Snow v. Eventbrite, Inc.

Background

Sherri Snow and Linda Conner bought event tickets through Eventbrite’s online ticket marketplace. The events were canceled or rescheduled because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The plaintiffs alleged that Eventbrite owed them refunds but refused to provide them, and they sued on behalf of themselves and a proposed class.

Eventbrite’s Terms of Service contained provisions requiring consumers to arbitrate claims individually. Eventbrite first moved to compel arbitration, but the court denied that motion because Eventbrite had not shown what versions of its account-registration and checkout webpages the plaintiffs would have seen when they made their purchases. The court also found that Eventbrite had submitted contradictory factual assertions and misleading evidence.

Motion to Compel Arbitration

The Federal Arbitration Act requires a court to determine whether a valid arbitration agreement exists and whether it covers the dispute. The court applied ordinary California contract principles. Eventbrite had the burden of proving, by a preponderance of the evidence, that an arbitration agreement existed.

The court held that Eventbrite cured the evidentiary problems identified in the earlier order. For Snow, Eventbrite showed that the agreement displayed during 13 of her prior orders would have been in effect when she purchased the tickets at issue. That agreement linked to the Terms of Service and gave a reasonably prudent user adequate notice of the terms. Eventbrite did not know what agreement appeared for one of Snow’s 14 orders, but the court found the evidence concerning the other agreement sufficient.

For Conner, the court did not rely on the account-registration screen that Eventbrite had previously submitted and later admitted was not the screen she would have seen. Instead, the court relied on the checkout agreement. It found that this agreement was essentially identical to one previously considered and that it gave Conner adequate notice of the Terms of Service and the arbitration provision.

The plaintiffs argued that Eventbrite had not adequately established which version of the Terms of Service applied. The court rejected that argument because the issue had not been raised earlier and because Eventbrite had produced all versions in effect from January 2016 through the date of the renewed motion, all of which contained arbitration provisions. The court also held that a sworn declaration authenticating the agreements was sufficient without requiring the underlying files and metadata.

The motion to compel arbitration was GRANTED. The case was STAYED pending arbitration. The parties were ordered to provide status updates every three months and to file a notice within 14 days after arbitration ends, either seeking dismissal or requesting a case-management conference, as appropriate.

Motions to Seal

Eventbrite’s requests to seal information in the parties’ briefing and exhibits were GRANTED IN PART and DENIED IN PART. The court denied sealing of the fact that Eventbrite uses Salesforce to store its Terms of Service and denied sealing of most information about how Eventbrite’s services are hosted and operated. Eventbrite had not shown a compelling reason to withhold that information from the public.

The court granted sealing or redaction for specified material concerning concrete back-end operations, non-public information about how Eventbrite stored its Terms of Service, related employee notes, duplicative exhibits, specified portions of a deposition, and related documents. The parties were ordered to file new, unsealed versions of documents containing other redactions within 21 days. The court also GRANTED the motion to remove an incorrectly filed document and ordered that document permanently sealed.

Eventbrite’s Litigation Conduct

The court criticized Eventbrite and its attorneys for making contradictory factual claims about the webpages and agreements the plaintiffs allegedly saw. Eventbrite later admitted that some screenshots submitted in its first motion did not depict the plaintiffs’ actual registration or checkout experiences. At the hearing, Eventbrite’s counsel accepted responsibility and apologized. The court stated that the conduct was unacceptable and admonished Eventbrite and its attorneys, while still granting the renewed arbitration motion.

Disposition

Judge William H. Orrick granted Eventbrite’s motion to compel arbitration, stayed the case pending arbitration, resolved the sealing motions as described above, and granted the motion to remove the incorrectly filed document.