, stating it would "not entertain further motions in this case except a motion to confirm, vacate, or correct the arbitration award" under California Code of Civil Procedure § 1285. Id. at Ex. F.

Apparently undaunted by the above admonition, Shamitoff filed yet another motion for preliminary injunction with the Sacramento Superior Court, which the court summarily denied on grounds it had "already made it abundantly clear in prior rulings that it [had] no jurisdiction to interfere in the AAA proceeding and . . . would entertain no other motion other than one to confirm, vacate or correct the arbitration award." Id. at Ex. G. While the Sacramento Superior Court noted that Shamitoff had obtained a declaratory judgment in a Los Angeles County action that he and his entities owned the RDAs following their bankruptcy sale, and while Shamitoff argued, as he does here, that said judgment removes any basis for the arbitration, the Sacramento Superior Court found it was up to the arbitrator, and not the court, to weigh the effect, if any, of the Los Angeles judgment. Finally, on July 10, 2013, the same day the court denied Shamitoff's second preliminary injunction request as discussed above, the Sacramento Superior Court further denied Shamitoff's request to transfer venue of the matter to Orange County.

Perhaps due to a lack of success in Sacramento, Plaintiffs and Lucero filed a total of three different actions in Orange County, all in an apparent effort to keep the AAA arbitration from moving forward. In the first 2010 proceeding, filed by Lucero, the Orange County court denied Lucero's preliminary injunction request, reasoning that any stay issued on its part "would be a direct interference with the jurisdiction of the Sacramento County Superior Court." Id. at Ex. I. Shamitoff himself nonetheless filed two additional lawsuits in Orange County, both requesting similar injunctive relief.

Despite this plethora of attempts to thwart the arbitration from moving forward, the AAA arbitrator, Robert Brown, scheduled the arbitration hearing to begin on August 12, 2013. After five days of testimony and evidence, the arbitrator rescheduled the remainder of the hearing at Shamitoff's request. After continuing the hearing twice, Brown denied Shamitoff's third continuance request on December 27, 2013. Plaintiffs instituted the present lawsuit, on January 3, 2014, five days before the AAA arbitration was set to reconvene on January 8, 2014.

According to Plaintiffs, the ongoing arbitration proceedings violate their constitutional right to due process, as guaranteed by the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, because they seek to improperly seize the RDAs in contravention of the bankruptcy court's approval of their sale. According to Plaintiffs, given that sale, there is nothing to arbitrate and the arbitration proceedings are nothing more than an ill-conceived attempt to recover property Plaintiffs validly purchased, and to saddle Plaintiffs with improper and unnecessary arbitration fees and costs in the process. In addition to seeking preliminary and permanent injunctive relief that would prevent the AAA and Brown from further "mismanaging" the arbitration proceedings or "failing to follow their own rules," Plaintiffs also request a declaration that Arbitrator Brown has no jurisdiction over Plaintiffs, as well as a declaration that Plaintiffs are the legal owners of the subject RDAs.

While Plaintiffs applied for a temporary restraining order at the same time they filed their Complaint, that request was denied on January 17, 2014, on grounds that the so called Anti-Injunction Act, 28 U.S.C. § 2283, prohibits a court, absent special circumstances not applicable here, from enjoining or staying proceedings in a state court. See Younger v. Harris, 401 U.S. 37, 43-45 (1971). Given those strictures, the Court found that Plaintiffs lacked any likelihood of success on the merits, a showing they had to make to qualify for preliminary injunctive relief. Moreover, this Court further rejected, at least for purposes of determining the merits of the matter for purposes of a TRO, Plaintiffs' substantive argument that because they subsequently purchased the RDAs once owned by Jacquelynn Bird, any lawsuit for fraud was necessarily moot. The Court pointed to the fact that neither possession nor title of the RDAs was being sought by the Bankruptcy Trustee in pursuing Bird's lawsuit. Instead, the remedy sought was money damages in connection with those contracts, an inference strengthened by the fact that the RDAs themselves were virtually worthless, having been bought by Plaintiffs for some $7,500.00 despite Bird's initial investment of nearly $400,000.00.

