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Surprise! The Supreme Court Just Killed the Consumer Class-Action Lawsuit
adytum
The Inevitable RiseAnd FallRegistered User regular
The Inevitable RiseAnd FallRegistered User regular
http://www.latimes.com/business/sc-dc-0428-court-class-action-web-20110427,0,1239412.story
Mandatory Binding Arbitration is already a part of many contracts, and will undoubtedly become even more widespread in the near future. Here's what the House Judiciary Committee has to say about Mandatory Binding Arbitration
http://judiciary.house.gov/hearings/printers/110th/36018.PDF
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. formed the majority.
Justices Stephen G. Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan formed the dissent.
Read the ruling here.
Score one for the big guys!
The Supreme Court gave corporations a major win Wednesday, ruling in a 5-4 decision that companies can block their disgruntled customers from joining together in a class-action lawsuit. The ruling arose from a California lawsuit involving cellphones, but it will have a nationwide impact.
In the past, consumers who bought a product or a service had been free to join a class-action lawsuit if they were dissatisfied or felt they had been cheated. By combining these small claims, they could bring a major lawsuit against a corporation.
But in Wednesday's decision, the high court said that under the Federal Arbitration Act companies can force these disgruntled customers to arbitrate their complaints individually, not as part of a group. Consumer-rights advocates said this rule would spell the end for small claims involving products or services..
Mandatory Binding Arbitration is already a part of many contracts, and will undoubtedly become even more widespread in the near future. Here's what the House Judiciary Committee has to say about Mandatory Binding Arbitration
http://judiciary.house.gov/hearings/printers/110th/36018.PDF
- Most consumers have little or no meaningful choice about submitting to arbitration; because all corporations in entire industries are adopting these clauses, people have no choice.
- Private arbitration companies are under great pressure to devise systems that favor the corporate repeat players who draft the arbitration clauses (and thus decide which arbitration companies will receive their lucrative business)
- There is no meaningful review of arbitrator's decisions. Under current law, arbitrators enjoy near complete freedom to ignore their own rules, the facts, and even the law in any given case, without fear that their rulings will be seriously examined by any later court - and without fear of personal or professional consequences
- Many corporations tack on unfair provisions to their arbitration clauses that are not inherent to the idea of arbitration, but that further rig the systems against individuals. For example, some corporations impose "loser pays rules" to discourage individuals from bringing claims; that strip individuals of substantiative statutory rights; that require people to arbitrate their claims across the country
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. formed the majority.
Justices Stephen G. Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan formed the dissent.
Read the ruling here.
Score one for the big guys!
adytum on
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:shock:
Worst. SCOTUS. Ever.
Missing from the article, but he obviously was part of the 5 member majority where you'd expect him.
Hey, everybody can get their hate on for the White and Taft courts.
I think it was so obvious they didn't see the need to include it.
But then he voted for it?
Buh?
Binding Arbitration is some seriously heinous shit. Shadow judicial system with a profit motive? That's utterly opaque, internally inconsistent, and accountable to no one except the corporations whose contracts they compete for? What could go wrong!
At least I think that's an option.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
Let's be fair now. The Dred Scott SCOTUS was probably the worst. So the current SCOTUS is like 2nd worse ever.
I believe the chain of logic goes
The individuals contracts say everything must be arbitrated
Individual consumers want to band together for class-action lawsuit
Scalia says the class-action lawsuit must be arbitrated instead per the contracts rather than in court, but class-action groups are too large for arbitration to handle
Therefore, the class-action group must be broken up into individuals, who are now free to pursue mandatory binding arbitration with the company
Well they didn't find the Federal Arbitration Act unconstitutional, they just said the FAA meant companies could toss class-actions in favor of individual arbirtration actions. So if the FAA were changed or a new federal law were passed, this decision would be irrelevant.
I hope.
That's going to require two Democrat controlled houses, though.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
It's a defacto adherence contract.
There are two changes that need to be made to the FAA:
First, there should be a right to appeal an arbitration agreement.
Second, either party to an arbitration agreement should be able to submit documents related to that agreement to a court of law despite any NDAs.
Imma write my congressfolks.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
They're just taking the time to lovingly overturn every legal precedent that doesn't fit their personal and highly biased view of the constitution.
I wonder what the ratio of over-turning precedence on this court is, compared to more sensible courts of the past?
The Alito/Roberts/Thomas/Scalia bloc is pretty predictably mainline Republican in their votes, regardless of whether or not the vote overturns precidence. Kennedy is the only one that wavers, and he's been more and more corporatist of late.
I know that people are constantly looking into the conservative blocs finances and practices to see if theres any sort of shenanigans going on, but has anyone ever really taken a hard look at Kennedy?
Come Overwatch with meeeee
Kennedy's an ass and his decisions would be better written by a finite number of monkeys.
I only brought up the precedent over-turning to remind us all that the load of bullshit that the conservative justices spouted in their Senate interviews about "respecting precedent" was, as we suspected, total bullshit and lies.
These guys clearly have a conservative agenda that they are vigorously pursuing. It seems that they are going out of their way to overturn as much precedent as they can before the court's balance of opinion shifts liberal again. Sounds like judicial activism to me, but then I never had a problem with judicial activism until it became conservative judicial activism that has massively restricted privacy and consumer rights, and re-affirmed the asinine legal view that corporations are people. I mean, come on, they aren't alive, they aren't citizens of this country, they have no birth certificate, they can't vote, they can't drive, they can't get sick, they can't die, they can't reproduce sexually, they can't take a walk, they can't breathe, they can be owned by people - THEY ARE NOT PEOPLE in any sense of the word, but some business tycoon got to be clerk of a court and wrote his own opinion instead of the court's, in the summary, which stated that corporations are people with unlimited life and just this year the current court upheld that complete nonsense!
Or is there an arbitration clause requiring them to submit to the will of the arbitrator's arbitrator?
I look forward to the day where I have to agree to mutually binding arbitration to buy a pack of gum. Though it will actually be 2, one to the maker of the gum and one to the seller.
If binding arbitration is a requirement for working anywhere, just like renting anywhere or buying anything, then that would gut many non-union labor laws.
Well, this only applies to people that have signed contracts with arbitration clauses. Which are in almost every contract you've ever signed but didn't read the fine print for, whether it's your cell phone or apartment.
But unless the fishermen had signed a contract with BP or whomever you're referring too, there is no arbitration clause to uphold. So they wouldnt' have to go to arbitration, they could go straight to class-action law suit.
Also what chance would a member of the public have in these arrangements, in these cases they do seem a lot like it's the company picking it's own in house judge to make the decision. Or would you have the option of picking your own arbitrator?
Find me a cell phone provider that doesn't.
More importantly, find one in six month time.
The fuckmuppet corporation decided to do a press release. Hahaha, they actually used that reasoning in the opinion? I may have to read it. It is so retarded.
Now you do not get to choose!
Everybody wins!
Are you talking about arbitration, or the current SCOTUS?
PSN/Steam/NNID: SyphonBlue | BNet: SyphonBlue#1126
While it is morbid, none of these Justices are going to ever retire while Obama is in office.
They're spending their golden years breaking my country, I don't really mind if that happens to be the last thing they get to do before dieing.