Florida: Arbitration Clause in Employment Contract Binding in Former Employee’s Retaliatory Discharge Claim

An employment agreement that required arbitration of all employment disputes between a staffing company and a truck driver did not violate public policy by requiring that the driver’s claim of retaliatory discharge be submitted to arbitration, rather than be determined by a court, held a Florida appellate court. Moreover, while the court acknowledged that an agreement to arbitrate future disputes in another jurisdiction—here Texas—was outside the authority of the Florida Arbitration Code and ordinarily rendered the agreement to arbitrate voidable at the instance of either party, because this particular employment agreement involved interstate commerce, the Federal Arbitration Act applied and, citing prior precedent, the court indicated a Florida court must enforce a valid arbitration clause that provided for arbitration in a foreign state. Finally, the court found that the driver was not under duress at the time he signed the agreement in spite of his contention that when he first appeared for work he was told he had five minutes to sign the agreement or be fired.

Thomas A. Robinson, J.D., the Feature National Columnist for the LexisNexis Workers’ Compensation eNewsletter, is a leading commentator and expert on the law of workers’ compensation.

LexisNexis Online Subscribers: Citations below link to Lexis Advance. Bracketed citations link to lexis.com.

See AMS Staff Leasing, Inc. v. Taylor, 2015 Fla. App. LEXIS 3036 (4^th DCA, Mar. 4, 2015) [2015 Fla. App. LEXIS 3036 (4^th DCA, Mar. 4, 2015)]

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, §§ 104.07, 125.03 [104.07, 125.03]

Source: Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, the nation’s leading authority on workers’ compensation law.

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