Events subsequent to the Court's initial denial of the TRO are also significant. In the wake of that denial, Arbitrator Brown completed the arbitration and, on February 10, 2014, issued an award against Plaintiffs, jointly and severally, in the amount of $380,000.00, plus prejudgment interest totaling $164,280.00 (based on 7.0 percent interest per annum for the period between December 1, 2007 and January 31, 2014). Plaintiffs were further ordered to pay administrative fees and expenses of both the AAA and Arbitrator Brown $22,375.00. That award was subsequently confirmed by the Sacramento Superior Court on the basis of Judge David I. Brown's Order Confirming Arbitration Award dated May 12, 2014.5

STANDARD

In addition to the six specific defenses set forth in Rule 12(b) that can be asserted by a pretrial motion to dismiss, case law permits certain other "unenumerated" defenses to be raised through a 12(b) motion. Immunity is one of the defenses that can be made by such an unenumerated motion. See Rutter Group, Federal Civil Procedure Before Trial, 9:239.10 (2014) (citing Thomas v. Nakatani, 309 F.3d 1203, 1205 (9th Cir. 2003)).

When permitted, an unenumerated motion to dismiss is governed by the rules applicable to motions generally, as opposed to those limited just to those applicable to Rule 12(b). This allows the court to consider facts outside the complaint based on affidavits submitted by the parties. Fed. R. Civ. P. 43; Ritza v. Int'l Longshoremen's & Warehousemen's Union, 837 F.2d. 365, 369 (9th Cir. 1988), overruled on other grounds in Albino v. Baca, 747 F.3d 11162 (9th Cir. 2014). Both parties here have submitted declarations attaching various documents for the Court's consideration. Those matters may consequently be properly considered in adjudicating this matter. Moreover, counsel for Defendants has also requested that Exhibits A through R also be judicially noticed under Federal Rule of Evidence 201. Plaintiffs further have requested that certain documents also be judicially noticed in connection with their opposition. Neither party has filed any opposition to those various requests and they are granted.

ANALYSIS

A. Arbitral Immunity

In recognizing the doctrine of arbitral immunity, the Ninth Circuit describes applicable case law as dictating that "arbitrators are immune from civil liability for acts within their jurisdiction arising out of their arbitral functions in contractually agreed upon arbitration proceedings." Wasyl, Inc. v First Boston Corp., 813 F.2d 1579, 1582 (9th Cir. 1987). As the Wasyl court goes on to explain, "[t]he functional comparability of the arbitrator's decision-making process to those of judges and agency hearing examiners, to whom immunity is extended, generates the same need for independent judgment free from the threat of lawsuits. Id. Arbitral immunity therefore "protects all acts within the scope of the arbitral process." Olson v. Nat'l Ass'n of Security Dealers, 85 F.3d 381, 383. (8th Cir. 1996); see also Austern v. Chicago Bd. Options Exch., Inc., 898 F.2d 882, 886 (2d Cir. 1999). Like judicial immunity, the only exception to arbitral immunity's broad scope is where there is a clear absence of jurisdiction (Intern. Medical Group, Inc. v. American Arbitration, 312 F.3d 833, 843 (7th Cir. 2002), or where the arbitrator engages in acts that clearly fall outside his or her arbitral capacity. See Cort v. American Arbitration Ass'n, 795 F.Supp. 970, 972-73 (N.D. Cal. 1992).

Arbitral immunity applies not just to an individual arbitrator, but also to organizations that sponsor arbitrations, like the AAA here. In reaching this conclusion, one California court notes that "a refusal to extend immunity to the sponsoring organization would make the arbitrator's immunity illusory." American Arbitration Ass'n v. Superior Court, 8 Cal.App.4th 1131, 1133 (1992). Consequently, "[a]s a practical matter a grant of immunity to the arbitrator must be accompanied by a grant of the same immunity to the AAA, an entity as indispensable to the arbitrator's job of arbitrating as are the courts to the judge's job of judging." Id. Significantly too, federal courts have found likewise: "[A]rbitral immunity is not limited to the individual arbitrators. It has been uniformly accepted that such immunity extends to arbitration associations such as the AAA as well. Cort, 795 F. Supp.at 971. The immunity extended to the AAA as a sponsoring organization includes not only situations where the arbitrator is or would be immune, but also instances "where the organization has engaged in tasks such as selecting an arbitrator, scheduling a hearing, giving notice of a hearing, and billing for services." Stasz v. Schwab, 121 Cal.App.4th 420,433-34 (2004), citing Corey v. New York Stock Exchange, 691 F.2d 1205, 1211 (6th Cir. 1982), New England Cleaning v. American Arbitration Ass'n, 199 F.3d 542, 545 (1st Cir. 1999). The scope of immunity is so wide that this remains true even if the sponsoring organization has violated its own internal rules. See Olson v. Nat'l Ass'n of Security Dealers, 85 F.3d 381, 383 (8th Cir. 1996).

