DLA Piper secures defense win on behalf of STARZ Entertainment

DLA Piper secured a significant defense win pertaining to mass-arbitration enforcement for entertainment company STARZ Entertainment, LLC (STARZ).

A three-judge federal appellate court in California affirmed the lower court's denial of petitioner Kiana Jones' motion to compel arbitration of her privacy-related claims against STARZ.

The case began as a mass arbitration in which counsel purporting to represent STARZ customers, including Kiana Jones, sent tens of thousands of claimant demands for arbitration to STARZ alleging violations of the federal Video Privacy Protection Act and other laws. After filing 7,300 demands for arbitration with arbitration service JAMS, STARZ faced the potential of incurring US$12.77 million in arbitration initiation fees.

Addressing the claims before JAMS, STARZ argued that the individual arbitrations should be consolidated, and JAMS agreed over the opposition of claimants’ counsel. Claimants’ counsel eventually filed a petition, on behalf of Jones, in federal court in the Central District of California against STARZ seeking to overturn JAMS’ decision and to compel arbitration on terms advocated by claimants’ counsel.

The district court rejected Jones’ argument that STARZ refused to arbitrate, and claimants’ counsel appealed to the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. In the first published opinion since the Ninth Circuit’s October 2024 key mass-arbitration decision in Heckman v. Live Nation, et al., a unanimous panel of the appellate court affirmed the district court’s opinion and held, among other things, that Jones was not “aggrieved” for purposes of bringing a petition under the Federal Arbitration Act because STARZ never failed, neglected, or refused to arbitrate. Additionally, the Ninth Circuit panel rejected the “unprecedented” effort to “chisel an arbitration agreement into a version that suits [Jones’] preferred contractual interpretations and then order the other party to comply with those modified terms.”

“DLA Piper is proud to have represented STARZ throughout this litigation. We believe this decision will have a significant impact across the mass arbitration landscape and serve as a guidepost for crafting mass arbitration procedures,” said Jeff Tsai, a litigation partner in the firm’s San Francisco office, who led the firm’s representation. Tsai also serves as Co-Chair of DLA Piper’s State Attorneys General Practice and Managing Partner of the firm’s San Francisco office.

In addition to Tsai (San Francisco), the DLA Piper team included partners Angela Agrusa (Los Angeles) and David Horniak (Washington, DC), as well as associates Oliver Kiefer (San Diego) and Jamie Davidson (San Francisco).

The case is Kiana Jones v. Starz Entertainment, LLC, Case No. 24-1645 (9th Cir. Feb. 28, 2025).