SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1
Consumers may have a harder time suing financial companies they feel have wronged them.
The Senate voted Tuesday night to overturn a rule the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau worked on for more than five years. The final version of the rule banned companies from putting “mandatory arbitration clauses” in their contracts, language that prohibits consumers from bringing class-action lawsuits against them. It applies to institutions that sell financial products, including bank accounts and credit cards.
[...] “By forcing consumers into secret arbitration, corporations have long enjoyed an advantage in the process, and victims have often been precluded from sharing their stories with the press or law enforcement,” said Vanita Gupta, the president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, a group of advocacy organizations based in Washington, D.C.
[...] Mandatory arbitration clauses typically say that companies or customers must resolve disputes through privately appointed individuals known as arbitrators, but not through the court system, allowing companies to save time and money and avoid negative publicity. When consumers sign forced arbitration clauses, which they may not realize are included in contracts, they waive their right to participate in a class-action lawsuit against companies.
[...] The Senate's vote against the CFPB’s rule “is a win for consumers,” said Rob Nichols, the president and CEO of the trade group American Bankers Association. “As we and others made clear in our multiple comments to the CFPB, the rule was always going to harm consumers and not help them.”
Source: MarketWatch
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Whoever on Tuesday October 31 2017, @03:46PM (11 children)
This is the new newspeak.
This is Humpty Dumpty speaking, where words have only the meaning that the speaker ascribes to them.
This shows the corruption of the current Senate.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday October 31 2017, @03:57PM (10 children)
s/current //
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 31 2017, @04:40PM (2 children)
I can think of some sitting Senators I would gladly trade for a horse.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday October 31 2017, @04:55PM (1 child)
I'd trade any of them for a bag of runny shit and be certain I got the better end of the deal. Not even a zip-lock bag. A paper one.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 31 2017, @05:48PM
Unfortunately, I know of no precedent for bags on the Senate. The Romans can't think of everything!
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 31 2017, @04:53PM (4 children)
Care to enlighten us as to what this new net grammar is all about? I would guess some sort of /sarcasm mixed with current, so I assume you're saying they have always been corrupt.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday October 31 2017, @04:58PM
It's not new. It's very old. sed [die.net]
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 31 2017, @05:43PM
It's not net net grammar. It's very old syntax for substitute command and it's *currently* used often as part of regular expressions. ( https://www.google.com/search?q=substitute+regular+expression [google.com] )
s/current //
means you substitute "current " with "". Yeah? So basically, you erase "current "
Hope that clears it for ya.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by maxwell demon on Tuesday October 31 2017, @05:51PM
New net grammar? This is older than the World Wide Web. Get off my lawn!
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday November 01 2017, @04:31AM
Seriously, Anon? Turn in your geek card. Even I know a little sed and regex...
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Wednesday November 01 2017, @05:52AM (1 child)
https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=22315&cid=590190 [soylentnews.org]
Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts"- --Daniel Patrick Moynihan--
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday November 01 2017, @09:56AM
Give it a couple minutes. I'm sure the Senate Dems will do something outrageous before you finish reading this.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by stretch611 on Tuesday October 31 2017, @03:53PM
One look at the people who sponsored this bill and you see who is at the top of the list of people who are bribed... err "political contributions" from the banking industry.
And looking back the same asshats that make court appointees who are willing to let a law supersede the constitution.
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 4, Interesting) by TheRaven on Tuesday October 31 2017, @03:54PM (15 children)
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2, Disagree) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday October 31 2017, @04:00PM (14 children)
Good idea. Class-action lawsuits are only ever good for the lawyers anyway. They get half the total payout and you get enough to maybe cover your lunch.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Tuesday October 31 2017, @04:52PM (13 children)
Class action lawsuits serve exactly the purpose GP explained: When one bad actor does something that harms a large number of people.
For instance, imagine if your local ISP simply overcharged everybody $15 for no reason whatsoever. They didn't try to justify the charge, they didn't even invent a new fee for a service you could opt out of, they just demanded $15 (or dinged your credit card if you have automatic payments) than they said they would charge you in your consumer contract, and refused to refund the money. Without a class-action lawsuit option, your options would be:
A. Write angry letters / emails. These will go in the circular file.
B. Cancel your service. Good luck with that: The ISP is a monopoly, so you're now without Internet access.
C. Sue them individually. So now you're talking about spending something like $600 in legal fees to recover $15 worth of stolen property. No rational person will do this.
