Nino v. JEWELRY EXCHANGE, INC.

PRECEDENTIAL

IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT

_____________

No. 09-1268
_____________

RAJAE NINO,

Appellant

v.

THE JEWELRY EXCHANGE, INC.; WENDY TARAPANI

On Appeal from the U.S. District Court
for the District of the Virgin Islands

(D. V.I. No. 3-06-cv-00039)

District Judge: Honorable Curtis V. Gomez

Argued December 1, 2009

Before: McKEE, Chief Judge, FUENTES and NYGAARD,
Circuit Judges

(Opinion Filed: June 15, 2010)
Terri L. Griffiths, Esq. [ARGUED]
70C Lindbergh Bay, Suite 134
P.O. Box 307557
Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas
USVI 00802

Counsel for Appellant

Jessica Chung, Esq. [ARGUED]
Treston E. Moore, Esq.
Moore, Dodson & Russell, P.C.
5035 (14A) Norre Gade, Suite 1
P.O. Box 310
Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas
USVI 00802

Counsel for Appellees

Anna N. Occhialino, Esq.
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
5 th Floor
131 M. Street, N.E.
Washington, DC 20507

Counsel for Amicus Appellant

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 OPINION OF THE COURT

FUENTES, Circuit Judge:
Rajae Nino brought this action against his former
employer, alleging that he was discriminated against on account
of his gender and national origin. After litigating the matter
before the District Court for fifteen months, the employer
invoked an arbitration provision in Nino’s employment contract
and moved the District Court to compel the parties to arbitrate
their dispute. Nino opposed the motion, arguing (1) that the
arbitration agreement was unconscionable and, therefore,
unenforceable, and (2) that by engaging in extensive litigation
of this dispute, the employer had waived its right to compel
arbitration. The District Court concluded that although the
arbitration agreement contained unconscionable terms, those
provisions could be severed from the contract and the remainder
of its terms could be enforced. The Court then concluded that
the employer did not, through its litigation conduct, waive its
right to compel arbitration. We disagree.
In our view, the pervasively one-sided nature of the
arbitration agreement’s terms demonstrates that the employer
did not seek to use arbitration as a legitimate means for dispute
resolution. Instead, the employer created a system that was
designed to give it an unfair advantage through rules that
impermissibly restricted employees’ access to arbitration and

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that gave the employer an undue influence over the selection of
the arbitrator. We hold that it is not appropriate, in the face of
such pervasive one-sidedness, to sever the unconscionable
provisions from the remainder of the arbitration agreement. We
further conclude that the employer, by engaging in protracted
litigation of this matter before belatedly seeking to arbitrate its
dispute, waived its right to compel arbitration. We will thus
reverse the District Court’s order compelling the parties to
arbitrate.
I.
A.
Diamonds International (“DI”) is one of the world’s
largest jewelry retailers. 1 Nino is a Jordanian national who, in
January 2000, agreed to work for DI as a salesperson and
gemologist. Because Nino did not have a United States work
visa when he was hired, he was assigned to DI’s Aruba store,
where he was paid $450 per week, plus commissions and
housing. DI helped Nino obtain a United States work visa, after
which it transferred him to its Alaska store. In September 2000,
DI asked Nino to transfer to its St. Thomas location, and he
agreed.
Upon his arrival at the St. Thomas store, Nino was given
a copy of the company’s standard employment contract. The

1
The business entity named as a defendant in this
lawsuit is Jewelry Exchange, Inc. Jewelry Exchange does
business as Diamonds International, and we, like the parties,
will refer to it by that name.

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following are some of the procedures and deadlines contained
in the contract that we find most troublesome. Article IV of the
contract sets forth a grievance and arbitration procedure that the
contract describes as “the sole, final, binding and exclusive
remedy for any and all employment[-]related disputes.” (J.A. at
80.) The remedial process outlined in Article IV requires an
aggrieved employee to satisfy a series of requirements before he
is eligible to arbitrate a dispute. First, the employee must file
with his manager a detailed written grievance within five days
of having received notice of the action complained of; the
manager is then required to respond with a decision within two
days. If the employee is unsatisfied with the manager’s
decision, he must re-file the grievance with the managing
director within two days of having received the manager’s
decision; the managing director is then required to respond with
a decision within five days. If the employee is not satisfied with
the managing director’s decision, he must file a written request
for arbitration with the managing director within five days of
having received the decision.
The contract makes clear that “[t]he time limits provided
for above are binding and may not be waived except by written
agreement of both parties,” (id. at 82), meaning that an
employee who does not file grievances within the applicable
time frame loses the opportunity to arbitrate a dispute altogether.
The contract insulates DI against a comparable risk of
default—it provides that if DI fails to respond to an employee’s
grievance on a timely basis, “the last decision given by [DI]
shall be a final and binding resolution of the grievance.” (Id.)
If an employee satisfies these grievance filing
requirements, DI must submit a request to the American

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Arbitration Association (“AAA”) for a panel of four arbitrators.
The parties then select a single arbitrator from this list according
to the following method:
From the panel the Employer will strike the first
arbitrator for whatever reason is unacceptable to
the Employer. The Employee will then be
allowed to strike one arbitrator from the
remaining names of panel members. This process
will continue until there remains one arbitrator
who will be the arbitrator for this grievance or the
parties can decide on an arbitrator that would be
mutually acceptable.

(Id. at 81.) Stated more directly, DI is permitted to strike two
members from the list of potential arbitrators, but the employee
is permitted to strike just one.
The contract provides that the arbitration must take place
at DI’s place of business “at a date and time mutually
convenient to both parties but in no event more than thirty (30)
days after the selection of an arbitrator has been made.” (Id.)
The contract further provides that the parties are entitled to be
represented by counsel at their own expense, that discovery may
be had by either party pursuant to the Federal Rules of Civil
Procedure, and that the fees and expenses of the arbitrator and
stenographer are to be borne equally by the parties. Under the
contract, the arbitrator “may make any award deemed legal and
appropriate,” and in doing so, “must interpret, apply and be
bound by the Employer’s rules, regulations, policies and
procedures as well as applicable federal, state, local and

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common laws.” (Id. at 81-82.)
On the same day that Nino signed the employment
contract, he signed a separate one-page document entitled
“Diamonds International AGREEMENT,” in which Nino
acknowledged that he had received DI’s employee handbook.
(Id. at 84.) In this one-page agreement, Nino also acknowledged
that DI was authorized “to unilaterally amend its rules,
regulations, policies, and procedures without prior notice to its
employees.” (Id.) Nino further acknowledged “that the
grievance procedure[] set forth in the employee handbook is my
exclusive remedy for my employment-related disputes.” (Id.)
The employee handbook, in turn, sets forth a process for
dispute resolution that partially resembles, but is not identical to,
the grievance process described in the employment contract.
Specifically, the process described in the handbook differs from
the contract in that it does not mention a right to arbitration, it
requires employees to file the initial grievance within two
(rather than five) days of the complained-of action, and it makes
the decision of the managing director final as to all decisions
except terminations, which may be further appealed to a
management panel for final resolution. The materials that DI
provided to Nino do not purport to reconcile the differences
between the contract and the handbook, nor do they explain
which of these two dispute resolution mechanisms actually
applies to an employee’s grievances.
B.
While the precise details of Nino’s allegations of
discrimination are not central to the issues presented in this
appeal, we summarize them to provide the basis for his federal

