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this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2024
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Arbitration clauses must be made illegal
Or at least reasonable.
It's perfectly reasonable for, say, a tattoo artist not to be liable for the medical bills, if the ink causes a hitherto unknown allergy to kick in.
It's not reasonable to argue that a streaming service agreement covers liability for being cut in half by a train.
There has to be a reasonable understanding of the underlying risks that are covered. Some things are just inherently risky, and if the buyer knows and understands that, she can agree on taking that risk. Otherwise, no doctor would ever touch any patient ever again.
Arbitration is never the right answer. Fix the judicial system, don’t privatize it.
I think we should be allowed to opt in to arbitration from within the public judicial system, once charges have already been brought forward. Then people will only agree to it when it's legit just saving time/money, and won't change the likely ruling.
A public system designed for everyone can never be as cheap as one specific to the issue/people at hand. It just needs to always be available as a fallback.
I think what you are mentioning is basically how settlements work.
I just can’t see how an arbitration company that is selected by a company will ever have the incentives to side with consumers.
I can only see arbitration working when both sides have equal leverage. Large company vs large company, citizen vs citizen. And both sides must have a say on which arbitration company is selected.
What I'm mentioning will frequently lead to settlements, but the choice of whether or not to use arbitration is typically made before there's any case.
Both sides don't have equal leverage today because of an information asymmetry market failure. The cost to the consumer to read the ToS (and research its arbitrators) for everything they buy is unreasonably high, while it costs the company very little. If consumers only had to research arbitrators after the fact, then the company would have a strong incentive to agree to a fair one, avoiding the public courts.
Demonstrably false. In a public healthcare system it is also possible to have publicly funded patient injury compensation systems. Source: Live in Norway and we have both.
That's not the same. You still don't have any legal claims against the hospital or the doctor. You can't sue your surgeon, because you missed, say another week of work because of some unexpected bleeding.
Uhm what are you talking about? Why would I want to sue my surgeon?
EDIT: The reasons why I would not sue my surgeon are:
If the surgeon did something illegal, this would be a different matter.
The whole point of the discussion was that arbitration clauses should be illegal, since they prevent you from suing.
Points were made, that it's still a good thing for tattoo artists and doctors. Your earlier comment seemed to dispute this at first, but then pivoted to funds for damages (that exist and you can get without legal action.
You were then told that's besides the point of the discussion, since it was exactly about suing.
It is not besides the point because there exists an alternative to the whole ordeal of arbitration clauses and suing. That is what I pointed out.
We all joke about how americans sue for the most stupid shit, but (besides different mindsets following from the same reason) you do it because your system allows for it and provides no alternative course of action.
Well it wasn't demonstratably false in any case, as it's the only course of action in some places.
In a perfect world these arbitration clauses wouldn't exist, and luckily they aren't enforceable in many countries.
The original comment says that these clauses should be made illegal, to which the comment I responded to objects. Objecting to change based on arguments that are only valid within the paradigm that exists before said change is nothing but a logical fallacy.
It is demonstrably false that the change has to entail the problems conjectured by the comment I responded to. Thus the counter argument is shown to be both reductionist and wrong.
My country has heavy immunity for doctors. I think we can't sue them, like it's automatically a regional arbitration hearing, and at no point can one get "pain and suffering" but only "recoup of costs to fix as much as possible" kind of stuff.
So if the doc removes the wrong foot, he'll lose his job, and you'll get a pegleg or something like that.
Hmm. Just reading that makes me think the rate of vindictive doctor slayings is too low for that to be true.
....and immunity is exactly what this is about.
Every time you get surgery, you sign a waiver basically saying "there's an inherent risk to this, we're not liable unless someone really screws up". And that's exactly what Disney is trying here - just using an absolutely bonkers interpretation of it.
Your tattoo example doesn't make sense to me. The tattoo shop could require an agreement limiting liability without denying access to the courts.
Are you saying that it's reasonable to be allowed to waive your right to access the legal system when getting a tattoo but not when accessing streaming services?
I would like to see whether and how a case of Negligence should work with the boilerplate arbitration clauses that they're abusing.
Would Disney then roll over and sue the everliving out of the server as a scapegoat?
Why would it be rasonable? Did the tatoo artist do what is (keyword:) reasonable on their end to ensure that doesn't happen? Did they make information about tatoo ink allergies known to their customers? Do they advise their customers about the allergies? Do they use FDA approved tatoo inks?
Did the streaming service clearly for example cause magnetic interference and was ruled as a large contributor to the disaster? If yes, then it's reasonable.
Whatever scenatio you think of, there's always room for liability. Some, nay, mlst of it's far-fetched, but not impossible.
However there's at least one thing that's never reasonable, and that's arbitration itself. Arbitration is someone making a decition which can't be amended after it's made. It can't be appealed. New evidence coming to light after-the-fact means nothing. Arvbitration is absolute.
Arbitration doesn't allow complaint. The judgement is final.
Which is fucking ridiculous.
Let's return to your two claims of unreasonability:
There's nothing stopping a normal court from fairly making a judgement. It can be appealed, which is fine.
What isn't fine is giving a company, or a like-minded court sole and absolute jurisdictions over suits against a company by its users. And above that, making said judgements unappealable.
To paraphrase you: there has to be a reasonable understanding of the underlying facts of the case covered. Some claims are clearly ubsubstantiated. Some, however, are clearly substantiated and if the service provider knows and understands that, they would accept the jurisdiction of the court system without carveouts grossly in their favour.
They are in the rest of the first world countries.
You need to reform lawsuits at the same time. The US legal system allows lawyers to take cases on contingency, getting paid only if they win. In most other countries this isn't allowed. In addition, in most other countries it's much easier for the winner of the lawsuit to recover the legal costs of the lawsuit from the loser.
The result of this is that the US has a lot more nuisance and extremely speculative lawsuits. Under those conditions, a binding arbitration setup is more reasonable. It means that neither side is spending tons of money on lawyers. If you reform the legal system so that only people who stand a decent chance of winning are willing to sue, then definitely get rid of binding arbitration.