What that means is that without a class action option, the ISP has absolutely no incentive to not do this. Sure, their PR department might have a bunch of work to do for the week or so after they do it, if anybody notices, but for an extra $450 million or so I think they'd be perfectly happy to deal with that annoyance.
That's where the class action comes in: The lawyers recruit a bunch of people who've been affected to be the "lead plaintiffs", sue, and recover the $450 million plus another $50 million in damages and attorney's fees. Now you just see the $15 back and are thinking "whatevs, no big deal", but the company just got a $50 million loss, and that they're going to notice. And sure, the lawyers are going to take home a bunch if they win. But that credible threat is the only thing in our legal system standing between you and even more petty abuse by every single major company you deal with.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0, Troll) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday October 31 2017, @05:09PM (9 children)
You're either a lawyer or care more about punishing the offender than making it right to people who were harmed. Class-action suits do almost nothing to redress harm already done. Realistically it does very little to address any future bad behavior either because judges are loathe to slap a penalty on a company that will actually harm it significantly.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bob_super on Tuesday October 31 2017, @05:18PM
> Class-action suits do almost nothing to redress harm already done.
My favorite kind of settlement is when you get a coupon to get a discount off buying more stuff from the company which wronged you.
the lawyers don't get coupons, they get cash.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Tuesday October 31 2017, @05:25PM
In my example, the class action suit exactly redresses the harm done: The ISP overcharged people $15, everyone got their $15 back. We'll even assume the judge gave the ISP a slap on the wrist.
Now consider what you're advocating for: None of the people robbed pursue the case, because individually it's not worth it to do so. And since it's a civil matter, the government does nothing. So that means the company that just robbed 30 million people for $15 apiece gets to keep their ill-gotten gains without any punishment, and the people who were harmed are out the $15 with no legal recourse. In other words, if you rob the bank, you go to jail. If the bank robs you, they get to keep the money. Now, please explain to me how that's an improvement.
Class action suits aren't perfect by any means, but they're better than not having them.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday October 31 2017, @05:26PM
...care more about punishing the offender than making it right to people who were harmed.
Which is a description of our criminal justice system. Why would the civil justice system be much different?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by NewNic on Tuesday October 31 2017, @07:06PM (1 child)
Your argument is that because you ordinary benefit significantly from class action lawsuits, companies should be allowed to bar such lawsuits and force arbitration? Do you see the flaw?
Forced arbitration means that people won't even be able to get the tiny awards that class actions typically dole out.
Class action lawsuits typically don't provide real compensation to people harmed by the actions of a large company, but they do provide an incentive to not repeat those actions. Yes, primarily the purpose of class actions is punitive, not restorative. Why is that a problem? Do you think that companies should be immune from punishment for bad actions?
If the total award (including that to the lawyers) is high enough, it become less cost effective to defraud or otherwise harm your customers. That's the real benefit of class actions.
You are allowing your hatred for lawyers to overcome rational thinking (or perhaps not, because you don't generally show much rational thinking anyway).
lib·er·tar·i·an·ism ˌlibərˈterēənizəm/ noun: Magical thinking that useful idiots mistake for serious political theory
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday October 31 2017, @08:28PM
No, that was in fact not my argument. That is your strawman. Reread what I actually said without adding words of your own.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 31 2017, @09:36PM (2 children)
Surely they issue here is to fix class actions so they're more effective rather than allow companies to make signing away your right to them (in favour of fuck all) a part of any contract with them.
Presumably these things have some effect, otherwise we'd not see the banking lobby waste time crowing about their victory.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday October 31 2017, @09:43PM (1 child)
Sounds good to me. I was speaking from an individual perspective above. It currently makes no sense for anyone to ever join a class-action suit if they can afford the necessary legal representation to win an individual suit.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2, Informative) by j-beda on Wednesday November 01 2017, @01:02AM
Even if you can affort the necessary legal representation to win an individual suit, it can often be not worth it to open one. I can afford to sue for the hypothetical $15 overcharge, but I am unlikely to do so since recovering $15 is unlikely to be worth my time and effort, even if I recover legal fees in addition to the $15. It is worthwhile in my opinion to join a class action lawsuit of this nature, even if I only recover a small fraction of my losses. Additionally, I would see joining such a class action as being benificial to society at large, even if I recover nothing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 31 2017, @11:39PM
The point of class action suits is to punish the offending party because it's cost prohibitive for people to take companies to court, even small claims court, for small amounts of money. Even at the federal minimum wage, it's not worth missing a day of work for $5 or even $50. Companies know it and if they make a "mistake" of that magnitude they can rake in millions of dollars with little risk of being taken to court.
