With Liberty and Justice for… Corporations?

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/05/05-0

On April 27, 2011, the Supreme Court of the United States once again ruled in favor of big business. In the highly anticipated case of AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion, the Roberts led conservative block of the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that federal law trumps state law in allowing companies to use arbitration clauses to prohibit consumers from joining class actions against the companies.

The case involved a California couple, Vincent and Liza Concepcion, who were charged $30.22 sales tax on the full retail price of a cellphone that was advertised as “free.” They filed a lawsuit against AT&T for deceptive practices on behalf of a class of consumers who had also overpaid. But the couple, along with their fellow plaintiffs, had signed a contract with AT&T that contained a “mandatory arbitration clause” which required them to settle any disputes through arbitration (a private legal proceeding) and barred them from seeking class-action treatment with other consumers, whether through arbitration or in a lawsuit brought in a traditional court.

Initially, both a federal district court and the Ninth Circuit Court sided with the Concepcions, saying it was unfair under a 2005 California Supreme Court ruling, for contracts to ban class-action litigation. However, this was overturned by the recent Supreme Court decision, which says federal law, specifically the Federal Arbitration Act of 1925, trumps state law.

Aside from the fact that the conservative Justices who purport to be staunch defenders of “states rights” abandoned their principles for corporate interests, this ruling has chilling implications for future corporate accountability. Corporations are now free to legally bar victims of their abuse from collectively suing in a court of law if the abused have signed a contract that includes a mandatory arbitration clause, regardless of state laws to the contrary. This could literally render companies immune from class actions and overall accountability.

More at the link --

There is only one consistent thread in everything they do: favor the wealthy or the corporations they control.

There is NOTHING that gets in the way that.

NOTHING THEY *EVER* DO EVER BREAKS THAT RULE.

You'd think that *SOMETHING* might come along which INCIDENTALLY puts more burden upon the wealthy, but AMAZINGLY that NEVER happens!

Abortion. States rights. Gun ownership. Religious freedom. Rule of law. The Constitution. All bullshit to them. They are just tools to achieve the true objective: serving the rich or the corporations which they control.

The problem is when companies will be able to nickle and dime us to death and we as individuals (and now no longer as groups) can't practically sue them and hold them accountable for bad business practices.

Now another way to hold business accountable for bad practices is to inform the public when they are abusing us so that people can take their business elsewhere. Now this won't work as well for industries where monopoly mergers and consolidation have been allowed to happen so that customers in effect don't have choices, but where they do, perhaps here's a way to fight back.

If the consumers unions, trial lawyers (since they are losing out on this ruling), and others can line up and build up another organization along with a web site and other means to get the word out about bad business practices, that instead of compiling a whole bunch of people affected by a bad business process to do a class action lawsuit against a firm, that we allow a decent web site, etc. have customers file complaints and join them together on certain issues, and provide a means to slap down a company for bad business practices. If it is done more effectively than it is now so that customers, instead of filing class action lawsuits, are directed to adding their complaints to a list of similar complaints against a company and help driving its "rating" down, then as consumers people shopping at these firms can check firms out for their sordid "bait and switch" actions, etc.

Now if it is effective enough and drives business away from a company, either they might stop such practices, or try to sue this organization for their publicizing these customer experiences and unifying them. Now then the question out there would be that if the company sues the organization, would the organization be able to ask for damages back that would be sent back to those that participate in such ratings? Sort of an "end around" to class action lawsuits. Just wondering if there are loopholes in the Supreme Court ruling that would allow for people to in effect benefit from this sort of legal action instead.

If this organization would win one of these lawsuits against the company involved, and people were to get money back for their logging of their complaints, then perhaps that would steer more people to the site to file their complaints too.

Still an idea that probably has many details to work out, but I'm just wondering if there's a way to do class action lawsuits in effect in a different way than the Roberts' Barons Five on the Supreme Court ruled against!