I don't really understand what is going on with the legal system in the US lately? We have all those nice protections for the buyer ... unless the seller chooses not to provide them. We have all those nice protections for consumers, like being able to sue in case something goes wrong ... unless the other party decides not to play this whole 'legal system' game and includes an arbitration clause in the initial agreement, which basically means "we can break the agreement but you don't". What's up with that?
Arbitration clauses are wrongly maligned. If I had a conflict with a company I'd want to do arbitration and civil litigation is my day job. The major arbitration companies are fair and professional.
The only downside is that arbitration is still too much like litigation.
The only downside is that the consumer never has a choice in the matter of arbitration at all. There's a take-it-or-leave-it EULA, which if you reject you cannot legally use the $300 item you bought. The consumer never has a chance to choose if they get arbitration or not. The consumer never has a choice of the arbitrator. The consumer does not have a choice of venue. The only choice the consumer has is to whether or not to file suit.
I've been dreaming about a ballot proposition which says that if a person agreed to a contract that enforced binding arbitration, and was never given an opportunity to amend the contract, then the consumer would be eligible to pick the arbitrator from the set of licensed arbitrators. The company still gets its cost savings from avoiding court, but is not in effect buying a whole firm of arbitrators. The consumer at least can get some attempt at a fair choice in a case of a complaint, which is more choice than they have now.
>I've been dreaming about a ballot proposition which says that if a person agreed to a contract that enforced binding arbitration, and was never given an opportunity to amend the contract, then the consumer would be eligible to pick the arbitrator from the set of licensed arbitrators.
The Supreme Court decided in AT&T Mobility LLC v. Concepcion that the Federal Arbitration Act preempts state laws disfavoring arbitration. Your proposed law would invalidate a large number of existing arbitration agreements and so would likely also be preempted. At this point, it will take an act of Congress to make any significant changes to existing consumer arbitration laws because conflict preemption will invalidate nearly any conceivable state law favoring consumers.
It's an upsetting state of affairs because the federal government does little to protect consumers yet consistently interferes with the ability of state governments to do so (see, e.g., the Office of Comptroller of Currency's frequent interventions to prevent state regulators from investigating predatory lending practices in the years leading up to the financial crisis).
> Arbitration clauses are wrongly maligned ... The major arbitration companies are fair and professional.
I'm gonna call [citation needed] on this. The recent NYT series on binding arbitration claimed exactly the opposite: that arbitration almost always rules in favor of the company and that arbitration companies which do rule in favor of individuals quickly find themselves getting no more business. They cited peer-reviewed sources and law professors, so I want to see yours.
That seems to be a long article series. I've read most of the first article but haven't come across the data you referenced.
Would you mind highlighting the article with peer-reviewed sources and law professors explaining that "arbitration almost always rules in favor of the company and that arbitration companies which do rule in favor of individuals quickly find themselves getting no more business"?
Furthermore, even if it was true that "arbitration almost always rules in favor of the company", why would that alone be the sign of a problem? We shouldn't just assume that, for example, half of the victories will go to the company and half to the individual; we shouldn't assume any particular percentage breakdown without more information about who initiates arbitration and why. (The "priors", to make an analogy to Bayesian statistics)
Since the prevalent opinion on HN appears to be against contracts of adhesion, a request for sources is an expected request when presenting the minority opinion.
Rejecting the offered source with a "tl;dr" complaint is an invalid distraction from that request.
Not to mention, many topics have not been the subject of peer-reviewed research; if you require peer-reviewed research as a necessary condition on you being persuaded about anything, then you are severely limiting the scope of potential debate.
I don't care if arbitration is better than sex, companies shouldn't be removing customers' right to settle disputes in court, and the government shouldn't allow them to.