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complaint. Nino, who is a gay man, did not initially disclose his
sexual orientation to his co-workers in St. Thomas. According
to his allegations, Nino’s co-workers began to fixate upon the
issue of his sexual orientation, making increasingly hostile
comments during his employment. Eventually, Nino revealed
to his co-workers that he was gay. According to the complaint,
this revelation served only to intensify the harassment by his co-
workers, which escalated to both verbal and physical assaults to
which DI’s management turned a blind eye.
According to Nino’s allegations, on February 2, 2005,
one of Nino’s co-workers, Jason Lettsome, falsely accused Nino
of “coming on” to him. (J.A. at 43.) Nino reported this incident
to the store manager, and Lettsome in turn complained to the
manager that Nino “acted and talked like a female” when he
interacted with Lettsome. (Id.) In response to these complaints,
the manager wrote up both Nino and Lettsome for being
disruptive. Shortly thereafter, Nino was suspended for one week
without pay and was threatened with termination. The rationale
behind Nino’s suspension was that Nino had allegedly used a
profanity when he was informed that he was being written up,
although Nino contends that this was a pretext for
discrimination. Nino did not return to work following his
suspension, and he alleges that he was constructively
discharged, i.e., that he was compelled to resign due to the
hostile working environment. Nino did not file a grievance with
DI related to his suspension and eventual resignation.
C.
On March 3, 2006, Nino filed a complaint against DI and
Wendy Tarapani, a manager of DI’s St. Thomas store, alleging,

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inter alia, that he had been discriminated against on the basis of
gender and national origin.2 As the seventh of the ten
affirmative defenses asserted in its answer to the complaint, DI
contended that Nino was “contractually barred to any remedy
other than one achieved by arbitration.” (Id. at 54.)
Notwithstanding this invocation of arbitration in its initial
pleading, DI actively litigated this case for fifteen months
between June 2006, when it was served with the complaint, and
September 2007, when it finally filed a motion to dismiss based
upon the arbitration clause. In particular, the parties conferred
and submitted a joint proposed case management order (which
was silent as to the question of arbitration); they attended no
fewer than ten pretrial conferences before the magistrate judge,
throughout which DI was silent as to the matter of arbitration;
and they engaged in extensive discovery, including service and
supplementation of disclosures pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil
Procedure 26, service and supplementation of written discovery,
and attending four depositions.
On September 26, 2007, after litigating this dispute for
fifteen months with no mention of the arbitration clause apart
from the affirmative defense asserted in its answer to the
complaint, DI filed a motion to dismiss Nino’s claims on the
grounds that the parties’ contract made arbitration the sole
method of resolving employment-related disputes. Nino
opposed the motion on the grounds that the one-sided nature of

2
For simplicity, we refer to DI and Tarapani collectively
as “DI” or “Defendants,” except where it is necessary to identify
them individually.

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the arbitration clause made it unconscionable and that, through
its litigation conduct, DI had waived any right to enforce the
clause.
The District Court granted DI’s motion to dismiss. The
Court initially noted that aspects of the arbitration clause were
unconscionable. The Court held, however, that the
unconscionable provisions were severable from the remainder
of the arbitration agreement, because they did not constitute an
“essential part of the agreed exchange” between Nino and DI.
Restatement (Second) of Contracts § 184. The Court thus held
that the remainder of the arbitration agreement was enforceable.
Additionally, the Court determined that DI had not waived its
right to enforce the arbitration clause, notwithstanding its
fifteen-month delay in filing the motion to compel arbitration,
because DI had raised arbitrability as an affirmative defense in
its answer to Nino’s complaint, and because DI had not engaged
in dispositive motion practice prior to moving to compel
arbitration. Nino filed this timely appeal of the District Court’s
dismissal order.
II.
The District Court had jurisdiction over this case under
28 U.S.C. § 1331 and 48 U.S.C. § 1612(a). We have
jurisdiction pursuant to 9 U.S.C. § 16(a)(3). See Green Tree
Financial Corp.-Alabama v. Randolph, 531 U.S. 79, 89 (2000)
(explaining that “where . . . the District Court has ordered the
parties to proceed to arbitration, and dismissed all the claims
before it, that decision is ‘final’ within the meaning of §
16(a)(3), and therefore appealable”). “We exercise plenary
review over questions of law concerning the applicability and

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scope of arbitration agreements.” Zimmer v. CooperNeff
Advisors, Inc., 523 F.3d 224, 228 (3d Cir. 2008) (citation
omitted). We likewise exercise plenary review over the District
Court’s determination of whether DI, through its litigation
conduct, waived its right to compel arbitration. See Ehleiter v.
Grapetree Shores, Inc., 482 F.3d 207, 215 (3d Cir. 2007). We
review the District Court’s factual findings for clear error. See
Zimmer, 523 F.3d at 228.
III.
A.
We first address the District Court’s decision to sever the
unconscionable aspects of the parties’ arbitration agreement and
enforce the remainder of the agreement. We have repeatedly
recognized that the Federal Arbitration Act (“FAA”) establishes
a “strong federal policy in favor of the resolution of disputes
through arbitration.” Puleo v. Chase Bank USA, N.A, --- F.3d
----, 2010 WL 1838762, at *3 (3d Cir. May 10, 2010) (citation
omitted); see also Spinetti v. Service Corp. Intern., 324 F.3d
212, 213 (3d Cir. 2003). Under the FAA, arbitration agreements
“are enforceable to the same extent as other contracts.”
Alexander v. Anthony Int’l, L.P., 341 F.3d 256, 263 (3d Cir.
2003) (internal quotations and citations omitted). “A party to a
valid and enforceable arbitration agreement is entitled to a stay
of federal court proceedings pending arbitration as well as an
order compelling such arbitration.” Id. (citing, inter alia, 9
U.S.C. §§ 3-4) (emphasis added).
The preceding qualification that an arbitration agreement
be “valid and enforceable” before arbitration can be compelled,
id., makes clear that when a party to an arbitration agreement

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challenges the validity of the agreement, a threshold question of
arbitrability is presented for the court to decide.3 See Howsam
v. Dean Witter Reynolds, Inc., 537 U.S. 79, 83 (2002); see also
Parilla v. IAP Worldwide Servs., VI, Inc., 368 F.3d 269, 275-76
(3d Cir. 2004) (“It is up to the court, prior to granting such an
order [compelling arbitration], to determine whether the parties
entered a valid agreement to arbitrate.”) (citation omitted).
Nino’s contention that the arbitration agreement at issue in this
case is unconscionable presents such a question of arbitrability.
See, e.g., Doctor’s Assocs., Inc. v. Casarotto, 517 U.S. 681, 687
(1996) (“[G]enerally applicable contract defenses, such as . . .
unconscionability, may be applied to invalidate arbitration
agreements without contravening § 2 [of the FAA].”); see also
Puleo, 2010 WL 1838762, at *5. In addressing a claim that an
arbitration clause is unconscionable, we apply the “ordinary
state law principles . . . of the involved state or territory,” which,
in this case, is the law of the Virgin Islands. Gay v.
CreditInform, 511 F.3d 369, 388 (3d Cir. 2007) (citations
omitted); see also Spinetti, 324 F.3d at 214.

3
By contrast, “questions concerning the validity of the
entire contract [as opposed to the validity of the arbitration
clause itself] are to be resolved by the arbitrator in the first
instance, not by a federal or state court.” Preston v. Ferrer, 552
U.S. 346, 349 (2008) (citing Buckeye Check Cashing, Inc. v.
Cardegna, 546 U.S. 440, 445-46 (2006)) (emphasis added).
Nino’s challenge is limited to the provisions of the arbitration
clause itself; he does not challenge the validity of the contract as
a whole.

