Alkutkar v. Bumble Inc.

Background

Harsh Alkutkar sued Bumble Inc. and other defendants under consumer-protection laws, alleging misleading advertisements about special features available for purchase in the Bumble online dating app. Defendants moved to dismiss and to compel arbitration. The court granted the motion to compel arbitration. After receiving permission to seek reconsideration, Alkutkar filed that motion, and defendants opposed it.

Reasons for Reconsideration

Under Civil Local Rule 7-9(b), reconsideration may be requested for a manifest failure to consider important facts or dispositive legal arguments. The court described reconsideration as an extraordinary remedy reserved for highly unusual circumstances.

Alkutkar argued that the court had committed clear error by:

The court rejected the first argument because the two standards serve different purposes. The party seeking arbitration must prove the existence of a valid arbitration agreement by a preponderance of the evidence, while the court uses the summary-judgment standard when reviewing the evidence. The court stated that it had viewed the facts and reasonable inferences in Alkutkar’s favor and had concluded that Bumble proved by a preponderance of the evidence that clicking the “Blocker Card” was Alkutkar’s act of agreeing to the updated terms, including the arbitration agreement.

The court also rejected the jury-trial argument. It reasoned that its finding that Bumble had established assent necessarily meant there was no genuine dispute of material fact requiring submission to a jury.

Evidence and Factual Dispute

Alkutkar submitted declarations stating that he did not view or click the Blocker Card and that other people had access to and used his phone. In a later declaration, he unequivocally denied viewing or clicking the Blocker Card and said his earlier statement about remembering such an event had been hypothetical.

The court found these explanations difficult to reconcile. It said that Alkutkar’s alternative explanations—either that the Blocker Card did not appear or that someone else using his phone clicked the agreement—did not create a triable factual dispute. The court found that his declaration was uncorroborated and self-serving. It also found that declarations from other users about their experiences in April or May 2022 did not show what happened when Alkutkar accessed the app in March 2021.

Evidence Objections

Alkutkar objected to declarations submitted by defendants, asserting lack of foundation, hearsay, lack of personal knowledge, lack of authentication, and violation of the best-evidence rule. The court explained that, when deciding whether to compel arbitration, it reviews evidence under the summary-judgment standard and does not focus on the evidence’s form if its contents could be presented in admissible form at trial.

The court concluded that Alkutkar’s objections did not require exclusion of the evidence. It stated that the earlier order had implicitly overruled the objections and expressly overruled them in this order.

Disposition

The court denied reconsideration of its order compelling arbitration. It directed the parties to proceed to arbitration and stayed the lawsuit pending completion of the arbitration proceedings.