In Lowell v. Angi Inc., 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 106094 (W.D. Wash. May 13, 2026), the defendant's theory was simple. Maybe a little too simple: only the plaintiff could possibly have typed his own name, email, zip code, and phone number into a website and clicked a "View Matching Pros" button with an arbitration clause hidden in a hyperlink below it. So he must have agreed to arbitration. Case closed, send it to the arbitrator.
Not so fast.
The plaintiff brought a putative TCPA class action alleging that he was hit with dozens of unwanted commercial texts and calls, despite having registered his number on the national do-not-call registry. He claimed violations of the TCPA along with two Washington statutes. The defendant, which runs a platform matching home-service professionals with consumers, moved to compel arbitration. Its evidence: a declaration from a senior executive and printouts of several service requests bearing the plaintiff's contact information, plus the assurance that its system only generates a request after a user clicks past a disclosure agreeing to the company's terms including an arbitration clause.
The plaintiff swore he had never used the platform, never downloaded the app, and didn't recall visiting the website. Then he got specific. He doesn't own the gas furnace one request sought to repair. He doesn't live at—or know anyone at—the address tied to a landscaping request.The kicker: he was told the requests came from an Apple device—which he doesn't own.
That standoff doomed the motion. As the Court framed it, it could not decide as a matter of law whether the plaintiff assented because the parties genuinely dispute whether he, or someone else, made the requests. And that distinction matters.The Federal Arbitration Act favors arbitration, but as the Ninth Circuit held in Goldman, Sachs & Co. v. City of Reno, 747 F.3d 733 (9th Cir. 2014), that presumption applies only to a contract's scope—when the parties contest whether an agreement exists at all, it drops out.
The defendant gambled on calling the scenario implausible and dismissing the plaintiff's sworn account as a self-serving declaration lacking specific facts or corroborating evidence. That didn't land. The Court's answer was that, absent a showing of no genuine dispute over contract formation, the question is for a jury—or, at minimum, for the Court on a renewed motion after discovery.
So the motion to compel was denied without prejudice, and the parties were sent down the now-familiar three-phase path: limited discovery into arbitrability, an optional renewed motion, and—if needed—a jury mini-trial. The defendant's motions to dismiss and to strike the class allegations were stayed pending the outcome.
The lesson is simple. A presumption favoring arbitration can't carry the day where a contract may never have formed at all, and a stack of internal records won't prevail against a plaintiff who answers with receipts. Whether anyone actually agreed to arbitration is now a question for discovery, and maybe a jury.
On a related note, this case brushes up against a real problem for American consumers: forced arbitration clauses buried in terms that almost no one reads, quietly locking people into agreements they never knew existed—and handing companies a tidy way to slither out of being held accountable. It's a practice long overdue for a reckoning, and decisions like this one—insisting that a contract actually be formed before anyone gets shoved into arbitration—are a welcome step toward one.