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 We have reviewed Virgin Islands law governing
unconscionability challenges to arbitration agreements on
numerous occasions. See, e.g., Edwards v. HOVENSA, LLC,
497 F.3d 355, 362-63 (3d Cir. 2007); Parilla, 368 F.3d at 275;
Alexander, 341 F.3d at 264. Virgin Islands statutory law
“mandates that we turn to ‘the rules of the common law, as
expressed in the restatements of the law approved by the
American Law Institute’” in evaluating whether the provisions
of an arbitration agreement are unconscionable. Alexander, 341
F.3d at 264 (quoting 1 V.I. Code Ann. § 4). Section 208 of the
Restatement (Second) of Contracts provides that “[i]f a contract
or term thereof is unconscionable at the time the contract is
made a court may refuse to enforce the contract, or may enforce
the remainder of the contract without the unconscionable term,
or may so limit the application of any unconscionable term as to
avoid any unconscionable result.”
Under Virgin Islands law, “[t]he doctrine of
unconscionability involves both ‘procedural’ and ‘substantive’
elements.” Edwards, 497 F.3d at 362 (citation omitted). The
procedural component of the unconscionability inquiry looks to
the “process by which an agreement is reached and the form of
an agreement, including the use therein of fine print and
convoluted or unclear language.” Alexander, 341 F.3d at 265
(citation omitted). We have consistently found that adhesion
contracts—that is, contracts prepared by the party with greater
bargaining power and presented to the other party “for signature
on a take-it-or-leave-it basis”—satisfy the procedural element of
the unconscionability analysis. Id. (citation omitted); see also
Edwards, 497 F.3d at 362; Parilla, 368 F.3d at 276. “A contract,
however, is ‘not unconscionable merely because the parties to

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it are unequal in bargaining position.’” Alexander, 341 F.3d at
265 (quoting Restatement (Second) of Contracts § 208 cmt. d).
Instead, a party challenging a contract on unconscionability
grounds must also show that the contract is substantively
unconscionable by demonstrating that the contract contains
“terms unreasonably favorable to the stronger party.” Id.
(citation omitted). With these principles in mind, we turn to
Nino’s unconscionability challenge to the arbitration agreement
at issue in this case.
B.
Looking first to the question of procedural
unconscionability, we agree with the District Court that Nino
had no opportunity to negotiate with DI over the contract’s
terms, that DI was the stronger contractual party, and that the
arbitration agreement is thus procedurally unconscionable. First
and most significantly, as the District Court expressly found, DI
presented the arbitration agreement to Nino “for signature on a
take-it-or-leave-it basis.” Id. at 266 (citation omitted). As Nino
explained in his deposition, during his first week at the St.
Thomas store, DI’s human resources manager provided him
with a copy of the company’s employment contract and
instructed him to “read it and sign it,” (S.A. at 18), without
affording him any opportunity to negotiate over its terms. As
the District Court explained, “Nino was given no reasonable
choice in accepting the challenged Arbitration Agreement.”
(J.A. at 13.)
Moreover, a significant disparity in bargaining power
existed between Nino and DI. As was the case in Alexander, DI
is a large corporation that “conducts business throughout the

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nation and the world, [and it] clearly possessed more bargaining
power” than did Nino, a single, retail-level employee.
Alexander, 341 F.3d at 266. DI likens Nino’s case to Zimmer,
in which we held that an employment contract was not
procedurally unconscionable where the employee-plaintiff was
“a Harvard-educated economist, previously employed by J.P.
Morgan Chase and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York”
who was weighing “multiple offers of employment at the time
he accepted [defendant’s] job offer.” 523 F.3d at 229.
Although Nino, as a college graduate, was better educated than
were the plaintiffs in Alexander, we cannot agree with DI that
Nino’s bargaining leverage was even remotely comparable to
that of the plaintiff in Zimmer. As the District Court
recognized, Nino was dependent upon DI “with respect to his
immigration status at the time he accepted the job offer.” (J.A.
at 13.) Quite unlike the plaintiff in Zimmer, who was fielding
a host of employment offers at the time he negotiated his
contract with the defendant, Nino depended upon DI for his very
capacity to work in St. Thomas, where he had just been
transferred. Given that the contract was presented to Nino on a
take-it-or-leave-it basis, and given the disparity in bargaining
power between the two parties at the time the contract was
signed, we agree with Nino and the District Court that the
arbitration agreement is procedurally unconscionable.4

4
We pause to note an additional concern under the
procedural unconscionability analysis. We have recognized that
a party may show that an agreement is procedurally
unconscionable where the agreement is so “convoluted” that the
party could not have known what it was that he was agreeing to.

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See Alexander, 341 F.3d at 265.
C.
We likewise conclude that the arbitration agreement is
substantively unconscionable because it contains terms
unreasonably favorable to DI, the stronger party. See Zimmer,
523 F.3d at 228 (“Substantive unconscionability looks to
whether the arbitration provision unreasonably favors the party
asserting it.”) (quotation marks and citation omitted). We
address these unreasonable contract terms in turn below.
First, we agree with Nino and the District Court that the
arbitration agreement’s provision requiring that an employee file
a grievance within five days of the complained-of incident in
order to preserve his or her opportunity to arbitrate the dispute
is substantively unconscionable. We have twice held in no
uncertain terms that a thirty-day filing requirement in an
arbitration agreement is substantively unconscionable.

Zimmer, 523 F.3d at 228. In this case, the contract and DI’s
employee handbook contain disparate dispute resolution
mechanisms with conflicting deadlines and other irreconcilable
differences. We find it hard to imagine that an employee in
Nino’s position reading these contradictory materials could
realistically understand what sort of dispute resolution
mechanism he was agreeing to. However, because the parties
barely address this point—indeed, Nino raises it only in passing
in his reply brief—we do not rest our procedural
unconscionability holding on the convoluted nature of the
agreement.

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See Parilla, 368 F.3d at 277-78; Alexander, 341 F.3d at 266. As
we explained in Alexander and reiterated in Parilla, while “a
provision limiting the time to bring a claim or provide notice of
such a claim to the defendant is not necessarily unfair or
otherwise unconscionable,” the time period designated by the
agreement must still be reasonable. Alexander, 341 F.3d at 266;
accord Parilla, 368 F.3d at 277-78. A thirty-day filing period,
we made clear in both cases, is “clearly unreasonable and unduly
favorable” to the employer. Alexander, 341 F.3d at 266.
If a thirty-day filing window is “clearly unreasonable,”
id., then the five-day filing requirement imposed by the parties’
contract in this case is even more unduly favorable to DI than
were the agreements at issue in Alexander and Parilla. Indeed,
the filing requirement in Nino’s arbitration agreement is
particularly unreasonable because it is both inflexible and one-
sided. With regard to its inflexibility, the agreement states that
its filing requirements “are binding and may not be waived
except by written agreement of both parties.” (J.A. at 82.) As
we have explained, such a provision enhances the unfairness of
the narrow filing window because it “prevents an employee
from invoking the continuing violation and tolling doctrines.”
Alexander, 341 F.3d at 267 (citing Ingle v. Circuit City Stores,
Inc., 328 F.3d 1165, 1175 (9th Cir. 2003)); see also Parilla, 368
F.3d at 277. The one-sided nature of the five-day filing
requirement exacerbates this unfairness. As in Alexander, DI’s
“unfair advantage is only compounded by the fact that [DI itself]
is apparently not required to provide detailed and written notice
to an employee of any of its own claims within a strictly
enforced [five]-day time period.” Alexander, 341 F.3d at 267.
Indeed, the arbitration agreement in this case imposes no notice

