Polytek Engineering Company, Limited v. Jacobson Companies
United States District Court for the District of Minnesota
984 F. Supp. 1238 (1997)
Polytek (plaintiff) sent Jacobson (defendant) a purchase order for rubber-recycling equipment with an attached separate contract Polytek had with a third-party buyer, Hebei, which contained a mandatory arbitration clause; Jacobson disputed and renegotiated a letter-of-credit term in the Hebei contract but never objected to its arbitration clause. After Hebei successfully sued Polytek over defective equipment, Polytek won a Chinese arbitration award against Jacobson under the incorporated Hebei contract and sought to confirm it in U.S. federal court; Jacobson argued it never agreed to arbitrate with Polytek.
Whether, if a contract containing an arbitration clause is incorporated into a purchase order, the seller agrees to the arbitration clause by accepting the purchase order.