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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."
*shrug*
I'm slightly torn on this. On the one side, this means that there won't be ridiculous class action settlements where the class members get a $5 coupon towards future purchases while the lawyers get millions of dollars. On the other side, it effectively removes the only real consumer protection from wide spread practices.
I'd have to say, I'm leaning more towards it being a bad thing.
Arbitration = "impartial" non-accredited non-monitored unaccountable random person bought and paid for, who if he decides for the customer more than once in a great while is fired in favor of another "impartial" random person. Alternate definition: how to bribe a civil court judge legally.
No arbiter can be impartial. Their livelihood depends upon bias and outright prejudice (as in "pre-judging"). It is not an honorable profession.
Everybody gets what the majority deserves.
This is what 8 years of Bush bought us folks, a Supreme Court on the take (look it up, it's a fact that Clarance Thomas took bribes). Hopefully a few of 'em 'll retire while the Dems are in and Obama'll man up and put some liberals in.
Which will go stunningly well I'm sure. The courts will run like a well oiled machine then.
Call me jaded, but when I choose between modern liberals and modern conservatives I'm really choosing which set of rights I want them to try and take.
It is not a fact that Clarence Thomas took bribes. It is a left wing interpretation of a situation based on the fact that Clarence Thomas is a black Republican. Democrats believe that the only reason a black man would hold the views he does is because someone bribed him. Of course, I have trouble understanding how a black man can support the Party that opposed the abolition of slavery and created the Ku Klux Klan.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Absolutely nothing, pretty much guaranteed.
...If you're a corporation.
I think that was the whole point over fighting such a silly case all the way up to the Supreme Court--to virtually guarantee that you can never be subject to a class action case again. Let's not kid ourselves, who here thinks that any company will ever again sell any service again without a clause in it forcing arbitration and disallowing class action lawsuits?
No, you have a Republican congress that forced that issue into the health care bill (no single payer! No public option! That's soshulizm!), then turned around and decided that the issue they forced was bad. Republicans made 161 (passed; over 700 proposed) amendments to the health care bill to create the abomination we have now.
The sad thing is, this abomination is *still* better than what we had before, if your goal is to keep people from getting sick and/or dying from easily preventable things.
TL;DR: take your "regime in the White House" and shove it up your ass.
--Jeremy
Jesus was a liberal
That's not the broadest definition that could be unreasonably imagined, we have a regime in the White House who thinks having some limited powers to regulate interstate commerce means they can force everyone to buy health insurance, as a cost of being alive.
Yeah, shame on Obama for including the Bush proposal in his health care plan. In the US, anybody at any time can go to the hospital, whether they can pay or not. Not every place in the world allows that and many people die in the streets. However, somebody has to pay for all of those provided services and they are passed on to those who already have insurance.
I find it odd that people don't complain about the government saying you must have auto insurance if you want to drive a car, but they do complain if the government says you must have health insurance if you want medical treatment. In either case, if you are uninsured, your actions have an impact on the rest of those who are insured.
While I do NOT like this decision, it does seem Constitutional.
May I refer you to the Seventh Amendment?
In Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.
(Emphasis mine).
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Do we even have any real Liberals left anywhere? Obama, Pelosi, Clinton, and their ilk are basically so centrist they're "Republican Lite". Surely I'm not the only left-leaning person who feels unrepresented. As far as that goes, the Republicans don't do a particularly good job at representing conservatives, either.
Actually, since the right has moved so far to the right, today's liberal is yesterday's conservative. A lot of Reagan's proposals would be shot down as liberal sh*t today.