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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."
Mandatory corporate kangaroo courts! What could possibly go wrong?
*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.
They certainly can try, apparently. It sure is a good thing that we have arbitration clauses to prevent people gang-raped on the job from having the hassle of an actual trial, when they could simply have a closed-door proceeding run by somebody hired by their employer instead...
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.
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They're just a way for legal firms to make ridiculous amounts of money. They're an abomination.
AT&T can only force arbitration if you agreed to it in your contract. Which you did. All major companies make it a condition of the sale.
What the court decided is that you can't get out of your contractual agreement with a class-action suit.
The unconscionable part here is the law that they're upholding, the Federal Arbitration Act, which basically lets you give up your right to sue. You don't have to, but they don't have to give you the service, unless you agree to meet in a court of their choosing. Which, of course, they'll always require, as long as the law allows them to.
That's been upheld before. This case is just deciding that the federal law trumps state anti-arbitration laws. I find it unconscionable in both cases, and "unconscionable" is supposed to be a way out of contracts, but the existence of the federal law and 5 Republican appointees on the Supreme Court says I'm wrong.
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.
Justice Roberts once again proves his obedience to his corporate masters. Once upon a time the SCOTUS was seen as above such petty matters. Now it is clearly the pawn of the corporations - and this has been obvious ever since the ruling which allowed the corporations unlimited access to fund/bribe politicians.
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!
So next time you'll have a choice between two operators. Both of them will have 'mandatory arbitration' clause.
Sure, no pressure. You can always move to another country, right?
McDonalds requires every employee to sign away class action rights -- boom, they can nick a buck off each employee every day and it will never be worth an individual suit. They can just fire you as the total from you approaches the cost of filing your claim.
Add in Walmart and all the other chain stores and shady dealers. This ruling was NOT limited to consumer cases.
-GiH
(Yes, IAAL)
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.
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?
Per Jeffrey Toobin, “in every major case since he became the nation’s seventeenth Chief Justice, Roberts has sided with the prosecution over the defendant, the state over the condemned, the executive branch over the legislative, and the corporate defendant over the individual plaintiff.” That’s conservative jurisprudence in a nutshell.
As has become abundantly clear, "activist judges" are only a problem when their rulings don't fit the conservative POV.
Luke, help me take this mask off
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.
OK, so in arbitration, I get my sales tax back.
In a class action lawsuit, if I'm the lucky first guy to file, I might get a couple G's to serve as lead plaintiff, the lawyers make tens of millions of dollars, and everyone else gets a coupon for $10 off their next phone.
How much did I really lose here?
The question you pose is valid only if you believe the entire affair is all about your personal financial gain and how to maximize it.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Yeah! The democrats had unassailable majorities in both houses of congress, but it was the republicans who did it! And they were the ones who prevented the democrat supermajority from passing (or even writing) a budget. They have magical powers, those republicans....
They turned me into a Newt Gingrich!
You're thinking of the way things use to be. Arbiters are currently chosen by the corporation. You have no say in who hears your case. The Christian Science Monitor reports that the arbitration firms find in favor of the corporation against the consumer 98.4% of the time and the remaining 1.6% offer consumers laughably small compensation that does not even come close to making them whole.
Let me put it bluntly to be clear. No consumer has ever won in arbitration. Under the current regime, none of them ever will.
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