Judge Says Paypal's Arbitration Rules Unfair

MooRogue points to this article in today's San Francisco Chronicle, which reports U.S. District Court Judge Jeremy Fogel's ruling that Paypal "attempts to isolate itself from challenges," noting "Judge Fogel also refused to dismiss the class-action lawsuit going against Paypal." I guess I've been lucky with PayPal so far, but I know a few people who haven't.

Comments

Re:Federal small claims

[DDX_2002]

$25K is awfully high. At that sort of value, what'll happen is that you get a lot of commercial disputes moving into small claims. Once that happens, they show up with their 12 binders of documents, their lawyers (at $25K it's worth hiring one), the legal objections, etc. All of a sudden, the 15 minute trials take hours or days, it takes many months to get a trial date and there's no advantage vs. using a normal superior court.

And any dispute involving a federal court is going to require lawyers, which leads to all the bad things above. The contract was probably drawn up in one state, you live in another, what law is applicable? What law was intended by the parties? Does anyone know if there's such a thing as federal contract law in the US, or is it purely a state matter?