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AT&T Defeats Class Action In Unlimited Data Throttling Case (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader writes from an Ars Technica article: Customers who sued ATT over its practice of throttling unlimited data plans will not be able to pursue a class-action lawsuit against the company. ATT argued that the customers could not only have their complaints heard individually in arbitration, and Judge Edward Chen of US District Court in Northern California has sided with the cellular company. Chen accepted ATT's argument, noting that the Supreme Court previously upheld ATT's arbitration provision in a 2011 decision. In the 2011 case, ATT Mobility v. Concepcion, the Supreme Court found that the Federal Arbitration Act preempted a California state law that limited the power of companies to force customers into arbitration. [Chen's ruling granting ATT's motion to compel arbitration was issued on February 29 and highlighted in a MediaPost article Friday.] "Plaintiffs argue that the Concepcion Court never addressed the specific issues now raised -- i.e., that enforcement of the arbitration agreements would violate their rights as protected by the Petition Clause of the First Amendment," Chen wrote. "Because there is no state action in the instant case, Plaintiffs lack a viable First Amendment challenge to the arbitration agreements. As Plaintiffs have not challenged the arbitration agreements on any other bases, the Court grants ATT's motion to compel arbitration."
ATT is still being punished by the FCC and FTC. Ars Technica writes, "The FCC last year proposed a $100 million fine to punish ATT for throttling the wireless Internet connections of customers with unlimited data plans without adequately notifying the customers about the reduced speeds. Separately, the FTC sued ATT in an attempt to gain millions of dollars worth of refunds for customers who paid for unlimited data and had their speeds throttled."
ATT is still being punished by the FCC and FTC. Ars Technica writes, "The FCC last year proposed a $100 million fine to punish ATT for throttling the wireless Internet connections of customers with unlimited data plans without adequately notifying the customers about the reduced speeds. Separately, the FTC sued ATT in an attempt to gain millions of dollars worth of refunds for customers who paid for unlimited data and had their speeds throttled."
If you're looking to "invest capital in your company's future", you don't have to buy legislators in all 50 states; you can just buy the right ones at the federal level, and the courts will take care of the rest.
Consider the hugely corrupt perversion of compulsory biased arbitration. One party has broken the contract but demand the contract they broke remains in force, well, at least the part that favours them, the parts that favour you, meh, sucker. A hugely corrupt application of law to allow a broken contract to remain in force in selected parts by one party to their advantage. Surely the law should have governed whether the contract was substantively broken and no longer in force and thus court action was the only fair resolution.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
ATT is still being punished by the FCC and FTC. Ars Technica writes, "The FCC last year proposed a $100 million fine to punish ATT for throttling the wireless Internet connections of customers with unlimited data plans without adequately notifying the customers about the reduced speeds.
I don't quite get that... the FCC proposed a $100 million fine versus imposed a $100 million fine, the way it would be presented to me as a citizen gone awry of the rule of law.
Separately, the FTC sued ATT in an attempt to gain millions of dollars worth of refunds for customers who paid for unlimited data and had their speeds throttled."
Millions of dollars for millions of customers typically translates into a small credit on my bill... but hey, the attorney's children need a college fund too.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
HAHAHHAHAHAHAH!!! SUCKERS!!!!
The Federal Arbitration Act was originally intended only for use between corporate entities, unfortunately it is being used more and more by crooked unscrupulous companies to force people to give up their rights for judicial relief. This has being enforced by several key bad decisions by the Supreme Court. Senate bill S2506 the "Restoring Statutory Rights Act" is supposed to restore some of these rights. Unfortunately it will probably not pass in a usable form due to corrupt corporate owned politicians (again, allowed by a bad decision by the Supreme Court).
This must be such a dilemma for Republicans... which ideology do I sacrifice to the other?!
Only crack the nuts that crack. You don't put the ones that don't crack in the sack.
