Fine print "forced arbitration clauses" and the end of class action lawsuits. Fight back!

[Scuba]

First they quit calling us "citizens" and started calling us "consumers". Now they're stripping consumer rights.

Here's an easy way to petition your representatives and fight back against these predatory practices.

From my email...

Scuba,


Big Business is trying to rig the justice system.

Multibillion-dollar banks, cell phone companies, cable providers and other industries are slipping forced arbitration clauses into the fine print of their contracts.

These clauses strip the signer’s right to take the company to court. Instead, consumers and employees who have been hurt or ripped off are forced into a private, secretive tribunal that favors corporations.

Tell Congress: Stop the corporate attack on our rights and end forced arbitration.

No one should have to sign away their rights in order to buy a product or get a job.

Last April, the U.S. Supreme Court made this bad situation worse. It ruled that corporations can use forced arbitration clauses to also deny people the right to band together in class actions.

In practice, the ruling means if a company decides to illegally charge an extra $10 to its 10 million customers, there is virtually no way for the customers to hold the company accountable for stealing $100 million.

Contracts that use the fine print to ban class actions require each consumer to file his or her claim individually — a burden that virtually no one takes on for a small amount of money.

This is corporate mugging on a grand scale.

The Arbitration Fairness Act (S. 987, H.R. 1873) would fix this injustice. The Consumer Mobile Fairness Act (S. 1652) would specifically fix the problem in contracts for millions of American cell phone and mobile device users.

Don’t let Big Business rig the justice system.

Go to http://action.citizen.org/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=4150

Thanks for all you do,

Rick Claypool
Public Citizen’s Online Action Team
[e-mail]