Yes. Forced Binding Arbitration is a rigged system that helps companies evade responsibility for violating anti-discrimination, consumer protection, and public health laws. These companies, are “repeat offenders” this means they are using forced binding arbitration to commit white collar crimes of fraud against the American tax payers in a “pre-meditated way”. Meaning they have a long long list of law suits against them for the “SAME” behaviors…such as in my case, which was one of the ones that got the furthest before I was slapped down by the arbitrator who sided with the company I sued. The arbitrator sided with the company “EVEN THOUGH” I had inside witnesses who worked as employees who gave depositions in our favor. My story is in the second part of the three part NY Times series.

Also, see the documentary I was a part of in October 2014 called “Lost in The Fine Print”. We had to choose from a list of arbitrators from the AAA that were all “PRO BUSINESS” and the company we sued had a choice or not as to whether or not to allow that arbitrator to serve on the case. My attorney said when we got the list from the AAA…that “none of these arbitrators are good for our side…but we are required to choose one.”

AGAIN…do not miss the fact that we had multiple inside witness testimony on our behalf and we still lost! Not only that…but we were slapped with hundreds of thousands of dollars in a judgement to pay the repeat offenders legal fees! Does this sound like a fair system of justice? Believe Me! You do not want to get locked out of the justice system.

Lost in The Fine Print

A Big caveat. Apparently, this was a three part series. Mr. Olson linked to the second part. The Forbes article apparently responds to the first part. (There is a similar response from the Chamber of Commerce out there). That is significant, because the first part does focus on class action matters, while the 2nd and 3rd do not.

So… As far as non-class action matters, I stand by my point that arbitration clauses are not a panacea and the Forbes article does nothing to dissuade me.

As far as arbitration as a way to do away with class actions, I believe that the NYTimes makes a good case that there is a violation of public policy perpetrated by businesses at the expense of consumers. Federal policymakers made a choice to have class action suits as a way for consumers who suffered smallish losses to band together to try to force corporations to disgorge ill-gotten gains.

Unfortunately, class-action suits were pirated by attorneys who saw them as a way to enrich their coffers. Corporations, who disliked class-action suits because it prevented them from lining their own coffers, came up with a strategy to undermine the suits and
(not unjustifiably) painted class-action lawyers as leeches.

I say a pox on both their houses. In reality, the problem is that companies are taking nickels and dimes from consumers. 100 million dimes a month adds up. No-one is addressing how to fix the real issue.

Certainly. If the issue is class action reform, then focus on that rather than keeping people out of court for any reason.

As for the “freedom to contract” argument, no rational person feels more free after discovering that the fine print in a contract they had no ability to negotiate means that this country’s court system is unavailable to them when they need it.

The part about Friedman is a red herring and totally irrelevant to the focus of the article.

I think one can be very suspicious of arbitrators and of class action attorneys. Both are doing what they believe to be in their own economic interests. And that is the problem with arbitration (and the class action suites).

This is nonsense. Consumers are free to choose each and every trip whether they want to take a taxi, Uber, city bus, rickshaw, etc… The analogy only works if you find out that, thanks to some fine print you agreed to years ago, you’re now required to get around exclusively by Uber, even if the Uber driver’s car smells funny and he insists on taking the FDR and Uber is surging 3X. Pre-dispute arbitration clauses are slipped into lengthy consumer contracts of adhesion and are unavoidable in daily life.

If arbitration is so great for both sides, why is it being foisted by companies on individuals with no negotiating leverage?