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Supreme Court Upholds Arbitration In DirectTV Case
An anonymous reader sends word that the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled in a 6-3 decision that DirecTV’s service agreement barring mass arbitration by its customers must be enforced. The NYTimes reports: "The Supreme Court on Monday ruled that dissatisfied customers of DirecTV in California could not band together in a class action and must instead pursue individual arbitrations. The decision, by a 6-to-3 vote, was the latest in a series of Supreme Court decisions that have made it harder for consumers to go to court to pursue claims of fraud and defective products."
Sounds like as many users that can afford to sue should do that individually, and i wonder if it wouldn't cause problems for the judges/justice system to have tons of individual case where one big case would have sufficed. If they worked together they may even be able to bring the price down a bit on individual cases as there is a lot of work in common for all the cases.
would love to see a real life "ddos" XD
So why didn't totally bar arbitration altogether in its service agreement? In small print, "You cannot sue us, anytime, anywhere over anything. Period. No exceptions. Don't even dream of trying to contact a lawyer."
The company wants arbitration instead of class action suits because arbitration tends to work better for the companies than getting hit by the actual law.
Users tend to sign away their right to legal protection by agreeing to arbitration in terms of use etc., giving the company the ability to screw over large numbers of people while risking only individual lawsuits and not class action suits that would actually have some effect on the company's bottom line.
IMHO such use of arbitration should be generally illegal.
blindly antisocialist = antisocial
Any legal accountability corporations had just dissipated into the ether. It's no longer a "If class action settlement $X is less than recall cost $Y, then we do Z", now it's "if X% of affected customers go to arbitration, with average settlement $Y, and X*Y recall cost Z, then we don't recall." I'm willing to bet that the proportion of people who would bother to do the effort of arbitration for a low chance of being granted a pittance is far less than the tiny proportion of a class who apply for an already-approved class-action settlement (and get a $7 rebate coupon). In addition, punitive damages go away, unless a regulatory agency prosecutes.
Binding arbitration is now fully SCOTUS-approved, and I expect it'll become a standard component of every "take it or leave it" legal contract.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
These clowns have been bought and paid for for quite a while now. Honestly, they are supposed to uphold the constitution not bow to their corporate masters.
But they are all lawyers, so of course they will act like scumbags.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
...why Tivo isn't suing the everliving shit out of DirecTV. Conversely, I would like to know why DirecTV even still claims to actually sell "DirecTivos" anymore. If you try to actually get one you just get a never-ending runaround.
Looks like there's another product/service I won't be purchasing.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Individual arbitration? Why waste the time and money? Instead, just stop paying the bastards.
If enough people are upset, setup a site to coordinate these many thousands of people and issue a warning to DirectTV (or Comcast, whoever) that on a specific date, tens of thousands of users are going to refuse to pay their bill - period. To make this really effective, have an escrow account setup where the money gets deposited to show that this is a protest.
Truth be told, tens of thousands of people refusing to pay might not be enough to catch DirectTV's attention but get a few hundred thousand people threatening to withhold payment and the accountants are going to look at what that does to the cash flow and scream.
What I like about this is idea is that it's the perfect method for Americans to protest because they don't actually have to do anything, all they have to do is nothing (as in don't pay their bill). Let's face it, we, as a nation, excel at doing nothing.
They wouldn't be able to get away with "You can't sue us for any reason", but demanding arbitration also means that they pick (and pay) the arbitrator. They select someone who is favorable to them and who will rule in their favor as often as possible. No, it doesn't make winning against them impossible, but if winning against them was impossible then forcing arbitration might be ruled illegal. So they take the occasional token loss and still wind up vastly ahead of where they'd be if actual lawsuits were allowed.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Corporations can legally enjoy the rights of individuals for legal reasons but groups of people cannot enjoy the same rights in suing a corporation? How about if the group of people being screwed by DirectTV incorporate then sue the pants off of them instead of a class action suit?
Agreed. It's gotten so bad I'm fully expecting the SCOTUS to shit out a pretzel after it finishes the contortions necessary to explain why Dollar General should be allowed to ignore its contract with the Native American tribe that they signed, agreeing to subject itself to Native American court jurisdiction, without allowing every other "person" to ignore the jurisdiction-setting clause in every single contract in this country.
It'll probably involve something like claiming that because mere humans can only exist in one physical location they must be subject to a jurisdiction no matter where in that country that jurisdiction is, even if it has nothing at all to do with the physical location of the human, while Corporate People exist everywhere and nowhere at once and therefore cannot be subject to any jurisdiction at all except by Their whims and Their whims are allowed to change whenever They feel the jurisdiction They chose has become doubleplusungood, despite what any contract heretofore executed shall claim.
