On December 12, 2013, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau issued a preliminary study finding that mandatory forced arbitration, which corporations often include in their terms and agreements on websites and form contracts, deprives consumers of the right to effectively resolve disputes they may have with the corporations.
That is because the mandatory arbitration clauses preclude class actions, which are often the only way that consumers can afford to obtain relief from corporations for violations of the law that result in damages of less than about $10,000 per consumer.
On the same day, a law firm that represents these corporations, Mayer Brown issued its own “study” in which it claimed it could not find a class action that recovered any money for class members. This piece of propaganda is not a study. It did not even look at actual class actions. It only looked at class actions reported in certain trade publications that only corporations get.
For a summary of the defects of this study, watch this video blog by Paul Bland of Public Justice.
