Background
Oscar Hills IV joined Plenty of Fish, an online dating platform owned by Match Group, in 2021 and accepted its Terms of Use. Those terms required binding arbitration of disputes, selected Texas law for disputes arising from the agreement or the service, and provided that the Federal Arbitration Act governed the arbitration agreement.
After Hills alleged that he was wrongfully banned from Plenty of Fish and other Match Group platforms following another user’s sexual-assault allegations, he sued in Hawaiʻi circuit court. The circuit court stayed the case and compelled arbitration, concluding that the parties did not dispute the existence of a valid arbitration agreement and that the agreement assigned questions of arbitrability to the arbitrator. Hills appealed, arguing in part that the arbitration provision was voidable under the Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act and that Match Group had abused the judicial process.
The Court’s Holding
The Intermediate Court of Appeals held that it lacked appellate jurisdiction because the circuit court’s order staying the case and compelling arbitration was not immediately appealable. Although Hawaiʻi law generally permits an appeal from such an order, the court concluded that the Terms of Use’s valid choice-of-law provision governed appealability.
The court enforced the parties’ selection of Texas law and the Federal Arbitration Act because Match Group’s principal executive offices in Dallas supplied a sufficient nexus to Texas. Under both Texas law and the Federal Arbitration Act, an interlocutory order staying litigation and compelling arbitration is not appealable. Because either body of law produced the same result, the court did not decide which one specifically supplied the controlling procedural rule.
The court therefore dismissed Hills’s appeal without addressing the merits of his challenges to arbitration. It also stated that no judgment would be entered in the appellate case.
Key Takeaways
- A Hawaiʻi order staying litigation and compelling arbitration may ordinarily be appealable under Hawaiʻi law, but a valid contractual choice-of-law provision can require a different result.
- The court treated the parties’ selection of Texas law and the Federal Arbitration Act as extending to the appealability of the arbitration order.
- Because neither Texas law nor the Federal Arbitration Act permits an interlocutory appeal from an order staying proceedings and compelling arbitration, the court lacked jurisdiction to reach Hills’s substantive arguments.
Why It Matters
The decision underscores that an arbitration agreement’s governing-law clause can determine not only how arbitration disputes are resolved but also whether a party may obtain immediate appellate review of an order compelling arbitration. Litigants should examine the contract’s choice-of-law language before relying on the forum state’s appellate rules.
The ruling also distinguishes prior Hawaiʻi precedent applying Hawaiʻi appealability rules where the parties had selected Hawaiʻi law. Here, enforcing the parties’ selection of Texas law and the Federal Arbitration Act foreclosed interlocutory review even though the order originated in a Hawaiʻi circuit court.