A federal judge in Pennsylvania has denied Rite Aid’s attempts to hold a customer to an arbitration provision in a contract, rejecting the pharmacy’s argument that the customer was bound to the contract under the doctrine of equitable estoppel.
In a March 30 opinion, U.S. District Judge Mitchell S. Goldberg of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania denied Rite Aid’s motion to compel arbitration from plaintiff Diane Scavello, after determining Scavello wasn’t bound to the contract as her claims in her complaint did not seek to enforce Rite Aid’s contractual obligation to report “usual and customary” prices to Optum, nor did she “knowingly s[ought] and obtain[ed] direct benefits from that contract.”
