November 29, 2015

Arbitration: The corporatization of justice

NY Times - Over the last 10 years, thousands of businesses across the country — from big corporations to storefront shops — have used arbitration to create an alternate system of justice. There, rules tend to favor businesses, and judges and juries have been replaced by arbitrators who commonly consider the companies their clients, The Times found.

The change has been swift and virtually unnoticed, even though it has meant that tens of millions of Americans have lost a fundamental right: their day in court.

“This amounts to the whole-scale privatization of the justice system,” said Myriam Gilles, a law professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law. “Americans are actively being deprived of their rights.”

All it took was adding simple arbitration clauses to contracts that most employees and consumers do not even read. Yet at stake are claims of medical malpractice, sexual harassment, hate crimes, discrimination, theft, fraud, elder abuse and wrongful death, records and interviews show.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The worst forced arbitration isn't a corporate one, it is the National Childhood Vaccine Injury program. An act of congress that forces all people injured by vaccines into an arbitration program that is completely stacked against vaccine injured people and their families. If an injured party prevails and their claim is accepted, they will receive a pittance to raise and for the life long care for a vaccine injured child. The NCVIp is completely corrupt and was enacted by congress because of pressure from Big Pharma, who was having to pay out for the vaccine injuries they caused, and didn't want to pay for the harm they caused anymore. Big Pharma is relieved of liability when they kill and ruin lives, and the taxpayer gets to pick up the tab.