Wyrick v. Millennial Capital

What’s at Stake

Corporations should not be allowed to use fine print in contracts to immunize themselves from lawsuits that have nothing to do with the contract, and they definitely shouldn’t be allowed to use a contract they weren’t a part of to do it.

Summary

This case is a class action filed in Florida state court, and now on appeal in the Florida court of appeals, brought by tenants of a large corporate landlord for charging lease termination fees that allegedly violate state law.

Millennial Capital Company, LLC owns the building Kathryn Wyrick lived in. Another company, Greystar, managed the property for Millennial. Greystar uses online leasing software provided by RealPage to process leasing applications. After Kathryn’s application was approved, she then registered for an account with ActiveBuilding, a portal for residents and building management. Both RealPage and ActiveBuilding require users to accept or agree to their terms, and both include an “agreement” to settle disputes outside of court through a private arbitration process. Finally, Kathryn signed an 18-month lease agreement with Millennial. In contrast to RealPage and ActiveBuilding’s terms, Millennial’s lease does not include an arbitration clause.

After Kathryn’s lease ended and she moved out of the building, Millennial sent her a bill for an “insufficient notice fee” of over $1,800. Florida’s Residential Landlord and Tenant Act allows landlords to charge this fee when tenants who plan to move out do not give at least 60 days’ notice, but only if the tenant has been properly notified at least 15 days before the 60-day period begins. Mr. Wyrick did not receive any notice and challenged the fee in court. And, alleging that Millennial charged the same fee without notice to other tenants, she brought the case as a class action on behalf of other tenants.

In court, Greystar and Millennial did not address the unlawful fee allegations. Instead, they asked the court to send her case to private arbitration by invoking the arbitration agreements in RealPage and ActiveBuilding’s terms. In arbitration, Kathryn and anyone else who believed they had been unlawfully charged would have to make their cases one-by-one instead of as a class, and they wouldn’t be making them to a judge but rather a private expert who would be paid by the defendants. In reality, people like Kathryn who try their cases in arbitration find their odds of winning are worse than being struck by lightning. That’s why cases “sent to” arbitration almost never “go to” arbitration, they’re simply dropped. For defendants facing a potential lawsuit like this one, arbitration is almost as good as the case being dismissed altogether.

Public Justice joined the case to ensure that Kathryn’s lawsuit stays in court where it belongs. We opposed Greystar and Millennial’s motion to compel arbitration in the trial court, but the trial court granted the motion. We filed an appeal of that decision in Florida’s District Court of Appeal on April 28, 2025. We await a decision on that appeal.

Core Legal Problem

Greystar and Millennial have each moved to compel arbitration and dismiss Kathryn’s claims. But Millennial doesn’t have arbitration provisions in its lease agreements with tenants. In fact, the lease referenced court as the venue for resolving disputes pertaining to the lease.

The defendants argued that RealPage and ActiveBuilding’s terms—which Kathryn accepted when she submitted her application and created a resident portal account—should apply to this dispute, and that they have the right to enforce those terms as “third-party beneficiaries” or under the “doctrine of equitable estoppel.” Even though this dispute is not in any way related to the use of RealPage or ActiveBuilding, and Greystar and Millennial were not signatories or named parties in the agreements between Kathryn, RealPage, and ActiveBuilding. They alternatively argued that in any event, questions about whether this lawsuit can be forced into arbitration should also be decided by an arbitrator

Public Justice is arguing on behalf of Kathryn and the other members of the class that under Section 2 of the Federal Arbitration Act, people should not be forced to arbitrate disputes that are outside the scope of the contract itself, and this dispute falls well outside the scope of Kathryn’s agreements with RealPage and ActiveBuilding. We also argue that third party non-signatories like Greystar and Millennial can’t enforce agreements they were not a part of. And finally, we argue that a court must be who decides whether this dispute is arbitrable or not (“the question of whether a non-signatory can enforce an arbitration agreement is always for the court to decide”).