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Suckers Wanted: How Car Dealers and Other Businesses are Taking Away Your Right to Sue

All of this is especially nefarious given that the vast majority of consumers who attempt to seek justice in mandatory arbitration lose. The nonprofit consumer group Public Citizen recently analyzed data the NAF provided to the state of California, one of the few states that actually requires arbitration firms to disclose information about their results. Public Citizen found that in 94 percent of 19,000 cases, NAF arbitrators ruled in favor of the businesses that hired them. One arbitrator handled 68 cases in a single day, awarding every penny that the big companies were seeking. In one case Public Citizen looked at, the NAF also charged $1500 for a three-page document explaining the arbitrator’s decision, something unheard of in regular courts.

Suckers Wanted: How Car Dealers and Other Businesses are Taking Away Your Right to Sue

One reason businesses often come out on top in arbitration is that arbitrators who rule for consumers have a tendency to find themselves out of work. Such was the case with Richard Neely, a former chief justice of West Virginia’s Supreme Court, who worked briefly as an arbitrator for the NAF. In an article called “Arbitration and the Godless Bloodsuckers,” Neely reported that he had refused to award a bank arbitration-related fees that he judged to be far in excess of what a court would have charged. He never got another case. Neely is not alone. A 2000 study of forced arbitration in HMO contracts found that on the rare occasion that an arbitrator made a significant award for a patient, the HMO never hired that person to arbitrate a case again.

Take a look at your credit card agreement next time it’s updated and see what sort of mandatory arbitration agreement you’ve agreed to. And then see if you can find a card that doesn’t require it.

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Filed under: Lawsuit abuse, consumer rights, manditory arbitration