Slashdot Mirror
Online UK Courts Modelled On EBay To Settle Legal Disputes
First time accepted submitter infolation writes The UK justice system should receive a radical overhaul for the digital age with the creation of an online court to expand access to justice and resolve claims of up to £25,000, the official body that oversees civil courts has recommended. The report says existing services — such as eBay's disagreement negotiation procedure and Cybersettle's blind-bidding operations — provide prototypes worth studying. Only the judge need be legally qualified. If necessary, telephone hearings could be built into the last stage. Rulings by the online judge would be as enforceable as any courtroom judgment.
These courts are not like that. This would be for "small claims", a system I have used before against PayPal and Royal Mail.
Basically it is the two parties and a judge. It's fairly informal. In the PayPal case they didn't even send anyone so I won by default. In the Royal Mail case they sent a lawyer but there was no cross-examination or anything like that. The judge asked us both questions and we made our points, never asking each other anything. The whole thing only took half an hour.
It's a way to sort out relatively small disputes and can be appealed. Usually the amounts involved are small, a few hundred pounds. Most cases are an individual vs a company that has cost them money somehow (there are no punitive damages, just actual monetary losses). That being the case doing it online might actually work against the individual since it makes it easier for the company to participate. The hearing is at the complainant's local court, so in the case of PayPal they would have had to appoint a local lawyer or send someone from their head office down here.
I doubt there would be any kind of real-time interaction with this system. It would be like eBay's system where you have deadlines of a few days or weeks to submit information which they then review and apply the law/rules accordingly. Then you realize eBay's system is shit and just do a credit card charge-back instead.
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SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Hang on, the UK court system has had online small claims procedures for at least 8 years. I had to take a UK company that sold me a "dud" refurbished laptop to court online because they were being evasive and refusing to give a full refund in order to comply with UK consumer protection laws, i.e. the company has to "make good" on ALL costs incurred by the customer as a result of the faulty transaction.
Ebay's complaints procedure doesn't follow UK law and doesn't require sellers to "make good." You may get a flat refund for the price paid for the goods but none of the other costs, e.g. the cost of returning the goods, which is the company's responsibility to arrange for collection, and any transaction fees (banking and Ebay) incurred. If you have a serious, well-founded complaint against an Ebay vendor in the UK or any country with decent, effective consumer protection laws and procedures, you're much better off going that route than through Ebay.