Arbitration Fairness Act

All around the country, newspapers’ consumer journalists are taking notice and reporting on the injustice of forced arbitration. Most recently, Matthew Hathaway, columnist for the St. Louis-Post Dispatch, posted a short article on the “The Savvy Consumer” blog. While Hathaway reports on the biases and unfairness of the predatory corporate practice, he’s a tad overly optimistic that it may soon come to an end. 

Stephen Colbert has a hilarious segment on binding mandatory arbitration clauses in credit card agreements. The part on arbitration starts a little past two minutes in, but the whole piece is worth watching.

The forced arbitration of claims arising out of statutory protections for consumers and employees has become a hot topic at the Kagan hearings.

The following letter was published Thursday, October 29, in the Washington Post. Stand up to Halliburton, and take action!

Good news, Fair Arbitration fans! Two weeks ago, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Jamie Leigh Jones would have her day in court.  The majority opinion was written by the Honorable Rhesa Hawkins Barksdale, veteran of Vietnam and a graduate of West Point, who was appointed to the Federal bench by President George H. W. Bush.

If you ever wondered why corporations prefer arbitration, the following video makes one of the reasons pretty clear. In the video, a consumer runs up various unfair overdraft charges and then avails himself of the small claims system to challenge the exorbitant fees. He pays $47.50 in filing fees and spends less than an hour between the bank and the post office. The end result: the bank, Wells Fargo, calls him and settles the case by dropping his charges.

Watch for yourself:

The Fair Arbitration Now Coalition is encouraged by Bank of America’s decision to stop requiring its customers to resolve their disputes in the unfair system of forced arbitration.

By Lucy Colby

This Wednesday, the House Subcommittee on Domestic Policy, chaired by Congressman Dennis Kucinich, will hold a hearing on the misuse of arbitration in consumer debt collection. Experts invited to testify include Michael Kelly, COO of the National Arbitration Forum (NAF), Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson, and Richard W. Naimark, a Senior Vice President at the American Arbitration Association (AAA). We expect this hearing to further illustrate why we need legislation to end forced arbitration.

The hearing should be particularly interesting in light of the recent suit filed by Attorney General Swanson against NAF alleging false advertising, deceptive trade practices, and consumer fraud. (See this statement from David Arkush, Director of Public Citizen’s Congress Watch Division, and this post from Deepak Gupta of Public Citizen’s Litigation Group.)

"The actions of this company undermine justice and are a threat to the legal system."

That's Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson, quoted in a BusinessWeek article, referring to the National Arbitration Forum (NAF), which her office sued this week for consumer fraud, deceptive trade practices and false advertising. The lawsuit also claims that NAF is secretly allied with the credit card industry.

The Administration has released the details of its plan to create a new Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA). Opponents of forced arbitration should be encouraged that the Administration has specifically targeted the forced arbitration system as just the sort of predatory practice that the new agency should address.