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Supreme Court: AT&T Can Force Arbitration
suraj.sun writes with this unhappy news, as reported by Ars Technica: "The Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled that AT&T — and indeed, any company — could block class-action suits arising from disputes with customers and instead force those customers into binding arbitration. The ruling reverses previous lower-court decisions that classified stipulations in AT&T's service contract which barred class arbitration as 'unconscionable.' ... In cases where an unfair practice affects large numbers of customers, AT&T or other companies could quietly settle a few individual claims instead of being faced with larger class-action settlements which might include punitive awards designed to discourage future bad practices."
Yeah, just pick one of the zero phone companies that have no arbitration clause. What the heck do you need phone service for? Or natural gas, or electricity!
Don't Supreme Court justices know the law anymore? This decision is so out in right field that it doesn't even pretend to be supported by law passed by Congress. Contracts used to be invalid if:
1) They are so one-side as to be entirely unfair.
2) They force one party into a position because there is no alternative (the offer you can't refuse).
Carrier-forced arbitration meets both these points. Carriers, by the nature of their enormous power relative to consumers, will always win arbitration because the arbitrators are, for all practical purposes, on the carriers' payrolls. This is because carriers are repeat customers, whereas carrier customers are not. This severely biases the arbitrator in favor of the carriers. There is no easy way to make this even remotely fair to carrier customers. This, by itself, would be enough to nullify arbitration clauses in any sane country.
Carrier customers have no choice but to have a phone of some sort. You just can't exist in most modern markets without the ability to communicate with other people. And all carriers have the same arbitration clause in their contract, so customers have no alternative. This should also, all by itself, be enough to nullify arbitration clauses in contracts in any sane country.
Put these two things together, and it's clear that the Surpeme Court has no intention of applying the law. It seems that they don't even bother reading it anymore. They just want to apply their own sense of right and wrong as it aligns with their political philosophies. If we had a Constitutional Supreme Court, meaning a Supreme Court defined and authorized by our Constitution, prior to this ruling, it just evaporated.