consumerist.com — Like many companies, Cingular has a little thing in their contracts saying that if you use their service, you void your right to a class action lawsuit and instead have to go through "mandatory binding arbitration," which is basically an extra-judicial corporate court exempt from many of the basic laws and procedures and rights of real court.
Aug 18, 2007 View in Crawl 4
teatimegrommitAug 19, 2007
It puts a roadblock in place as a barrier to lawsuit. I file suit, then I have to get the contract set aside, which means typically appealing it since trial courts are notoriously wimpy. That means I have to pay filing fees at two courts, wait for months and all just for the right to then go through the whole shebang again but this time with my actual case.
rocket777Aug 19, 2007
The court's true motivation is to keep a monopoly on lawsuits. If the public ever discovered that they didn't need a court system run by the government, then the government would be seen as it is, a bully running a protection scheme. The reason for these agreements is to save money. Ultimately, the cost of voiding this part of the contract is born by the consumer, and the money goes to the lawyers and bureaucrats in government.A company that has no monopoly on cell phone service has to compete with all the others. If they too can't have these no suit agreements, then everyone's cell phone bill with go up.
flossdailyAug 19, 2007
I'm glad mandatory arbitration is finally getting some press! It's a terrible problem folks. I've been researching it all summer and I can tell you some real horror stories about it.People are losing their right to sue in all sorts of cases, including civil rights cases where the actual civil rights statutes specifically forbid mandatory arbitration!Employees are being held to mandatory arbitration clauses that they have flat out refused to sign!There is a way YOU can help! Call your representatives in Congress and tell them to support the Arbitration Fairness Act of 2007. It was just introduced a month ago, and it would be a huge step in removing mandatory arbitration clauses from consumer contracts as well as employment contracts.PLEASE call your representatives. I've been lobbying on hill all summer, and I can tell you that phone calls from constituents carry a lot of weight!
patw85Aug 19, 2007
In order to get a contract cell phone from Cingular/AT&T you have to have a credit check ran, and in order for the credit check to be ran you need a Photo ID. Plus Cingular/AT&T's credit check has some of the highest standards/deposits around so I doubt many teens would be going around getting contract phones without their parents present. -A guy who sells cell phones
flossdailyAug 19, 2007
As a law student and a lobbyist who has been working on this exact issue all summer, I can assure you that unless the arbitration clause is one of those rare few that has an opt-out policy, you have lost your right to a jury trial.I've seen many cases where people have been held to arbitration clauses even when they have explicitly refused to sign them.This stuff is a real, nightmare folks, I'm glad its getting some press!You can work to fix it, call your reps in congress and tell them to support the Arbitration Fairness Act of 2007, which was introduced just about a month ago!
seanc6610Aug 19, 2007
what's majour? i didn't even know that was a real word in britain, and firefox's spell checker doesn't think so either.ps: i hope corperations is an error, cause now i'm just confused.
rodzirraAug 20, 2007
Could somebody please give me a definition of "contract"?!? I seem to be very, very confused, here. I've been operating all these years under the (apparently false) assumption that I'm bound by the terms of any contract that I enter into voluntarily. What a dumb rube I've been!
midtownerAug 21, 2007
First off, the reach of the case: Some here seem to be confused. Very easy answer: This only reaches to the people who have signed contracts which are governed by the laws of the state of California. Second, what happened here? What happened is that IN CALIFORNIA, in this particular instance, the CLASS arbitration clause was held to be invalid. This, of course, is only decent precedential value for invalidating arbitration clauses between individuals or between individuals and corporations. Third -- how did this happen? The 9th Circuit brought up the term 'unconscionable' to describe the contract. This is a concept which occurs on virtually every law student's contracts class' final exam. Unconscionable is something used to describe the result of an unequal bargaining process where one party is in a more powerful position than the other. Usually, the terms agreed to would be something that the weaker party probably wouldn't have agreed to had he (or she) fully understood the results of those terms. Usually these sorts of situations occur on what we call contracts of adhesion (i.e., "take it or leave it" sort of contracts, mostly occurring on preprinted forms). Usually, we look at whether there was any actual bargaining involved and the knowledge level of the weaker party.. We usually look at a lot of things I didn't mention, but there ya go. It's a relatively fuzzy term which some courts use to shut down practices which they think are somehow "unfair." Personally, I think the entire concept of unconscionability is a load of bovine excrement, but there ya go. I could probably make a fair argument (completely supported with case law!) as to wiggle out of any contract where I willingly signed my name on the bottom line. The doctrine examines a great number of factors, none of them dispositive, and is essentially a tool for courts to spit out whatever decision they FEEL is the best.Typically, by adding such legal protections as this, corporations are able to offer customers a better value for their dollar. In these situations, litigation is nasty.. it takes a long time, a lot of paperwork, a lot of hours. Arbitration is neat, presumptively fair, and by contrast, the lawyers get less of the pie, whereas, in many class actions, the lawyers get big pay days while the parties end up with coupons. You know how it goes.Arbitration, of course does have a dark side and some would call it something of a farce. According to one of my contracts (unsigned and sitting by my shredder about to be minced) sent to me by my securities broker specifies that in the event of an impasse, we'll have to go to binding arbitration. We'll have a board of three certified arbitrators, one chosen by me, one by them, one "disinterested party." These guys won't be bound by any rules of procedure or law. As a law student who rather enjoys the protections of the law and all of the niceties of legal procedure, I'd prefer to forego any process where decisions are made based on what "feels right" to a group of three folks who will undoubtedly be asked by the business community to arbitrate a number of disputes, while little old me will never, ever see them again. It seems to me that the process in that manner is inherently flawed. While I enjoy the result of the case -- the plaintiff gets his day in court, I do not like the fact that the court had to reach to the wishy-washy doctrine of unconscionability.