There was a cute tv show a year or so back called 'Fairly Legal' that made arbitration sound sort of cool, even fun compared to a day in court. Turns out that isn't quite how it ends up for millions of people who didn't read the fine print until it was too late.
In Arbitration, a ‘Privatization of the Justice System’
by Jessica Silver-Greenberg & Michael Corkery | November 1, 2015 with linked story by Robert Gebfloff & Karl Russell | OCT. 31, 2015 @ NYTs
Over the past decade there has been an increasing trend for corporations and big business 'interests' to insert into contracts an arbitration clause in the fine print. This trend is creating an alternate system of justice that favors corporations over people.
Removing the Ability to sue
A New York Times study of the increasing use of arbitration clauses in contracts, which has effectively forced millions of people to sign away their right to go to court.
Arbitrators are supposed to remain neutral; yet if that arbitrator does not find in favor of big business ?
But in interviews with The Times, more than three dozen arbitrators described how they felt beholden to companies. Beneath every decision, the arbitrators said, was the threat of losing business.
emphasis added
Big business has the financial clout to make available arbitration work scarce for the arbitrator that doesn't find in their favor, and not just with that particular corporation.
“This amounts to the whole-scale privatization of the justice system,” said Myriam Gilles, a law professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law. “Americans are actively being deprived of their rights.”
And arbitration can be very lucrative for arbitrators that
are friendly forward big business.
Then there is the issue of accountability:
Little is known about arbitration because the proceedings are confidential and the federal government does not require cases to be reported. The secretive nature of the process makes it difficult to ascertain how fairly the proceedings are conducted.
Again, this is where $ clout can slant the system:
Behind closed doors, proceedings can devolve into legal free-for-alls. Companies have paid employees to testify in their favor. A hearing that lasted six hours cost the plaintiff $150,000. Arbitrations have been conducted in the conference rooms of lawyers representing the companies accused of wrongdoing.
Winners and losers are decided by a single arbitrator who is largely at liberty to determine how much evidence a plaintiff can present and how much the defense can withhold. To deliver favorable outcomes to companies, some arbitrators have twisted or outright disregarded the law, interviews and records show.
“What rules of evidence apply?” one arbitration firm asks in the question and answer section of its website. “The short answer is none.”
There are as many different types of cases as there are people:
• credit card cases
• for-profit schools
• car companies
• banks
• internet providers
• Pharma
• food corporations
• hospitals
• insurance companies
But the kind of dispute that has by far the most cases being removed from our legal court system are workplace rights and labor cases
There were far too many examples of people getting the short end of the legal stick to list even a fraction; many, painfully sad and very unfair.
They all sound bad to me.
It's one thing for a powerful "interested" party to try and buy influence over a judge and jury if one has the financial means; ..but a system that is decided by a private arbitration company? A company that earns it money deciding between an individual person vs a credit card company or bank etc.?
That not only sounds like an open invitation to corruption and just the thing that the "conservative privatization movement" would be solidly behind, but the low price of justice makes it damn near unavoidable for any self respecting low-life CEO to pass up such an inexpensive way around the laws of this land too. Investors would demand it
- bypassing our court system altogether seems like a very bad road to head down
With this last statistic:
And unlike the outcomes in civil court, arbitrators’ rulings are nearly impossible to appeal.
note: I'm not a lawyers but I'm sure that there are many legitimate and useful reasons for arbitration with good outcomes satisfying both parties involved. Without going into it I've witnessed this to be true.
But in cases between a Walmart vs a worker or case between an insurance giant vs hospital patient needing critical care - this trend sounds very bad to me.