Introduction
Electronic signatures now dominate modern commerce, employment relationships, consumer transactions, and litigation. Yet Pennsylvania courts continue to confront a recurring question: when a party denies signing an electronic agreement, what evidence sufficiently authenticates the electronic signature and proves assent?
The Pennsylvania Superior Court’s recent decision in Levin v. Prime Communications Inc. and AT&T, 2026 PA Super 119 (Pa. Super. Ct. 2026) provides important guidance on electronic signatures under Pennsylvania’s Uniform Electronic Transactions Act (“UETA”), particularly in the arbitration context. The case highlights both the strengths and limitations of electronic-signature evidence. Pennsylvania law fully recognizes electronic signatures as valid and enforceable. Importantly, Levin shows that courts generally must resolve factual disputes over attribution and authenticity before enforcing a challenged agreement.
The decision also raises important evidentiary questions:
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- Does Pennsylvania recognize a presumption or self-authentication rule for electronic signatures?
- Will the law in this area be similar to the presumption often applied to text messages sent from a person’s phone?
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Let’s first consider the current PA law governing electronic signature of a contract.
Pennsylvania’s Uniform Electronic Transactions Act
Pennsylvania adopted the Uniform Electronic Transactions Act at 73 P.S. §§ 2260.101–2260.503.
The statute defines an electronic signature as:
an electronic sound, symbol, or process attached to or logically associated with a record and executed or adopted by a person with the intent to sign the record.
For authentication purposes, Section 2260.305 provides the key rule. Under that section, an electronic signature is attributable to a person if it was that person’s act. A party may prove attribution “in any manner,” including evidence demonstrating the effectiveness of security procedures used to identify the signer. The statute also directs courts to consider the surrounding circumstances and context of the transaction.
The Levin Decision
As the Superior Court explained in Levin, a click-through process can create a valid electronic signature when the user understands that clicking the button signifies agreement and intends to take a legally significant action.
But how is this “click through” understanding proven factually?
Background
In Levin, an employee sued his former employer, Prime Communications and AT&T, asserting employment-related claims. The defendants sought to compel arbitration based on two electronically executed arbitration agreements, one from 2019 and another from 2022. The employee stated that he did not recall signing an arbitration agreement and denied signing one.
The defendants responded with human-resources records and a declaration from their Associate Director of Human Resources. The declaration described the electronic onboarding system and the procedures used to obtain employee assent.
According to the employer’s evidence, employees received unique usernames and passwords and logged into the company’s human-resources platform. To accept the arbitration agreement, the employee had to check an “I agree” box or, in the later version, check an acknowledgment box and click an “Acknowledge Policy” button. The system advised employees that taking those actions would constitute an electronic signature and create a binding contract. The employer also produced electronic acknowledgment reports showing the employee’s name, date stamps, and electronic-signature records.
Despite that evidence, the trial court denied the motion to compel arbitration. Relying heavily on Bair v. Manor Care of Elizabethtown, PA, LLC, 108 A.3d 94 (Pa. Super. 2015), the court concluded that the arbitration agreements themselves did not contain the employee’s signature. The court further held that the employer’s declaration constituted impermissible “extrinsic evidence.” As a result, it found insufficient proof of mutual assent.
The Superior Court vacated the order.
Why the Trial Court Erred
The Superior Court held that the trial court fundamentally misapplied Pennsylvania procedure governing preliminary objections seeking to compel arbitration. Pennsylvania Rule of Civil Procedure 1028(c)(2) expressly allows courts to receive evidence when factual issues arise through preliminary objections. The court relied on prior decisions, including Stern v. Prudential Financial, Inc., 836 A.2d 953 (Pa. Super. 2003), and Davis v. Center Management Group, LLC, 192 A.3d 173 (Pa. Super. 2018). Those cases recognize that courts may consider affidavits, declarations, and other evidence when deciding whether a valid arbitration agreement exists.
Failure to Conduct a Hearing About A Signature
The trial court therefore erred by refusing to consider the human-resources declaration simply because it was “extrinsic” to the contract. The issue was not contract interpretation. It was contract formation. Courts often need evidence outside the four corners of an agreement to determine whether a party actually assented to an electronic contract.
Importantly, however, the Superior Court did not compel arbitration outright. Instead, it remanded the matter for a factual determination.
The court explained that the employer’s evidence, if believed, would establish electronic assent under the UETA. The evidence showed that the employee logged in using unique credentials, received notice that clicking the box would constitute a signature, and then completed the required acknowledgment process. That conduct could constitute a legally effective electronic signature.
Nevertheless, the employer relied primarily on its own witness’s declaration. Under Pennsylvania’s longstanding Nanty-Glo rule, the trial court could not resolve the disputed factual issue solely on the basis of testimonial evidence offered by the moving party. The Superior Court therefore held that the court must conduct a factual hearing or other evidentiary proceeding to determine whether the employee actually executed the electronic signatures attributed to him.
