Imagine your washing machine breaks.
You ask the seller to replace it. They balk, claiming they don’t need to replace the defective machine but you’re confident they are wrong. Despite spending hours with customer service representatives on the phone, they refuse to send you a new unit.
What should you do now? Give up? Hire a lawyer to sue — and wind up spending more money on legal fees than a new machine would cost?
Fortunately, you have a third option: arbitration. You bring your complaint to a neutral third party, who will hear your side of the story, the other side, and then issue a binding decision. It’s a quicker, cheaper way of settling relatively small disputes without the hassle, time and expense of involving the courts.
But it might not be an option for ordinary Americans much longer. The House of Representatives recently voted to approve legislation that effectively bans arbitration agreements in many types of private contracts. President Biden has said he will sign it into law if it clears the Senate. That’d be a disaster for American workers and consumers.
Those seeking to deny Americans this effective alternative have dubbed their legislation the Forced Arbitration Injustice Repeal (FAIR) Act. They say it will help ordinary workers and consumers.
But the real beneficiaries would be plaintiffs’ lawyers who make their living by going to court. Banning arbitration would provide a huge boost to their income streams.
The trial bar and their allies claim...
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