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requirement upon DI whatsoever. Moreover, while an
employee’s failure to adhere to the strict five-day filing
requirement amounts to a default on his claims, the agreement
expressly insulates DI from any risk of default—under the
agreement, if DI fails to process an employee’s grievance in a
timely manner, “the last decision given by [DI] shall be a final
and binding resolution of the grievance.” (J.A. at 82.) The one-
sided five-day filing requirement is manifestly unreasonable and
is substantively unconscionable under Virgin Islands law.
Parilla, 368 F.3d at 278; Alexander, 341 F.3d at 266.
Nino likewise argues, and the District Court found, that
the arbitration agreement’s requirement that the parties bear
their own attorney’s fees, costs, and expenses is substantively
unconscionable. We agree. As we have explained:
It is well established that arbitration is merely a
choice of dispute resolution and does not infringe
upon statutory protections. Therefore, if
arbitration is to offer claimants the full scope of
remedies available under Title VII, arbitrators in
Title VII cases, just like courts, must be guided by
Christiansburg [Garment Co. v. EEOC, 434 U.S.
412, 417 (1978),] and must ordinarily grant
attorney fees to prevailing claimants rather than
be restricted by private contractual language.
Spinetti, 324 F.3d at 216 (internal quotations and citations
omitted); Parilla, 368 F.3d at 279 (same); Alexander, 341 F.3d
at 267 (same).
Provisions in arbitration clauses requiring parties to bear
their own attorney’s fees, costs, and expenses work to “the

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disadvantage of an employee needing to obtain legal assistance.”
Alexander, 341 F.3d at 267. Such provisions also undermine the
legislative intent behind fee-shifting statutes like Title VII. Cf.
Hackwell v. United States, 491 F.3d 1229, 1240 (10th Cir. 2007)
(“Title VII’s fee-shifting provision, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-5(k), was
intended to encourage private citizens to enforce the statute’s
guarantees and [] if successful plaintiffs were forced to bear
their own attorneys’ fees, few aggrieved parties would be in the
position to advance the public interest.”) (citing H.R. Rep.
102-40(I), Civil Rights Act of 1991 (Apr. 24, 1991)). The
arbitration agreement’s restriction on the arbitrator’s ability to
award attorney’s fees, costs, and expenses is substantively
unconscionable, as the District Court correctly concluded. See
Spinetti, 324 F.3d at 216.
Finally, we turn to the arbitration agreement’s provision
governing the selection of an arbitrator, which Nino contends is
substantively unconscionable. Under the arbitration agreement,
if an employee manages to navigate the labyrinth of
requirements for filing and refiling grievances in order to make
a request for arbitration, DI is required to submit a request to the
AAA for a panel of four arbitrators. The parties select a single
arbitrator from this list according to the following process:
From the panel the Employer will strike the first
arbitrator for whatever reason is unacceptable to
the Employer. The Employee will then be
allowed to strike one arbitrator from the
remaining names of panel members. This process
will continue until there remains one arbitrator
who will be the arbitrator for this grievance or the
parties can decide on an arbitrator that would be

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 mutually acceptable.
(J.A. at 81.) Although it is phrased in neutral, procedural terms,
the upshot of this provision is that DI is permitted to strike two
arbitrators from the four-member AAA panel, whereas the
employee is permitted to strike just one.
This provision is “one-sided in the extreme and
unreasonably favorable to [DI].” Alexander, 341 F.3d at 267.
It confers an advantage upon DI for no discernable purpose
other than to stack the deck in its favor. Courts of Appeals have
not hesitated to conclude that provisions in arbitration
agreements that give the employer an unreasonable advantage
over the employee in the selection of an arbitrator are
unconscionable, see, e.g, Hooters of America, Inc. v. Phillips,
173 F.3d 933, 940 (4th Cir. 1999), and we have consistently
recognized that arbitration provisions that confer an “unfair
advantage” upon the party with greater bargaining power are
substantively unconscionable, Alexander, 341 F.3d at 267. “By
agreeing to arbitration in lieu of litigation, the parties agree to
trade the procedures and opportunity for review of the
courtroom for the simplicity, informality, and expedition of
arbitration,” but they do not accede to procedures “utterly
lacking in the rudiments of even-handedness.” Murray v.
United Food & Commercial Workers Intern., 289 F.3d 297, 303
(4th Cir. 2002) (internal quotations and citations omitted).
DI advances several arguments in defense of the
arbitrator selection provision, all of which are thoroughly
unconvincing. First, DI contends that because the agreement
provides a secondary method for selecting an arbitrator—it
permits the parties simply to agree upon “an arbitrator that

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would be mutually acceptable,” (J.A. at 81)—the selection
process does not unreasonably favor DI. This argument invites
us to conclude that because the agreement authorizes DI not to
use the advantage it holds in the one-sided arbitrator selection
process, the process cannot be considered unreasonably
favorable to DI. Such reasoning would provide cold comfort to
an employee who is unable to agree with DI upon a “mutually
acceptable” arbitrator, (id.), and it does not diminish the unfair
advantage accorded to DI over the selection of an arbitrator if
the parties do not reach such an agreement. The presence of an
alternative avenue for selecting an arbitrator does not render less
unfair the one-sided mechanism set forth in the arbitration
agreement.
DI next suggests that because “the panel is comprised of
neutral, impartial arbitrators, as must be presumed, DI will not
gain any benefit by having an additional strike.” (DI Br. 16.)
We cannot agree. DI is of course correct that the panel is to be
comprised of arbitrators with no connection to, or interest in, the
parties or dispute at hand. The AAA’s rules require that
“[n]eutral arbitrators serving under these rules . . . have no
personal or financial interest in the results of the proceeding in
which they are appointed and . . . have no relation to the
underlying dispute or to the parties or their counsel that may
create an appearance of bias.” See American Arbitration
Association, Employment Arbitration Rules and Mediation
P r o c e d u r e s , R u l e 1 2 ( b ) ( 2 ) ,
http://www.adr.org/sp.asp?id=32904#12 (last visited June 14,
2010). But the fact that potential arbitrators are pre-screened for
personal or financial interests in the controversy does not mean
that a party derives no benefit from having a greater influence

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over the arbitrator selection process. The ability to strike
potential arbitrators from the panel is akin to a peremptory
challenge in jury selection—it enables the parties to eliminate an
arbitrator whose “sympathies” appear to align with one side or
another, even if the potential arbitrator is not personally
connected to the controversy or biased against a party. J.E.B. v.
Alabama ex rel. T.B., 511 U.S. 127, 148 (1994) (O’Connor, J.,
concurring). Just as no experienced trial lawyer would dispute
that “[t]he peremptory challenge is ‘an important aspect of trial
by jury,’” the ability to strike potential arbitrators undoubtedly
confers a benefit, even if the arbitration panel is composed of
disinterested and unbiased candidates. Darbin v. Nourse, 664
F.2d 1109, 1113 n.4 (9th Cir. 1981) (quoting Rosales-Lopez v.
United States, 451 U.S. 182, 188 n.6 (1981)). Indeed, it would
be difficult to understand the point of including in the arbitration
agreement a mechanism for striking potential arbitrators if the
parties did not stand to benefit from the exercise. We therefore
reject DI’s suggestion that it would derive no benefit from
exercising its contractual right to strike twice as many potential
arbitrators as Nino.
Finally, DI proposes that, rather than determining that the
arbitrator selection clause is unconscionable, we should simply
“alter[] the terms [of the arbitration agreement] so that the AAA
supplies a panel of five (5) arbitrators instead of four (4).” (DI
Br. 16.) Our precedent forecloses such an approach, and with
good reason:
[Section] 208 of the Restatement (Second) of
Contracts provides the rule of decision here. That
section provides, in relevant part, that “[i]f a
contract or term thereof is unconscionable at the

