CA1: denial of motion to arbitration confirmed

Combined Energies v. CCI, Inc., No. 07-1766 (2/1/08) affirms the denial of a motion to stay proceedings and compel arbitration in a dispute between ex-partner businesses.  Their partnership agreement apparently had an arbitration clause.  According to the plaintiff business, after their deal broke down, they started “raiding” the plaintiffs workforce, preventing alleging preventing the plaintiff from performing on its current contracts.  The defendants argue that a “Purchase Order Agreement.”  The First points out that “CE existed as a business before entering into any sort of relationship with CCI and had operations apart from CCI; the gravamen of CE's allegations--that CCI set upon a course of conduct that resulted in the destruction of CE's business--reverberate far beyond the POA and would stand regardless of the parties' rights and responsibilities as defined by that contract.”  It also rejects the notion that the Purchase Order Agreement another agreement was not incorporated by reference into this POA, however, 1) the POA on its face doesn’t apply to disputes regarding all contract documents; and 2) there really was no incorporation of one document into another, but rather the drafters listed a hierarchies of documents to refer to in deciding what one document meant.