Filed 6/4/12 CERTIFIED FOR PUBLICATION
IN THE COURT OF APPEAL OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA
SECOND APPELLATE DISTRICT
DIVISION TWO
ARSHAVIR ISKANIAN,
Plaintiff and Appellant,
v.
CLS TRANSPORTATION
LOS ANGELES, LLC,
Defendant and Respondent.
B235158
(Los Angeles County
Super. Ct. No. BC356521)
APPEAL from an order of the Superior Court of Los Angeles County.
Robert Hess, Judge. Affirmed.
Initiative Legal Group, Raul Perez, Glenn A. Danas, Katherine W. Kehr for
Plaintiff and Appellant.
Fox Rothschild, David F. Faustman, Yesenia M. Gallegos, Namal Tantula for
Defendant and Respondent.
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2
This is the second appeal in this case. We issued our opinion on the first appeal
soon after the California Supreme Court decided Gentry v. Superior Court (2007) 42
Cal.4th 443 (Gentry), which held that a class waiver provision in an arbitration agreement
should not be enforced if “class arbitration would be a significantly more effective way of
vindicating the rights of affected employees than individual arbitration.” (Id. at p. 450.)
In our prior opinion, in light of Gentry, we directed the trial court to reconsider its order
granting a motion to compel arbitration and dismissing class claims.
In this appeal, we are faced with an essentially identical order—defendant‟s
renewed motion to compel arbitration was granted and class claims were dismissed. The
legal landscape, however, has changed. In April 2011, in AT&T Mobility LLC v.
Concepcion (2011) __ U.S. __ [131 S. Ct. 1740] (Concepcion), the United States
Supreme Court, reiterating the rule that the principal purpose of the Federal Arbitration
Act (FAA) is to ensure that arbitration agreements are enforced according to their terms,
held that “[r]equiring the availability of classwide arbitration interferes with fundamental
attributes of arbitration and thus creates a scheme inconsistent with the FAA.” (Id. at p.
1748.) Applying this binding authority, we conclude that the trial court properly ordered
this case to arbitration and dismissed class claims.
FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND
The plaintiff in this matter, Arshavir Iskanian, worked as a driver for defendant
CLS Transportation Los Angeles, LLC (CLS), from March 2004 to August 2005. In
December 2004, Iskanian signed a “Proprietary Information and Arbitration
Policy/Agreement” (arbitration agreement) providing that “any and all claims” arising out
of his employment were to be submitted to binding arbitration before a neutral arbitrator.
The arbitration agreement provided for reasonable discovery, a written award, and
judicial review of the award. Costs unique to arbitration, such as the arbitrator‟s fee,
were to be paid by CLS. The arbitration agreement also contained a class and
representative action waiver, which read: “[E]xcept as otherwise required under
applicable law, (1) EMPLOYEE and COMPANY expressly intend and agree that class
action and representative action procedures shall not be asserted, nor will they apply, in