-22-
 time the contract is made a court may refuse to
enforce the contract.” Restatement § 208
(emphasis added). Accordingly, we must
determine unconscionability as of the time the
contract was formed, and an after-the-fact offer to
waive certain contract provisions can have no
effect on our analysis.
Parilla, 368 F.3d at 285 (emphasis in original). An arbitration
agreement in an employment contract does not, in the context of
litigation, become the employer’s opening bid in a negotiation
with the employee or the court over the agreement’s
unconscionable terms. As we have explained, “[b]ecause the
employer drafted the arbitration agreement, the employer is
saddled with the consequences of the provision as drafted.”
Spinetti, 324 F.3d at 217-18 n.2 (citation omitted). DI’s efforts
to defend the arbitrator selection clause are unavailing, and we
conclude that the clause, like the five-day filing window and the
provision requiring parties to bear their own fees, costs, and
expenses, is substantively unconscionable.5

5
Nino further contends that additional provisions of the
agreement are likewise unconscionable. We do not find these
additional provisions to be unreasonable, and we therefore
mention them only briefly. First, Nino suggests that the
agreement’s provision requiring that the arbitration take place at
DI’s place of business is substantively unconscionable. Such
provisions are not uncommon in arbitration agreements, see,
e.g., Ridge at Red Hawk, L.L.C. v. Schneider, 493 F.3d 1174,
1175 (10th Cir. 2007), and we do not agree that this term is

-23-
 D.
Our final task in addressing Nino’s unconscionability
challenge to the arbitration agreement is to determine whether
the unconscionable terms may be severed from the agreement
such that the remainder of its terms may be enforced. As the
Restatement (Second) of Contracts explains, where aspects of an
agreement are unenforceable, “a court may nevertheless enforce
the rest of the agreement in favor of a party who did not engage
in serious misconduct if the performance as to which the
agreement is unenforceable is not an essential part of the agreed
exchange.” Restatement (Second) of Contracts § 184(1). We
have frequently emphasized that determining whether or not the
unconscionable provisions of an arbitration agreement should be
severed “requires more than a count of the unconscionable

unduly unfavorable to DI. Nino likewise argues that a provision
in the agreement requiring the parties to evenly share the
arbitrator’s and stenographer’s fees is unconscionable. In order
to challenge such a provision, a plaintiff must show what the
arbitrator’s fees would likely amount to, and Nino made no such
showing. See Alexander, 341 F.3d at 269. Finally, Nino takes
issue with the agreement’s requirement that “[t]he arbitrator . .
. interpret, apply and be bound by the Employer’s rules,
regulations, policies and procedures as well as applicable
federal, state, local and common law.” (J.A. at 82.) Nino
suggests that this provision requires the arbitrator to enforce
DI’s rules, even if those rules are unlawful. We do not
agree—the agreement does not suggest that the arbitrator would
be bound to enforce an unlawful employment policy.

-24-
provisions,” and instead calls for an examination of the specific
“nature of the provisions” themselves. Parilla, 368 F.3d at 286.
As we recognized most recently in Parilla, two lines of
inquiry are relevant to the question of severability. The first of
these is whether the unconscionable aspects “of the employment
arbitration agreement constitute[] ‘an essential part of the agreed
exchange’ of promises” between the parties. Spinetti, 324 F.3d
at 214 (quoting Restatement (Second) of Contracts § 184(1)).
If the unconscionable aspects of the clause do not comprise an
essential aspect of the arbitration agreement as a whole, then the
unconscionable provisions may be severed and the remainder of
the arbitration agreement enforced. See id. “Whether the
performance is an essential part of the agreed exchange depends
on its relative importance in the light of the entire agreement
between the parties.” Restatement (Second) of Contracts § 184,
cmt. a.
The second consideration for the question of severability,
which we discussed in Alexander and elaborated upon in Parilla,
is whether the unconscionability of the arbitration clause
demonstrates “a systematic effort to impose arbitration on an
employee, not simply as an alternative to litigation, but as an
inferior forum that works to the employer’s advantage.” Parilla,
368 F.3d at 288 (quoting Ferguson v. Countrywide Credit
Indus., Inc., 298 F.3d 778, 787-88 (9th Cir. 2002)); see also
Alexander, 341 F.3d at 271. Put differently, “a multitude of
unconscionable provisions in an agreement to arbitrate will
preclude severance and enforcement of arbitration if they
evidence a deliberate attempt by an employer to impose an
arbitration scheme designed to discourage an employee’s resort
to arbitration or to produce results biased in the employer’s

-25-
favor.” Parilla, 368 F.3d at 289; see also, e.g., Nagrampa v.
MailCoups, Inc., 469 F.3d 1257, 1293-94 (9th Cir. 2006) (en
banc); Hooters, 173 F.3d at 939-40; Graham Oil Co. v. ARCO
Products Co., 43 F.3d 1244, 1248-49 (9th Cir. 1994). As we
explained in Parilla, the principle of foreclosing severance
where the contractual terms demonstrate a systematic effort to
create a one-sided, employer-friendly forum is derived from the
“equitable override provision of the Restatement.” 368 F.3d at
288. Under that provision, even if “‘disregard of [illegal
provisions] will not defeat the primary purpose of the bargain,’
enforcement of the bargain will be denied if the person seeking
it has been ‘guilty of serious moral turpitude,’ Restatement
(First) of Contracts § 603, or ‘serious misconduct,’ Restatement
(Second) of Contracts § 184(1).” Id. at 289.
These two considerations provide separate and
independent bases for declining to sever the unconscionable
provisions from an arbitration agreement. That is, if the
unconscionable provisions comprise essential aspects of the
agreement as a whole, or if the agreement demonstrates that the
employer sought to impose arbitration on the employee as an
inferior, one-sided forum that worked to the employer’s
advantage, then severance of the unconscionable provisions is
not called for, and the court should decline to enforce the
arbitration agreement in its entirety. See id. at 288; Alexander,
341 F.3d at 270-71.
We need not discuss whether the unconscionable
provisions of the parties’ arbitration agreement comprise an
essential aspect of the agreement as a whole, because we
conclude that the one-sided nature of the arbitration agreement
reveals unmistakably that DI “was not seeking a bona fide