Organizing plaintiffs for individual arbitration would cost ATT is the obvious answer. Boiler plait arbitration demands can be used by all and the simplified process can be managed my most without much trouble.
If you are "limiting" the amount of data that can be utilized, even indirectly, by just limiting data throughput, then as long as you take "limit" as a verb, by very definition, the amount of data is being limited. Now while obviously the quantity of data is still limited by things like the properties of the physical network layer and even the capacity of the physical network to handle a quantity of data, when any limits are being artificially imposed on a connection by limiting its throughput that would otherwise be much higher, then I cannot see how anyone can argue that the connection still has unlimited data.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Overheard in the company boardroom:
"We'll just raise the rates by $200M. What are they going to do? Fine us?"
"Great Scott! You've just earned us $100M. All in favor of giving him the usual 10% of profit performance bonus?"
(in unison) "Aye."
"The ayes have it. Mr. Secretary, please prepare a check for $10 million."
Stop using ATT, Verizon, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, etc.............
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
The putative class action plaintiffs will appeal. I wonder how many Court of Appeals / SCOTUS judges got screwed as a result of an unlimited data plan?
"ATT argued that the customers could not only have their complaints heard individually in arbitration, and Judge Edward Chen of US District Court in Northern California has sided with the cellular company."
Sentence good-having the summary is not.
"Nolo Contendere" and "The Arbitration Clause" are all you need to know, except the following, from Will Rogers:
"A holding company is a thing where you hand an accomplice the goods while the policeman searches you."
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Hardly. Class action lawsuits are a deterrent against corporate greed, when amounts are too small for consumers to hurt the company for their bad behavior. The alternatives are:
1) Consumers bend over and take it so corporations can swindle them at levels juuuust low enough not to start losing more money than they make via the swindle
2) The state takes a heavy hand and starts bitch-slapping corporations (and corporate executives) upside the head. As in, that fine for AT&T would have a couple more zeros behind it.
But of course, the same people that whine about class action lawsuits, are the sort of people who also whine about "Big Gubbmit". Leaving the consumer to take it up the ass, an eight of an inch at a time, for the benefit of corporate profits. Which was the objective to begin with.
But consumers, especially US ones, like to take it up the ass from the corporations. Cable TV, phone company, car company, banks, the list just goes on.
And what the average US consumer does? Bends over and asks, in a small voice, for some lubricant.
I used to work for AT&T awhile ago.
AT&T entered into agreements with customers (corporate and state customers in my case) knowing full well that what they were agreeing by contract was going to end up in legal action afterward either because they didn't intend to adhere to the contract or because they knew they were shafting the customer (an example is selling an entire MPLS network to the State of Texas knowing full well that they had only a single MPLS device in the entire state and they were just going to use existing circuits to back-haul all the sites to the one MPLS device).
They do what they can get away with up front and let the lawyers handle it afterward...and they build the whole thing into their business model so that the legal costs and penalties are risk managed out for each project.
I think this is a shitty way to treat your customers but I guess it's probably done by most companies today as a matter of course.
Posting this as AC to avoid potential repercussions from AT&T.
These arbitration clauses are a curse for consumers. Any ideas on how crowd sourcing could be used to help a group of individuals in these cases? Pulling together volunteers/advocates, gathering and sharing evidence, rules and process information... Needs to lower the cost and amplify the power of each individual to fight. While the corporations will easily overwhelm any individual, maybe making a fair fight possible for even a small percentage of those affected could overwhelm a corporation.
DO THE CRIME, PAY THE FINE!
To corporations essentially,
PAY THE FINE, DO THE CRIME
When fines are equivalent to about $5 of an average American's paycheck. Why are corporations going to stop? Meanwhile, the average traffic ticket fine which ranges $150-$450 often given for driving the same damn speed as everyone else. Essentially equates to about 0.5%+/-0.2% of an average American income.
Therefore a similar equivalent fine for AT&T should be around $500 million to $1 billion.
Stop using the internet, stop driving, stop eating, stop needing medical care, stop living....