Bergiadis

DISCUSSION

The trial court based its ruling entirely on the texts of the Agreement and the employee manual rather than on the resolution of conflicts in the evidence or factual inferences, and so we review de novo. (Sanchez v. Carmax Auto Superstores California, LLC (2014) 224 Cal.App.4th 398, 401 (Sanchez).) The Agreement is an agreement to arbitrate. Page 9 of the manual provides, under the title “ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF RECEIPT,” that the employee has read and understood the manual. A second paragraph states: “I acknowledge that this manual is provided as an informational guide only and is not a contract or an offer of a contract between the Company and me. Similarly, no Company policy, procedure, guideline or practice is a contract or an offer of a contract between the Company and me. I understand that my relationship with that Company is that I am an at-will employee.” The remainder of the paragraph describes the employee’s at-will status, and ends by stating that only an “express individual written employment agreement” signed by Fred Loya’s president can change that status. There is a signature line on the page for the employee, which is unsigned in the record provided to us.…