-26-
mechanism for dispute resolution, but rather sought to impose
a scheme that it knew or should have known would provide it
with an impermissible advantage.” Parilla, 368 F.3d at 289.
The provisions in question do not simply accord an advantage
upon DI indirectly or by happenstance. Instead, they are baldly
one-sided, with only one discernable purpose—to create
advantages for the employer that are not afforded to the
employee. Of the four members of the arbitration panel, the
agreement permits DI to strike two and the employee to strike
just one. The employee is required to give notice to DI of the
claims he intends to arbitrate, while DI is under no such
obligation to provide any notice to the employee. The employee
must file a detailed grievance regarding the matter he seeks to
arbitrate within five days of the underlying events or lose the
right to go to arbitration altogether, while DI is insulated against
the risk of default for any failure to adhere to its own filing
deadlines. These procedures provided DI with an
“impermissible advantage,” Parilla, 368 F.3d at 289, because
they “unreasonably favor [DI] to the severe disadvantage of [its
employees].” Alexander, 341 F.3d at 271. When the
unconscionable arbitration provisions “are so one-sided that
their only possible purpose is to undermine the neutrality of the
proceeding,” Hooters, 173 F.3d at 938 (emphasis added),
severance of those provisions and enforcement of the remainder
of the arbitration agreement is not appropriate. See Parilla, 368
F.3d at 289; Alexander, 341 F.3d at 271; Graham Oil, 43 F.3d
at 1248-49. The only conceivable purpose of the arbitration
agreement’s one-sided provisions is to stack the deck in DI’s
favor, making severance of the unconscionable terms

-27-
inappropriate.6
We conclude, in sum, that the arbitration agreement is
procedurally and substantively unconscionable, and that the
pervasively one-sided nature of the agreement forecloses any
possibility of severing the unfair provisions from the remainder
of the agreement. See Alexander, 341 F.3d at 271 (“[W]e
cannot give effect to an agreement to arbitrate afflicted by so
much fundamental and pervasive unfairness.”) We will thus

6
We are unpersuaded by DI’s argument that the
agreement’s unreasonable terms should be severed. DI likens
this case to Parilla, in which we explained that a thirty-day filing
provision and a requirement that arbitrating parties bear their
own fees and costs were unconscionable. 368 F.3d at 277-79.
As DI notes, rather than declining to enforce the agreement in
Parilla, we remanded for further proceedings as to whether
additional terms were unconscionable and whether severance of
the unconscionable provisions was appropriate. Id. at 289.
Here, we not only have a greater number of unconscionable
terms than in Parilla, but, much more significantly, those terms
demonstrate that DI created a one-sided arbitration system that
gave it unfair advantages and that unreasonably restricted
employees’ access to arbitration. As we explained in Alexander,
although “a district court should ordinarily be accorded the
opportunity to rule on the issue of severance based on a
sufficiently developed record,” given the inescapably one-sided
nature of this agreement, “no reasonable finder of fact could
conclude that severance is appropriate.” Alexander, 341 F.3d at
271 n.13.

-28-
reverse the District Court’s decision to sever the unconscionable
clauses from the arbitration agreement and enforce the
remainder of the agreement.7
IV.
As we now explain, we further conclude that the District
Court erred in determining that DI did not waive its right to
compel arbitration after litigating this case for fifteen months.
“Consistent with the strong preference for arbitration in federal
courts, waiver is not to be lightly inferred, and waiver will
normally be found only where the demand for arbitration came
long after the suit commenced and when both parties had
engaged in extensive discovery.” PaineWebber Inc. v. Faragalli,
61 F.3d 1063, 1068-69 (3d Cir. 1995) (internal quotations and
citations omitted). Notwithstanding the preference for
arbitration, however, “a court may refuse to enforce an
arbitration agreement where, for example, ‘the alleged
defaulting party has acted inconsistently with the right to
arbitrate,’” Doctor’s Assocs., Inc. v. Stuart, 85 F.3d 975, 981
(2d Cir. 1996) (quoting St. Mary’s Medical Ctr. v. Disco
Aluminum Prods. Co., 969 F.2d 585, 588 (7th Cir. 1992)), and

7
In granting DI’s motion, the District Court dismissed
Nino’s claims, rather than staying litigation pending the results
of arbitration. We note that if the unconscionable terms had
been severable from the arbitration agreement, the District Court
should have stayed litigation in this case rather than dismissing
Nino’s claims. See 9 U.S.C. § 3; Lloyd v. HOVENSA, LLC.,
369 F.3d 263, 268-69 (3d Cir. 2004) (explaining that § 3 directs
courts to stay, not dismiss, cases when compelling arbitration).

-29-
“we will not hesitate to hold that the right to arbitrate has been
waived where a sufficient showing of prejudice has been made
by the party seeking to avoid arbitration.” Ehleiter, 482 F.3d at
223 (internal quotations and citations omitted).
In Hoxworth v. Blinder, Robinson & Co., Inc., 980 F.2d
912 (3d Cir. 1992), we set forth “a nonexclusive list of factors
relevant to the prejudice inquiry.” Ehleiter, 482 F.3d at 222.
The Hoxworth factors are:
[1] the timeliness or lack thereof of a motion to
arbitrate . . . [; 2] the degree to which the party
seeking to compel arbitration has contested the
merits of its opponent’s claims; [3] whether that
party has informed its adversary of the intention
to seek arbitration even if it has not yet filed a
motion to stay the district court proceedings; [4]
the extent of its non-merits motion practice; [5] its
assent to the court’s pretrial orders; and [6] the
extent to which both parties have engaged in
discovery.

Hoxworth, 980 F.2d at 926-27 (internal citations omitted). As
is evident by our repeated characterization of these factors as a
nonexclusive list, not all the factors need be present to justify a
finding of waiver, and “[t]he waiver determination must be
based on the circumstances and context of the particular case.”
Doctor’s Assocs., 85 F.3d at 981.
We have, moreover, consistently emphasized that
“prejudice is the touchstone for determining whether the right to

-30-
arbitrate has been waived by litigation conduct.” Ehleiter, 482
F.3d at 222 (quotations and citations omitted). As the Hoxworth
factors themselves make clear, the concept of prejudice includes
not only “substantive prejudice to the legal position of the party
claiming waiver,” but also extends to “prejudice resulting from
the unnecessary delay and expense incurred by the plaintiffs as
a result of the defendants’ belated invocation of their right to
arbitrate.” Id. at 224. For example, we stated in Hoxworth that:
[W]here a party fails to demand arbitration during
pretrial proceedings, and, in the meantime,
engages in pretrial activity inconsistent with an
intent to arbitrate, the party later opposing
arbitration may more easily show that its position
has been compromised, i.e., prejudiced, because
under these circumstances we can readily infer
that the party claiming waiver has already
invested considerable time and expense in
litigating the case in court, and would be required
to duplicate its efforts, to at least some degree, if
the case were now to proceed in the arbitral
forum. Prejudice of this sort is not mitigated by
the absence of substantive prejudice to the legal
position of the party claiming waiver.
Id. (internal quotations and citations omitted). In other words,
the investment of considerable time and money litigating a case
may amount to sufficient prejudice to bar a later-asserted right
to arbitrate. This recognition that the right to arbitrate may be
waived under such circumstances is consistent with the purpose
behind arbitration itself—arbitration is meant to streamline the
proceedings, lower costs, and conserve private and judicial

