Labor & Employment Law Daily Wrap Up, ARBITRATION—D. Conn.: Electronic assent bound employee to arbitrate age-bias claims, notwithstanding waiver argument, (Aug 18, 2026)

By Tulay Turan, J.D.

Parties do not waive their right to arbitration by participating in EEOC proceedings.

Granting a company’s motion to compel arbitration of a former employee’s federal and state age discrimination claims, a federal district court in Connecticut ruled a valid arbitration agreement existed, and the company had not waived its right to arbitrate. The company presented sufficient evidence to support its request to compel arbitration, including a record showing the employee electronically agreed to and accepted the terms of the agreement. In addition, the employee failed to present sufficient evidence of waiver. The court rejected her numerous arguments, noting she failed to cite any authority for the proposition that normal pre-litigation activities in an employment dispute can support a finding of waiver (Baird v. Informa Connect USA, No. 3:25-cv-01939 (VDO) (D. Conn. Aug. 17, 2026)).

The employee began working for Informa in 2018 after Informa acquired her then-employer, UBM Media. In October 2019, Informa circulated a benefits and HR policies update to employees via email. The update included a notification of the company’s new arbitration program and a link to review and acknowledge the Mutual Arbitration Agreement along with employees’ benefits selections.

Acknowledgement form. The link took employees to a copy of the agreement and acknowledgment form hosted on the Microsoft Forms application. The form included a checkbox, which the employee would check to acknowledge he or she had reviewed and agreed to the arbitration agreement. Once an employee checked and submitted notification of his or her acknowledgment and agreement, Microsoft Forms would generate a record of the time and date of completion.

Records from Informa’s HR department showed that the employee acknowledged reviewing and agreeing to the arbitration agreement on November 22, 2019, and November 25, 2019.

Termination, complaint. In September 2024, Informa informed the employee, who was 64 years old at that time, that it was terminating her employment. Thereafter, the employee filed an age discrimination charge with the EEOC and the Connecticut Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities and then filed this suit, bringing claims pursuant to the ADEA and the Connecticut Fair Employment Practices Act (CFEPA). Informa filed this motion to compel arbitration and stay proceedings.

Valid agreement. Granting Informa’s motion to compel arbitration, the court found a valid arbitration agreement existed, and the employee had not denied signing it. The court rejected the employee’s argument that the HR representative’s declaration and attached exhibits were insufficient to prove the existence of an arbitration agreement.

That argument, the court said, was contrary to an analogous Connecticut case where the defendant successfully moved to compel arbitration in a former employee’s lawsuit. The defendant was unable to locate a signed copy of the agreement but instead submitted a copy of the unsigned agreement along with a declaration attesting to the process by which employees were required to sign and accept the terms of the agreement. The court in that case concluded the declaration was sufficient to support the request to compel arbitration.

Here, the HR representative likewise had declared under penalty of perjury that all employees, including the plaintiff, were asked to electronically acknowledge their review of, and agreement to, the arbitration agreement. Attached as an exhibit to the declaration was a copy of the communication that was sent to employees in October 2019, which included a link to the Microsoft Form with the agreement. The Microsoft Form provided the full text of the agreement and below the text was a check box, which employees were directed to check to acknowledge that they reviewed and agreed to the terms.

Also attached as an exhibit to the declaration was a record of the employee’s electronic submission from November 2019, showing that she electronically agreed to and accepted the terms of the agreement. This was sufficient evidence to support Informa’s request to compel arbitration, the court found.

No recollection. The court also rejected the employee’s argument that she had no recollection of seeing the agreement, reviewing it, or having agreed to submit her claims to arbitration. Although it was plausible that she did not remember signing a single arbitration agreement over five years ago, that did not support her conclusion that no agreement existed, the court said. “A person does not have to remember the exact moment she signs a contract for that contract to be enforceable,” the court wrote.

Thus, the court found she had not denied signing an arbitration agreement, and had she done so, she would not have sufficiently substantiated that denial. Accordingly, the court found a valid arbitration agreement had been formed.

No waiver. Turning to the employee’s various arguments that Informa had waived its right to arbitration, the court rejected each in turn.

Delay in motion to compel. First, the employee asserted that Informa waited 17 months to move to compel arbitration. Most of that period, however, was pre-litigation, the court said, noting that courts in this circuit often decline to consider an employer’s pre-litigation conduct when addressing the question of waiver. The employee did not claim that she ever raised a valid demand of arbitration that Informa refused to submit to. Nor did she cite any authority for the proposition that normal pre-litigation activities in an employment dispute can support a finding of waiver.

EEOC proceedings. Informa’s participation in the EEOC proceedings also did not support the employee’s waiver claim. The EEOC is not bound by private arbitration agreements, the court noted, and because of that, courts in this circuit have concluded that parties do not waive their right to arbitration by participating in EEOC proceedings or the EEOC’s own arbitration process. The court declined to infer waiver from a failure to raise the private right to arbitrate before the EEOC.

Tolling agreement. Informa also did not waive its right to arbitrate by signing a tolling agreement. Although the employee might have been contemplating a federal lawsuit when she signed the agreement, that did not mean that Informa was. In fact, the tolling agreement expressly referred to arbitration and contained a non-waiver clause, which, the court said, cut against any argument that Informa was waiving its right to arbitrate.

Procedural discussions. The court also rejected the employee’s argument that Informa’s actions in the three-month period following the initiation of this lawsuit were inconsistent with the right to arbitrate. The “negotiations” that the employee referred to were out-of-court discussions related to her naming of unnecessary parties in the original complaint, and they did not result in a formal motion to dismiss. “Courts generally look to substantive rather than procedural participation when considering the issue of waiver,” the court wrote.

Motion for extension of time. Finally, the employee contended Informa’s motion for extension of time without mentioning its intent to file a motion to compel arbitration was evidence of waiver. The court disagreed, noting that in some cases, a party’s failure to mention to the court its intent to arbitrate might be inconsistent with the right to arbitrate, but those cases were distinguishable from the situation here. Informa filed a consent motion for a ten-day extension of time without any history of substantive participation in the litigation. The employee presented no authority for the proposition that this conduct constituted a waiver of arbitration.

Granting Informa’s motion to compel arbitration, the court imposed a stay until the conclusion of the arbitration proceeding.

The case is No. 3:25-cv-01939 (VDO).

Judge: Farrish, T.

Attorneys: Lewis H. Chimes (Law Offices of Lewis Chimes) for Eileen Baird. Michael Seamus O'Malley (Ogletree Deakins) for Informa Connect USA LLC.

Companies: Informa Connect USA LLC

Cases: Arbitration Discrimination AgeDiscrimination StateLawClaims ConnecticutNews