Court of Appeal (Cal.) in McGill Runs Full Course; Remands to Trial Court to Determine Severability of Public Relief Waiver and Whether McGill Waived Her Right to Challenge the Trial Court’s Order

The Supreme Court concluded its opinion with the following paragraph: “Our invalidation of the arbitration provision insofar as it purports to waive McGill’s statutory right to seek public injunctive relief in any forum gives rise, under the terms of the parties’ agreement, to the following question: Is the rest of the provision enforceable? The arbitration provision contained in the 2001 Notice stated: ‘If any portion of the arbitration provision is deemed invalid or unenforceable, the entire arbitration provision shall nevertheless remain in force.’ (Italics added.) However, the arbitration provision set forth in the 2005 Notice and the 2007 account agreement states: ‘If any portion of the arbitration provision is deemed invalid or unenforceable, the entire arbitration provision shall not remain in force.’ (Italics added.) Because the parties have not mentioned, let alone discussed, this language, we do not decide whether, in light of our holding, it renders the remainder of the arbitration provision unenforceable. But because our holding raises this question, we need not detail each respect in which McGill’s injunctive relief request constitutes a request for public injunctive relief. We leave these issues to the Court of Appeal on remand, should the parties raise them and should the court find it necessary to decide them.” (McGill, supra, 2 Cal.5th at pp. 966-967.)  Based on this paragraph, we invited the parties to submit supplemental briefing that (1) identified what, if any, further proceedings are required in this court before we remand the matter to the trial court, and (2) addressed the merits of any issue we must decide. Both sides agreed there are no issues for us to consider, and therefore we should remand the matter to the trial court for further proceedings consistent with the Supreme Court’s decision.  Accordingly, although the trial court refused to order McGill’s injunctive relief claims to arbitration based on the Broughton-Cruz rule, we affirm the court’s order based on the result it reached and remand to the trial court for further proceedings. (Goles v. Sawhney (2016) 5 Cal.App.5th 1014, 2021 [“ ‘[i]t is established that on appeal we review the decision of the trial court rather than its reasoning, and thus “… a ruling or decision correct in law will not be disturbed on appeal merely because it was given for the wrong reason” ’ ”].) As the Supreme Court noted, its decision gives rise to additional issues relating to the enforceability of Citibank’s arbitration provision to the extent the parties seek to raise them. Those issues include whether the arbitration provision’s waiver of McGill’s statutory right to seek public injunctive relief is severable, and also whether McGill waived the right to challenge the trial court’s order sending all of her other claims to arbitration by failing to appeal from the court’s original order. We express no opinion on any of these issues, but rather reserve them for the trial court to decide in the first instance should the parties pursue them.