WHEN COMPANIES RUN THE COURTS

Sign on the dotted line, and sign your rights away.

“America has a secret justice system,” writes former DOJ antitrust counsel Ballou. That system is forced arbitration, which almost always benefits corporations that get to shop and even pay for judges, pick where hearings will be held, and limit their liability in many ways. A case in point opens his argument: A woman with severe food allergies dies after eating at a theme park, and her bereaved husband discovers that on joining the owner’s streaming service, he had signed away his right to take the company to court in the finest of fine print. Arbitration, “a private alternative to the American justice system,” has allowed countless outrages to pass unpunished: a woman raped on a cruise ship, customers bilked by credit card fees, retirees led to bankruptcy by incompetent investment advisors, a noted actress driven out of the business by a network TV star’s unchecked sexual harassment. The Supreme Court, Ballou writes, is all in for arbitration, citing a supposed “litigation explosion” but in actuality seeking to limit the ability of consumers to join in class-action suits. Since few people can afford to sue deep-pocketed corporations, this effectively allows corporations to do as they please, which is in keeping with recent Supreme Court rulings overall. The statistics that Ballou cites are shocking: One judge “issued decisions in 1,332 arbitrations in just ninety-seven days over four years. …sometimes rul[ing] on dozens of cases in a single day, relying solely on documents provided by the credit card companies. In 97 percent of his cases (1,292 matters), he ruled for the company.” Ballou counsels both state action, such as recent California reforms to limit arbitration, and citizen agitation to voice the unpopularity of the system: “Public opinion matters to the Supreme Court, and public opinion is on our side.”

A well-reasoned denunciation of justice unserved, and a cogent demand for overhauling a patently corrupt system.