Strategic Benefit
Levin is great news for any party having little or no defense to a breach of contract action. Levin confirms the need for a full hearing on whether the defendant’s electronic signature is valid. This creates a certain hurdle for the enforcement of a contract. It will slow down the process of the Plaintiff getting a judgment and enforcing it, buying the Defendant both time to defend and leverage to negotiate a settlement, even if the electronic signature was valid.
Authentication of Electronic Signatures Compared to Text Messages
Pennsylvania courts have developed relatively flexible standards for authenticating text messages. Under Pennsylvania Rule of Evidence 901, courts often permit authentication through circumstantial evidence, including:
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- ownership of the phone;
- the phone number used;
- contextual references within the messages;
- surrounding circumstances showing authorship; and
- corroborating testimony.
Although phone ownership alone may not suffice, Pennsylvania appellate courts frequently recognize that messages sent from a person’s assigned phone number provide substantial circumstantial evidence of authorship.
No comparable rule exists for electronic signatures.
Not yet, anyway.
In the interim, the UETA states that attribution may be proven “in any manner,” but it creates no presumption that a signature associated with a particular email account, username, password, or IP address is automatically authentic. Instead, the statute treats attribution as a factual issue.
As a result, unlike text-message cases, disputes over electronic signatures often require testimony and evidence regarding:
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- account credentials;
- security procedures;
- login records;
- audit trails;
- IP addresses;
- email verification procedures; and
- system-generated acknowledgment records.
The Levin decision reinforces that distinction. Even though the employer produced detailed electronic records and testimony about its login system, the Superior Court still required factual resolution of the attribution issue.
Is There a PA Rule Allowing Self-Authentication of Electronic Signatures?
At present, Pennsylvania appears to have no Rule of Civil Procedure, Rule of Evidence, statewide administrative rule, or county-specific rule that grants automatic self-authentication to ordinary electronic signatures.
Pennsylvania Rule of Evidence 902 identifies several categories of self-authenticating evidence. Ordinary electronic signatures on contracts do not fall within a dedicated self-authentication category. Instead, parties generally must rely on Rule 901 authentication principles together with the UETA.
Accordingly, when authenticity is disputed, a party seeking to enforce an electronically signed agreement ordinarily must present evidence linking the electronic act to the alleged signer.
How Other States Approach the Problem
Some jurisdictions have reduced authentication burdens through statutory presumptions or more developed evidentiary frameworks.
For example:
- Several states have adopted versions of the UETA and routinely treat audit trails, login credentials, and electronic-signature certificates as prima facie evidence of authenticity.
- Courts in states such as Texas, Florida, California, and New York increasingly recognize records generated by platforms such as DocuSign and Adobe Sign as strong circumstantial evidence of attribution.
- Some electronic-signature providers — such as Google — issue certificates of completion that courts often treat as highly persuasive evidence of authenticity, effectively shifting the practical burden to the challenger. In fact, Google includes the certification page as the last page of the endorsed PDF document, effectively incorporating it into the document, which helps the document “self-prove,” even if the rules of civil procedures do not squarely address the issue, currently.
For now, no uniform rule exists nationally to authenticate an electronic signature.
Even if it did, it would only create a rebuttable presumption, subject to challenge based on fraud, unauthorized access, identity theft, or misuse of credentials.
Will Pennsylvania Move Toward a Presumption?
The reasoning in Levin suggests that Pennsylvania courts will defer to the legislature on this topic.
But at least, the decision reflects a willingness to recognize modern electronic-signature practices. The court expressly acknowledged that click-through agreements, acknowledgment boxes, and electronic onboarding systems can create valid signatures when supported by evidence of attribution and intent.
The General Assembly could eventually create a rebuttable presumption through legislation. For example, a future statute might provide that execution through a secure electronic-signature platform, combined with an audit trail and unique user credentials, creates a presumption that the signature belongs to the identified user.
Currently, however, Pennsylvania has no such statute.
Conclusion about Electronic Signatures
As a precedential decision, Levin v. Prime Communications is one of Pennsylvania’s most significant recent decisions on electronic signatures. The Superior Court confirmed that electronic signatures—including click-through acknowledgments and electronic acceptance procedures—can create binding arbitration agreements under Pennsylvania’s Uniform Electronic Transactions Act. At the same time, the court emphasized that attribution remains a factual question. Courts generally cannot enforce disputed electronic signatures without proper fact-finding.
Unlike text-message authentication, Pennsylvania law currently provides no presumption that an electronic signature associated with a username, password, email account, or electronic platform automatically belongs to the purported signer. Authentication remains governed by the UETA and traditional evidentiary principles. A party must still prove that the electronic act is attributable to the alleged signer.
Accordingly, while Pennsylvania strongly recognizes electronic contracting, it does not yet provide a shortcut around factual disputes over authenticity. When a signer denies execution, Levin indicates that courts generally must receive evidence and resolve the factual dispute before enforcing the agreement.
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