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."

Comments

In Canada...

[awehttam]

For contrast: B.C. consumers can't sign away class-action right: Canada's highest court ruled Friday that British Columbia consumers can pursue class action lawsuits even after signing contracts that appear to waive that right.

*shrug*

Lawyers

[increment1]

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.

What is arbitration?

[Caerdwyn]

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.

Absolutely nothing.

[KingSkippus]

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?

Re:Absolutely nothing.

[causality]

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?

Note that arbitrators are notorious for overwhelmingly favoring the party which hires them. In this case, that'd be the company. This is part of a much larger and utterly foolish trend: the systematic dismantling of each available "working through the system" method of either getting justice or effecting change.

Social unrest is like any other kind of energy. It can be neither created nor destroyed; it only changes form. It does not go away merely because you start removing the legitimate means of acting on it. Quite predictably, this is only going to lead to the exact kind of vendettas and feuds that the justice system was specifically put in place to avoid. We're already beginning to see this with groups like Anonymous.

In fact I can sum up Anonymous quite easily. Right or wrong, I believe the reasoning goes like this: "I don't have the millions of dollars and years of my life that it takes to bring a lawsuit against a multinational corporation and actually prevail, but what I do have is some skill with computers and a lot of outrage with no approved outlet." Anonymous should be completely redundant. Instead, they are a blatantly obvious sign that the justice system is failing.

When the authoritarian types witness this, do they feel an immediate need to reform the system? No, they don't. They haven't the wisdom. Instead, they feel a need to "crack down" on computer crimes, as though they were random events happening in a vacuum, as if that does anything to address why they are happening. Where are the leaders who actually understand how to deal with human beings? Are they extinct? Are they the ones who never desired power in the first place?

Re:Oohh..

[sconeu]

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).