Postmates delivery in Downtown Baltimore, MD. (Photo: Diego M. Radzinschi/ALM) August 20, 2020Understatement alert: It is rarely, if ever, a good thing when a judge tells you that they are "completely unsympathetic" to your arguments on the merits. 

But that was the situation facing Theane Evangelis of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher Tuesday morning as she attempted to get a Ninth Circuit panel to reverse an order compelling her client Postmates to arbitrate more than 5,000 worker misclassification cases. Individual couriers in the case, represented by lawyers at Keller Lenkner, filed the demands for arbitration against the delivery app before the American Arbitration Association in the spring of 2019.

Evangelis argued plaintiffs had improperly linked their claims in an MDL-like manner to threaten the company with outsized arbitration fees. The arbitrations, she said, were allowed to move forward based on boilerplate demands and Postmates was required to pay fees before threshold issues including whether individual plaintiffs had actually used the app or entered into an agreement with Postmates had been considered.