JAMES S. GWIN, District Judge.
In this employment case, Defendants ask the Court to stay the litigation and compel arbitration of Plaintiff M. Ammar Alkatib's claims. For the following reasons, the Court
Plaintiff Alkatib alleges that Defendants hired him as an international sales associate and agreed to pay him roughly $72,000 per year.
For their part, Defendants allege that Defendant Progressive Paralegal Services, LLC agreed to help Alkatib with his immigration application and provided him with office space in exchange for Alkatib's occasional consultation.
Initially, Defendants adamantly denied that they had hired Alkatib as an international sales associate or promised him an annual salary.
The employment Agreement says that "[a]ny claim or controversy that arises out of or relates to this agreement, or the breach of it, shall be settled by arbitration."
If a case involves claims that the parties previously agreed to arbitrate, the Federal Arbitration Act requires the Court to stay those claims and compel arbitration.
In keeping with the Supreme Court's ever-increasing affection for arbitration, "waiver of the right to arbitration is not to be lightly inferred."
Here, Defendants acted inconsistently with an agreement to arbitrate. They filed not one, but two answers in this case.
Defendants' counterclaims, their failure to raise arbitration in their answers, and their repeated denials that the Agreement even existed, are inconsistent with arbitration.
However, Defendants fare better on the second question. Simply put, Defendants' delay in moving to compel arbitration—while inexplicable—did not prejudice Plaintiff. Defendants' motion comes only three months into the litigation, the parties have not filed any other motions, and it appears that little to no discovery has occurred.
The question, then, is which of the parties' fourteen claims relate to the Agreement. The Agreement requires that: "[a]ny claim or controversy that arises out of or relates to this agreement, or the breach of it, shall be settled by arbitration."
Quite obviously, Plaintiff's Counts I-V and VII-IX relate to the Agreement. These counts all concern Defendants' alleged breach. In contrast, none of Defendants' counterclaims relate to the Agreement (they concern a different agreement altogether). The parties seem to concede both points.
Where the parties disagree, however, is on Plaintiff's Count VI. Alkatib alleges that Defendants filed their counterclaims as unlawful retaliation for the claims in his first complaint.
However, because the Court believes that Defendants' counterclaims and Plaintiff's Count VI are factually intertwined with the arbitrable claims, the Court will stay these claims as well.
For the foregoing reasons, the Court
IT IS SO ORDERED.