Ya Mon Expeditions, LLC v. International Yacht Brokers Association, Inc.
June 10, 2026·1:24-cv-20805-KMM·Per Curiam·By Maria Santos
The Eleventh Circuit affirmed a district court ruling denying a motion to compel arbitration in an antitrust dispute over yacht broker commissions. The court held that the defendant failed to prove the existence of a binding arbitration agreement with the plaintiffs.
Plaintiffs filed a class-action antitrust suit alleging a conspiracy to fix yacht broker commissions in violation of the Sherman Act. The defendant, YATCO, an MLS company, moved to compel arbitration based on a SaaS agreement signed by the plaintiffs’ brokers. The district court denied the motion, finding the plaintiffs were not bound by the agreement.
The court’s reasoning
The court affirmed the denial of arbitration because YATCO failed to meet its burden of proving an arbitration agreement existed. The court found no evidence that the plaintiffs’ brokers actually listed the plaintiffs’ yachts on YATCO’s website. Furthermore, the court held that the plaintiffs could not be bound under agency principles because they lacked full knowledge of the agreement when their brokers signed it. The court also ruled that equitable estoppel did not apply because the plaintiffs’ antitrust claims did not rely on the terms of the SaaS agreement.
What it means going forward
The ruling reinforces that parties seeking to enforce arbitration clauses must provide concrete evidence of an agreement’s existence and cannot rely on speculation or assumptions about third-party actions.
