Singh v. Adobe Inc.
- Jacquelyn Corley
- 3:24-cv-03980
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 4
Counsel of record per CourtListener. Firm names are approximate.
In Singh v. Adobe Inc., Judge Corley denied plaintiffs' motion to lift a court-ordered stay, ruling Adobe did not waive its right to arbitrate their claims.
California consumers who are plaintiffs in this proposed class action against Adobe, particularly Frank Nunez and Ashley Brooke, whose claims remain stayed pending arbitration. Also relevant to parties in mass arbitration proceedings who use multiple law firms across different forums.
What happened
This case, Singh v. Adobe Inc., is a proposed class action brought by California consumers alleging that Adobe's online subscription sign-up process fails to provide the disclosures and authorizations required by California law. After the court previously ordered two plaintiffs — Frank Nunez and Ashley Brooke — to resolve their claims through arbitration, those plaintiffs returned to court arguing Adobe gave up (waived) its right to arbitration by routing their claims to small claims court instead.
The court found that Adobe's small claims court election was an honest mistake, not an intentional act against arbitration. A different law firm had filed a large group arbitration demand that secretly included Nunez and Brooke without telling Adobe's lawyers in this case. Adobe — unaware of their inclusion — automatically sent the whole batch to small claims court under its standard terms. Within ten days of learning Nunez and Brooke were in that group, Adobe wrote to the arbitration service, withdrew the small claims election for those two individuals, and confirmed it would proceed with arbitrating their claims.
Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley denied the motion to lift the stay. The court found that plaintiffs failed to meet their heavy burden of showing Adobe intentionally acted against its right to arbitrate. Instead, the record showed Adobe consistently pursued arbitration and corrected the routing error as soon as it discovered the mistake. The court also noted that plaintiffs' own conduct — using two law firms in two forums while withholding the arbitration demand from Adobe's counsel in this case — contributed to the confusion. The earlier order compelling arbitration and staying this case remains in effect.
The detailed version
- Singh v. Adobe Inc. · No. 3:24-cv-03980
- Jacquelyn Corley
- Aug. 19, 2026
Background
Plaintiffs brought a putative class action (a lawsuit filed on behalf of a broader group of similarly situated consumers) against Adobe Inc., alleging Adobe's online subscription enrollment process fails to provide disclosures and obtain authorizations required under California law for automatically renewing subscriptions.
On August 1, 2025, the court granted Adobe's motion to compel arbitration — a pretrial ruling requiring that plaintiffs Frank Nunez and Ashley Brooke resolve their claims through private arbitration rather than in court — and stayed (paused) their claims pending that arbitration. A separate plaintiff, Vikram Singh, had his claims dismissed with leave to amend and subsequently elected to pursue arbitration on his own.
The Waiver Dispute
Nunez and Brooke moved to lift the stay, arguing Adobe waived its contractual right to arbitrate by electing to send their claims to small claims court rather than arbitration.
To establish waiver of the right to compel arbitration under Ninth Circuit precedent (Armstrong v. Michaels Stores, Inc., 59 F.4th 1011 (9th Cir. 2023)), the party asserting waiver must demonstrate: (1) the opposing party had knowledge of its existing right to compel arbitration, and (2) the opposing party took intentional acts inconsistent with that right. The parties did not dispute the first element — Adobe had already successfully moved to compel arbitration.
Key Facts on the Second Element
The court found that plaintiffs' waiver argument omitted several material facts:
- In May 2025, the law firm Labaton Keller Sucharow filed a mass arbitration demand against Adobe on behalf of 1,157 claimants. Adobe retained Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer LLP to handle that mass arbitration. Pursuant to Adobe's General Terms of Use, Adobe sent those mass arbitration claims to small claims court.
- Approximately four months after the court compelled arbitration of Nunez's and Brooke's claims, Labaton filed a second mass arbitration demand — this time on behalf of 419 different claimants — which included Nunez and Brooke. However, Labaton served this demand on Arnold & Porter (Adobe's mass arbitration counsel), not on Adobe's counsel in this federal case, and did not disclose in the cover email that Nunez and Brooke were included or that this case existed.
- As a result, Adobe's counsel in this case was unaware that Nunez and Brooke had been included in the second demand. Adobe treated the 419-claimant batch the same as the first: it elected small claims court for the entire wave pursuant to its standard dispute resolution terms.
- On April 10, 2026 — ten days after Adobe learned that Nunez and Brooke were part of the mass demand — Adobe sent a letter to JAMS (the arbitration service) (a) withdrawing its earlier request to close their arbitration files, (b) requesting that JAMS reopen their files, (c) confirming it would pay JAMS invoices for those arbitrations, and (d) confirming it would respond to Brooke's and Nunez's arbitration demands.
- After Labaton nevertheless claimed waiver in a letter to JAMS, Adobe responded confirming it would arbitrate Nunez's and Brooke's claims and would not elect small claims court for those two individuals.
- At a subsequent status conference, plaintiffs' counsel confirmed that the Labaton firm had not served Adobe's counsel in this case with a copy of Nunez's and Brooke's arbitration demand. The court noted its confusion and questioned how plaintiffs could argue waiver when the demand had not been served on the appropriate counsel.
Ruling
The court denied the motion to lift the stay. Applying the totality-of-the-circumstances standard from Armstrong, the court found plaintiffs failed to meet their heavy burden of demonstrating that Adobe intentionally acted inconsistently with its right to arbitrate. The court emphasized:
- Adobe had immediately moved to compel arbitration of Nunez's and Brooke's claims when this litigation began. - Adobe asserted its intent to arbitrate as soon as it discovered their inclusion in the mass demand. - The small claims court election was a product of plaintiffs' own conduct — engaging two law firms across two forums and withholding the arbitration demand from Adobe's litigation counsel — rather than any intentional abandonment of arbitration rights by Adobe.
The court characterized plaintiffs' approach as "apparent gamesmanship." The court's prior order compelling arbitration and staying the case remains in effect.
Disposition
Plaintiffs' motion to lift the stay (Docket No. 78) was denied. The August 25, 2026 hearing was vacated.
Read the full 4-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.