-31-
resources, and it furthers none of those purposes when a party
actively litigates a case for an extended period only to belatedly
assert that the dispute should have been arbitrated, not litigated,
in the first place.
In rejecting Nino’s argument that DI had waived its right
to enforce the arbitration clause, the District Court focused
almost exclusively on two of the six Hoxworth factors: the fact
that, by including mandatory arbitration among the ten
affirmative defenses asserted in the answer, DI had “informed
its adversary of the intention to seek arbitration,” and the fact
that DI had not filed a dispositive motion prior to moving to
enforce the arbitration agreement. Hoxworth, 980 F.2d at 926-
27. As we now explain, in emphasizing these factors, the
District Court gave insufficient consideration to the remaining
Hoxworth factors, and, consequently, to the more practical
question of whether DI has “acted inconsistently with the right
to arbitrate.” St. Mary’s, 969 F.2d at 588. We conclude that DI,
through its litigation conduct, waived its right to compel
arbitration of Nino’s claims. We address the six Hoxworth
factors in turn below.
A. The Timeliness of DI’s Motion
The first Hoxworth factor requires that we consider
whether DI moved to compel arbitration on a timely basis. 980
F.2d at 926-27. Although “the length of the time period
involved alone is not determinative,” Zimmer, 523 F.3d at 232
(citation omitted), and although we have addressed instances of
more serious untimeliness, see Ehleiter, 482 F.3d at 223
(characterizing a four-year delay as especially “egregious”), DI
manifestly did not move to compel arbitration in a timely

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manner, and this factor weighs firmly in favor of waiver. As in
Ehleiter, the fifteen-month delay in this case substantially
“exceeds the eleven month time lapse at issue in Hoxworth, and
dwarfs the delay involved in cases where we have found no
waiver. See Palcko (38 days); Wood (1 1/2 months); Faragalli,
61 F.3d at 1069 (two months); Gavlik (defendant moved for stay
pending arbitration “immediately” after removing the action to
federal court).” Ehleiter, 482 F.3d at 223.
Moreover, to the extent that our review of the motion’s
timeliness should consider the movant’s explanation for its
delay, DI’s stated rationale for having waited so long to seek to
enforce the arbitration agreement is utterly unconvincing. DI
explains that it delayed filing a motion to enforce the arbitration
agreement because Nino’s complaint alleged that Nino and DI
had signed a new contract updating the terms of Nino’s
compensation; “DI had difficulty in locating this document”;
and it was not until Nino’s July 25, 2007 deposition that DI
understood that the complaint’s reference to a new contract was,
in fact, a reference to a letter of understanding that amended
Nino’s prior contract. (DI Br. 24.)
No aspect of this explanation withstands scrutiny. First,
while the complaint indeed refers to a May 22, 2002 agreement
between Nino and DI to modify the terms of his compensation,
the complaint certainly does not suggest that this subsequent
agreement in any way addressed or modified the original
contract’s arbitration agreement. DI’s contention that the
complaint led it to believe that the parties had somehow altered
their arbitration agreement is unconvincing, as nothing in the
complaint’s language supports such an inference. Second, if DI
had in fact experienced difficulty in locating the contract it

-33-
drafted and in assessing its impact upon the parties’ arbitration
agreement, it could (and presumably would) have propounded
interrogatories to Nino to clarify which contract the complaint
referred to and whether that contract had, in fact, affected the
arbitration agreement;8 DI’s interrogatories do not mention the
contract in question, undercutting DI’s explanation for its delay.
Third, on November 20, 2006, as part of its discovery
production in this case, DI produced the very document it now
claims not to have been able to locate. Finally, notwithstanding
its explanation that it was not until Nino’s July 25, 2007
deposition that DI understood which contract the complaint was
referring to, DI still did not move to enforce the arbitration
agreement for another two months after the deposition. In short,
DI’s delay was significant, and its explanations for the delay are
unpersuasive. The first Hoxworth factor thus weighs heavily in
favor of a finding of waiver.
B. Whether DI Contested the Merits of Nino’s Claims
We next consider “the degree to which the party seeking
to compel arbitration has contested the merits of its opponent’s
claims.” Hoxworth, 980 F.2d at 926. DI is correct that this
factor weighs against a finding of waiver, as it did not engage in
motion practice on the merits prior to moving to compel
arbitration. Although Nino argues that this factor tilts in his
favor because DI filed a motion to dismiss one of his claims at
the same time that it filed its motion to compel arbitration, and

8
The complaint states that DI refused to provide Nino
with a copy of this agreement, and so DI admittedly could not
ask that Nino produce the agreement during discovery.

-34-
that Nino’s counsel received the dismissal motion two days
before receiving the motion to compel arbitration, Nino was not
seriously prejudiced by having received the dismissal motion
just two days before the motion to compel arbitration.
C. Whether DI Informed Nino of its Intent to Seek
Arbitration
The third Hoxworth factor is whether the party seeking
arbitration “has informed its adversary of the intention to seek
arbitration even if it has not yet filed a motion to stay the district
court proceedings.” 980 F.2d at 926-27. The District Court
relied primarily upon this factor in its analysis, reasoning that
because DI included mandatory arbitration among the ten
affirmative defenses asserted in its answer, it had provided Nino
with adequate notice of the fact that it would eventually move
to enforce the arbitration agreement. According to the District
Court, “[a]fter the defendants raised the affirmative defense of
arbitration in their answer, Nino was on notice that arbitration
may be forthcoming and had the opportunity to plan his
litigation strategy accordingly.” (J.A. at 23.)
While DI is correct that this factor weighs in its favor, the
District Court’s analysis overstates its significance in this case.
It is undoubtedly true that DI’s answer disclosed the possibility
that it would seek to compel arbitration, and that this disclosure
is an important consideration, although it is by no means a
dispositive one, for the waiver analysis. Hoxworth, 980 F.2d at
926-27.
However, the significance, for purposes of the waiver
analysis, of DI’s invocation of arbitration in its answer
decreased the longer DI participated in this litigation without

-35-
further invoking or even mentioning the prospect of arbitration.
Contrary to the District Court’s reasoning that Nino could
strategize around the initially disclosed prospect of arbitration,
a party’s capacity to develop a litigation strategy with regard to
the likelihood of arbitration diminishes the longer the case is
litigated with no further indication that a motion to compel
arbitration is forthcoming. Cf. Thyssen, Inc. v. Calypso
Shipping Corp., S.A., 310 F.3d 102, 105 (2d Cir. 2002)
(“[W]aiver is more likely to be found the longer the litigation
goes on, the more a party avails itself of the opportunity to
litigate, and the more that party’s litigation results in prejudice
to the opposing party[.]”). A party’s approach to discovery, for
instance, will differ based upon whether the case is to be
litigated or arbitrated.9 Likewise, although we have concluded
the arbitration clause’s ban on attorney’s fees is unconscionable,
Nino could not have known that outcome as the case was being
litigated, and his litigation strategy was thus almost certain to
differ based upon whether the case was being litigated in court
(where an award of attorney’s fees was available) or arbitrated
(where, on paper at least, such an award was unavailable). In
the waiver context, where prejudice to the non-movant is the

9
It is well recognized that “discovery generally is more
limited in arbitration than in litigation,” In re Cotton Yarn
Antitrust Litig., 505 F.3d 274, 286 (4th Cir. 2007), and that, as
an “important counterweight[,] . . . arbitrators are not bound by
the rules of evidence,” Gilmer v. Interstate/Johnson Lane Corp.,
500 U.S. 20, 31 (1991). Consequently, a party’s evidentiary and
discovery needs will be substantially different depending upon
whether a case is to be litigated or arbitrated.