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tl;dr: SCOTUS will find a way to justify letting Corporations out of their binding arbitration contracts while keeping the rest of the normal humans stuck in theirs.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
just wait for GOP health care where they have a non doctor say what is per ex after the fact sticking you with the full bill + no court due to a forced arbitration
I had DirecTV for four whopping days before I cancelled it because of phone-bouncing between departments for 90 minutes trying to find out why my internet services were not delivered.
DirecTV charged me a $135 termination fee. I challenged the fee by demanding a contract with my signature that obligates me to that fee. Their response was the contract was "implied" when they started the service.
"Implied" contracts - IE non-signed - are inadmissable and not enforceable in a court of law. I didn't seek relief in court for obvious economic reasons. But I am not shy about discouraging everyone I know from accepting services from DirecTV.
The question that has not been answered in the cases in this article is this: do the parties have a signed contract in the dispute? If not, then DirecTV has no legal mandate to termination fees under contract law and the class action status should had been allowed.
There is no law that mandates agreement to a legal document in exchange for layman services or sales. Anymore if I am handed a paper that is contains any legalese, I respond that I will not sign it until I review it with my lawyer, and I reserve the right to amend the contract. People do this with real estate leases and contracts all the time. A signed receipt for sales or services is not an agreement to a legal contract.
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
So why didn't totally bar arbitration altogether in its service agreement? In small print, "You cannot sue us, anytime, anywhere over anything. Period. No exceptions. Don't even dream of trying to contact a lawyer."
That's easy, because some places you can't waive legally guaranteed rights that are afforded to you by law by contract. It actually makes the entire contract void.
Om, nomnomnom...
It is NOT the SCOTUS' responsibility to strike down bad but constitutional laws. To do so would be judicial activism. Congress is the culprit - they passed this special interest legislation and they should fix it.
Class action was the last thing we had to defend our rights. Right now with Unions dead there isn't really anything else that brings together enough of the American working class to stand up to a large corporation.
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I want to know what got their panties in such a twist over a TV service that they decided legal action was necessary. My guess is that they should be suing the installers and not the parent company, as the technicians that DirecTV contracts to are some of the least intelligent people I've had the pleasure of working with.
The following article describes the legal rise of arbitration eliminating class action suits.
Washington Monthly, June/July/August 2014
"Thrown Out of Court: How corporations became people you can't sue." by Lina Khan
http://www.washingtonmonthly.c...
Interestingly, a recent post at Washington Monthly reported that we have "Sharia" law in the U.S., as some companies require that arbitration be through religious mediators. (In the cases mentioned, Christian and Scientology arbitrators.)
http://www.washingtonmonthly.c...
Except that a lot of these scumbags not only require you to "waive your right to class-action" but also to "submit to binding arbitration" (usually an arbitrator assigned by the corp).
We don't have a government that represents the people, what we have is a government composed of people elected to be representatives. Which means that we are subject to the horrors of obtaining the government we deserve if our voters don't pay attention.
This anti class action is also paired up with the requirement to use an arbitration system instead of the legal system. Arbitration is fine, if it is voluntary. Too many of these contracts require the arbitration though. This is the part that the courts should overturn if they had any sense of decency left.
The question is, how many non-violent methods remain available to citizens in order to redress the wrongs committed by corporations?
In practice this doesn't work. The third party is often paid for by both parties; this means the consumer pays a large amount relative to their income compared to the amount paid for by the corporation. The intent here is to scare away the consumer. Why bother with the headaches if you're just trying to get $100 back? Some agreements (I've seen this in employment contracts but I haven't checked consumer agreements) where either party can appeal a judgement by paying for additional arbitration, with no limit on how many appeals are allowed. Thus the party with the deepest pockets will always win if they want to win. And these agreements often forbid the consumer from using the legal system (ie, they must use arbitration if they want to be a customer).
Though yes, it may be cheaper for them to just pay the $100, but that's hardly a sound basis upon which to replace the existing legal framework from the government by a new legal system controlled by the corporations.
Class action suits protect the consumer but they are a nightmare for the corporations. This is why corporations are undermining the legal system and why they spend so much PR effort to fool actual citizens that class action suits are bad. Corporations want to be able to cheat the consumers for $20 each with impunity knowing that the vast majority won't respond, and they're getting away with it. Yes, there are some bad class action lawsuits, but that should not be reason to discard the whole system that can balance the power of corporations against individual citizens.
And has the supreme court spoken on this? It seems that legal theory does not always match reality.
It comes as no surprise. The US government and the legal system has been controlled by the rich and their corporations for years. Citizens no longer have rights even remotely equal to them. A shift needs to happen that gives rights back to the people.
The next president will nominate new SCOTUS judges. See who voted the asshole way? Only judges nominated by republicans. This is the most important issue of the election.