similar to the plaintiff in the Shanlde case. After reviewing the case law, Judge Poliak held: This is an easy case. Giordano was a fairly low-level employee of Pep Boys earning a relatively low wage of $400.00 per week at the time of his termination. He avers that he could not afford the filing fees and arbitrators’ costs for which he would be responsible pursuant to the agreement and the AAA’s rules. Giordano is similar to the plaintiffs in Cole and Shankle and unlike the wealthier employees in [other cases].... 2001 WL 484360, at *6. As Judge Poliak noted in Giordano, many of the cases finding cost-splitting provisions enforceable involved “highly paid employees,’’ relatively speaking. See, e.g., Bradford v. Rockwell Semiconductor Sys., Inc., 238 F.3d 549, 558 n. 6 (4th Cir.2001) (<HOLDING>). 10 . To those who would complain that
holding that litigant with annual base salary of 115000 and average yearly bonuses in three previous years of 53000 was not deterred from arbitration by risk of incurring costs holding the party seeking to invalidate an arbitration agreement because of prohibitive arbitration fees bears the burden of proof and the possibility of such party incurring prohibitive costs is too speculative to invalidate an arbitration agreement where the record reveals only that the agreement is silent on the subject of arbitration costs holding that use of annual salary rate created fact issue as to whether the employment contract was atwill or for a specific term holding that arbitration agreement requiring litigant to pay onehalf of arbitration costs failed to provide an accessible forum in which litigant could resolve his statutory rights holding that where an arbitration agreement between an employer and employee does not specifically provide for the handling of arbitration costs california courts should interpret the arbitration agreement  as providing  that the employer must bear the arbitration forum costs