-36-
key, an initial invocation of the defense of arbitration becomes
less significant the longer and more actively a party litigates
after having made that initial invocation without making any
further mention of arbitration.10 In short, the affirmative defense
contained in DI’s answer to the complaint “informed [Nino] of
the intention to seek arbitration,” Hoxworth, 980 F.2d at 926-27,
but the significance of this notice diminished the longer DI
delayed in moving to compel arbitration.
D. Extent of Non-Merits Motion Practice
Under Hoxworth, we also consider the non-merits motion
practice that transpired in this case during the fifteen-month
period between when DI was served with the complaint and
when it filed its motion to compel arbitration. Id. Significantly,
here the non-merits motion practice is equivalent to that in
Hoxworth, in which the defendant was found to have waived its
right to compel arbitration—as in Hoxworth, DI “inadequately
answered [Nino’s] discovery requests,” requiring Nino to file
three detailed motions to compel, which DI opposed. Id. at 925.
And as in Hoxworth, the consequence of the parties’ motion
practice over these discovery disputes was to require Nino to
“devote[] substantial amounts of time, effort, and money in
prosecuting the action.” Id. at 926 This factor weighs strongly
in favor of a finding of waiver.
E. DI’s Assent to the Court’s Pretrial Orders
Also significant is the fact that DI “assent[ed] to the

10
Put more succinctly, at some point a party seeking to
enforce an arbitration agreement must use it or lose it.

-37-
[trial] court’s pretrial orders,” id. at 926-27, an important
consideration that the District Court failed to address in its
resolution of the waiver issue. In the fifteen months between
June 2006 and September 2007, the magistrate judge convened
no fewer than ten pretrial conferences. DI does not dispute
Nino’s contention that it did not even mention the prospect of
arbitration at any of these conferences, nor did it object to any
of the magistrate judge’s pretrial orders based upon its intent to
compel arbitration. While the case-specific waiver analysis is
not susceptible to precise line-drawing, certainly DI’s
participation in ten pretrial conferences over the course of
fifteen months shows unmistakably that it “acted inconsistently
with the right to arbitrate.” St. Mary’s, 969 F.2d at 588; see
Restoration Preservation Masonry, Inc. v. Grove Europe Ltd.,
325 F.3d 54, 61 (1st Cir. 2003) (noting, inter alia, the expense
plaintiffs incurred in participating in thirteen pretrial
conferences in concluding that defendant waived right to compel
arbitration).
The authorities upon which DI relies do not compel a
contrary conclusion. DI draws our attention to Maxum Found.,
Inc. v. Salus Corp., 779 F.2d 974, 983 (4th Cir. 1985), and, in
particular, to that court’s observation that “the party seeking
arbitration does not lose its contractual right by prudently
pursuing discovery in the face of a court-ordered deadline.” DI
appears to overlook the context in which the court made the
cited statement. In Maxum, the plaintiff argued that the
defendant waived its right to seek arbitration because the
defendant participated in discovery and pretrial conferences
after it had filed its motion to compel arbitration, but before the
trial court ruled on the motion. Id. at 982-83. There was no

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inconsistency between the defendant’s litigation conduct and its
intent to arbitrate in that case, because the litigation conduct in
question transpired after the defendant had demanded
arbitration. In our case, by contrast, DI participated actively in
the litigation for well over a year before moving to compel
arbitration, meaning that its pursuit of discovery and its assent
to pretrial orders is not remotely comparable to the conduct at
issue in Maxum.11 DI’s long-term assent to the magistrate
judge’s pretrial orders weighs heavily in favor of a finding of
waiver.
F. Extent to Which Both Parties Engaged in Discovery
Finally, the parties engaged in significant discovery
during the fifteen-month period before DI filed its motion to
compel arbitration. During this time the parties conferred and
prepared a proposed case management order which contained no
mention of arbitration, propounded interrogatories, served and
supplemented disclosures, exchanged requests for document
production, and attended the depositions of four witnesses.
Additionally, as was noted supra, Nino expended additional

11
American Recovery Corp. v. Computerized Thermal
Imaging, Inc., 96 F.3d 88 (4th Cir. 1996), also cited by DI, is
likewise readily distinguishable from the facts of our case. In
that case, the defendant invoking arbitration participated in
discovery during the two-month period between the
commencement of the lawsuit and the filing of the defendant’s
motion to compel arbitration. DI litigated this case and assented
to the trial court’s pretrial orders for thirteen months longer than
did the defendant in American Recovery.

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resources on discovery-related matters as a result of DI’s
inadequate responses to his discovery requests, which resulted
in significant discovery-related motion practice. While the
scope of the parties’ discovery during the fifteen-month period
at issue in this case was not as extensive as the discovery at
issue in Hoxworth and Ehleiter, the discovery in this case was
by no means de minimis.
DI, in arguing that the parties’ discovery-related activities
do not demonstrate that it engaged in pretrial activity
inconsistent with an intent to arbitrate, notes that the parties’
arbitration agreement authorizes the parties to conduct discovery
“pursuant to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.” (J.A. at 81.)
In light of Hoxworth’s finding that the plaintiffs in that case had
been prejudiced by the fact that, in litigating the case in court,
the “defendants were able to use the Federal Rules to conduct
discovery not available in the arbitration forum,” Hoxworth, 980
F.2d at 926, DI contends that there could be no prejudice in this
case, since discovery would have been available in the arbitral
forum.
The force of this argument is undermined, however, by
the arbitration agreement’s firm requirement that the arbitration
take place “in no event more than thirty (30) days after the
selection of an arbitrator has been made.” (J.A. at 81.) That is,
while the parties would undoubtedly have had some opportunity
for discovery had the arbitration clause been invoked on a timely
basis, the time constraints placed upon such discovery would
have been much more restrictive, and, by consequence, the
resources expended on discovery would have been much more
limited. See Restoration Preservation Masonry, 325 F.3d at 61.
The mere fact that some discovery would have been available in

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arbitration does not mean that Nino was not prejudiced by
having to participate in fifteen months’ worth of discovery in
federal court before DI elected to move to compel arbitration.
The extent of the parties’ discovery between June 2006 and
September 2007 weighs firmly in favor of a finding of waiver.
G. Summary
In summary, four of the Hoxworth factors—the
untimeliness of DI’s motion, the extent of non-merits motion
practice, DI’s assent to the magistrate judge’s pretrial orders,
and the extent of the parties’ discovery—weigh firmly in favor
of a finding of waiver. Of the two factors that do not tip
decisively against DI’s right to belatedly invoke the arbitration
clause—the fact that DI did not engage in merits-based motion
practice and the fact that DI listed arbitration as an affirmative
defense—the District Court relied most heavily upon DI’s
inclusion of arbitration in its answer to the complaint. As we
have explained, however, the significance of this factor
diminished the longer DI litigated this case without raising the
prospect of arbitration.
The fifteen-month delay between the service of the
complaint and DI’s invocation of arbitration was significant, see
Ehleiter, 482 F.3d at 223, and DI’s delay “caused [Nino] the
expense of litigating in court, as well as . . . making [Nino]
endure [fifteen months] of what would have been (had [DI]
succeeded) wasted litigation.” St. Mary’s, 969 F.2d at 591; see
also Ehleiter, 482 F.3d at 222 (such expense and delay constitute
prejudice). While we are mindful of the fact that “waiver is not
to be lightly inferred,” it is not appropriate to compel arbitration
where, as here, “the demand for arbitration came long after the

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suit commenced and when both parties had engaged in extensive
discovery.” PaineWebber Inc., 61 F.3d at 1068-69 (internal
quotations and citations omitted).
V.
For the foregoing reasons, we will reverse the District
Court’s order compelling arbitration and remand for further
proceedings.

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