Blue Apron Class Action Challenges Arbitration Clause

A subscriber to the Blue Apron meal delivery service is seeking a court’s help in avoiding the company’s arbitration requirement.

Amid a dispute with defendant Blue Apron Inc. over the company’s billing practices, plaintiff Matthew Lopez is seeking to avoid going to arbitration.

He has filed this Blue Apron class action lawsuit seeking a declaration by the court that the arbitration clause in Blue Apron’s subscription agreement is unenforceable.

Blue Apron is a nationwide meal delivery service. The company ships customers all the unprepared or partly-prepared ingredients for a full meal, allowing those customers to prepare the meal themselves at home.

Customers can purchase Blue Apron meals through an automatically-renewing subscription service. Blue Apron then ships meals to the customer on a regular basis and takes automatic payments from the customer’s credit card or bank account.

Though this Blue Apron class action lawsuit addresses only the issue of arbitration, Lopez says his core dispute with the company is over the terms and conditions of the Blue Apron subscription plan.

He believes Blue Apron has violated provisions of the California Automatic Renewal Law, or ARL. The ARL governs subscription services like those offered by Blue Apron, under which a business takes recurring automatic payments from consumers.

The law imposes particular requirements on how the business discloses the terms of that subscription and the customer’s rights under those terms, including how they can cancel their subscription. Customers are required to make express and written consent to those terms before the business may start debiting the customer’s account.

After Lopez purchased a subscription to the Blue Apron’s delivery service, his attorney sent Blue Apron a letter in January 2017, confronting the company with allegations that the terms of its subscription service violate the ARL.

In response, Blue Apron demanded that Lopez submit his dispute to arbitration, in accordance with the arbitration provisions of the Blue Apron online terms of use.

Those arbitration provisions are what Lopez is challenging in this Blue Apron class action lawsuit. Lopez argues the arbitration provisions are unconscionable, and therefore unenforceable.

He argues the arbitration clause violates the California Legal Remedies Act. The CLRA prohibits business from inserting unconscionable provisions into a contract and from representing that transaction confers or involves rights, remedies or obligations which it does not have or involve, or which are prohibited by law.

Lopez is proposing a plaintiff Class that would cover all persons in California who, within the applicable statutory limitations period, purchased any product or service from Blue Apron that constituted an “Automatic Renewal” under the ARL. He expects Class Members who meet this definition could number in the tens of thousands.

He is seeking an injunction barring Blue Apron from enforcing the arbitration clause against himself and any other proposed Class Members. He is also asking for an award of court costs and attorneys’ fees related to this action.

Lopez’s attorneys are Scott J. Ferrell and Victoria C. Knowles of Pacific Trial Attorneys.

The Blue Apron Arbitration Clause Class Action Lawsuit is Matthew Lopez v. Blue Apron Inc., Case No. 30-2017-00902648-CU-MT-CXC, in the Superior Court for Orange County, California.