Applying these principles to the present case, immunity clearly applies. Arbitration was contractually mandated by provisions contained within the RDA agreements at issue, and as stated above, it was Shamitoff himself that initially requested the matter be referred to arbitration. Although Plaintiffs appear to argue that there was no ongoing controversy because they had repurchased the RDAs, thereby leaving nothing to arbitrate (and no jurisdiction to do so), that argument lacks merit. As set forth above, the gravamen of Jacquelynn Bird's complaint against Plaintiffs, as now pursued by the Bankruptcy Trustee, rests not with title or possession to the allegedly worthless RDAs, but rather to money damages in connection with those contracts. That controversy remains ongoing and Arbitrator Brown had jurisdiction to consider it. Additionally, in setting up and billing for the arbitration, established precedent makes it clear that the AAA enjoys immunity as well, despite Plaintiffs' claims that billing methods were improper and that Defendants "failed to follow their own rules in proceeding forward with the arbitration. See id.; Corey v. New York Stock Exchange, 691 F.2d at 1211.

B. Mootness

In addition to arguing arbitral immunity, Defendants also argue that while arbitration proceedings remained pending when they instituted the instant motion on February 5, 2014, by the time reply papers were filed and the motion was submitted, arbitration had in fact been concluded. Then, as the attachment (Exhibit R) to Defendants' supplemental request for judicial notice attests, the arbitrator's award was confirmed by Order of the Sacramento Superior Court, dated May 12, 2014. According to Defendants, completion of the arbitration proceedings means there is nothing left to enjoin pursuant to Defendants' Complaint, which seeks preliminary and permanent injunctive relief to prevent the arbitration from continuing.

The Court agrees. Generally, a court's power to grant injunctive relief survives the cessation of the allegedly illegal activity only where there is "some cognizable danger of recurrent violation." United States v. W.T. Grant Co., 345 U.S. 629, 633 (1953). Here, the arbitration has been both completed and the award confirmed. The arbitration process is therefore complete and Defendants make no argument to the contrary. Plaintiffs' request for injunctive relief is consequently moot.

Other than the mooted injunctive relief, the only other relief requested by Plaintiff's prayer as against Defendants AAA or Brown sounds in declaratory relief. Plaintiffs request a "declaration that arbitrator Brown has no jurisdiction over Plaintiff[s]." Pl s.' Compl., 18: 12-13. In addition to being substantively flawed in the context of the AAA's ability to proceed with the arbitration, that request for declaratory relief has no independent viability outside the confines of Plaintiffs' request for an injunction. Declaratory relief is a procedural device for granting a remedy. It does not in itself create any substantive right or cause of action. DTND Sierra Investments LLC v. Bank of New York Mellon Trust Co., N.A., 958 F.Supp.2d 738, 753 (W.D. Tex. 2013) (citing Aetna Life Ins. Co. of Hartford, Conn. v. Haworth, 300 U.S. 227, 240 (1937)). Additionally, even if Plaintiffs did have a surviving claim for declaratory relief, which the Court does not believe they do, the Anti-Injunction Act, 29, U.S.C. § 2283, applies to requests for declaratory judgment if those requests have the same effect as injunctive relief. California v. Randtron, 284 F.3d 969, 975 (9th Cir. 2002). Here, as discussed above, the gravamen of the Complaint sounds solely in injunctive relief. Consequently, Plaintiffs' request for declaratory relief is insufficient, in the absence of any other viable relief, to create a legally cognizable claim against Defendants AAA and Brown.

CONCLUSION

For all of the foregoing reasons, Defendants AAA and Brown's Motion to Dismiss (ECF No. 9) is GRANTED. Because the Court does not believe that the deficiencies of Plaintiffs' claims against Defendants AAA and Robert Brown can be rectified through amendment, no leave to amend will be permitted.

IT IS SO ORDERED.