A class action suit bundles those small claims together into a bundle large enough that it's more cost effective to file suit. They get to keep the lion's share of the money because that's what it costs to file the suit and provide the service. The idea that these suits would have been filed otherwise is ridiculous. Even worse, when the company is out of state and you're stuck paying to use out of state courts where you're paying airfare and housing.
Class action suits exist as a deterrent to bad behavior that isn't criminal in nature. It's for those cases that aren't interesting enough for the attorney general's office to file suit over.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 31 2017, @05:14PM (1 child)
$600 in legal fees? Where do you find your lawyers, India? China? Ootbakinowherestan?
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Tuesday October 31 2017, @05:26PM
Where I live, that pays for about 3 hours of a lawyers' time to help prepare the (relatively simple) case, which should be more than sufficient.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by tomtomtom on Wednesday November 01 2017, @10:31AM
Fortunately, there's a much better way to deal with that specific situation: dispute the charge via your bank or credit card company. Quick, painless and you get all your money back. If you were a participant in a class action, you'd get 50 cents back after 5 years. It really, really, isn't a good system.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday October 31 2017, @05:22PM (16 children)
How is it even legal for a citizen to sign away his constitutional right to due process under the law in the first place?
We shouldn't need a CFPB here, we need SCOTUS.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 31 2017, @05:43PM
^^^
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 31 2017, @05:59PM
How dare you question your corporate overlords...! Why do you hate Freedom, the Freedom to sell yourself into slavery! Don't you understand that anyone selling themselves into slavery is doing so because they genuinely want to do this, because it's their liberty to do so, because it gives them happiness, because they are getting the better end of the deal!
You ignoramus!
(Score: 5, Informative) by Virindi on Tuesday October 31 2017, @06:05PM
Unfortunately, they're the ones who created this problem. Over time they have gone out of their way to use BS "interpretation" (otherwise known as making stuff up) to make arbitration clauses as powerful as possible. Congress barely had to lift a finger.
Which is convenient for Congress, because that way they can claim it is not their fault but at the same time get the desired outcome: de facto civil immunity for superbigco against everyone else.
Just another way we have nothing like a "free market", with the system tilted towards the biggest entities and against anyone smaller wishing to compete with them.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Thexalon on Tuesday October 31 2017, @06:35PM (6 children)
Alas, not only has SCOTUS said that requiring consumers to use binding arbitration rather than the courts are perfectly legal, and have also said that this ruling trumps any and all state laws that might ban them. This is one of the contenders for "most important Supreme Court case you've never heard of":
AT&T Mobility vs Concepcion [wikipedia.org]
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by NewNic on Tuesday October 31 2017, @07:09PM (5 children)
Yeah, why don't you hear the Republicans crying about "States' rights" over this decision?
lib·er·tar·i·an·ism ˌlibərˈterēənizəm/ noun: Magical thinking that useful idiots mistake for serious political theory
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday October 31 2017, @08:34PM (2 children)
I'm not a Republican but if you'd like to hear me say it's a bad decision, I'll be happy to do so. I generally don't get outraged when the courts fuck people and centralize power because I expect them to fuck people and centralize power. It's what you lot stacked them to do. There's only one guy on SCOTUS that even might remember the 10th Amendment exists and he just got appointed this year.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Virindi on Tuesday October 31 2017, @08:51PM (1 child)
Actually, you should read some of Justice Thomas' dissents. You might find more you like than you would expect.
He has also made it pretty clear that he disagrees with the post-1937 interpretation of the commerce clause, and he just goes along with it because there is no realistic way to fight it. In other words, he believes it is easier to fight overreach from within the system.
We already HAD one person on the court who believed in federalism, before this year. He is just smart about it.
(Score: 2) by Whoever on Wednesday November 01 2017, @05:12AM
Until he actually votes against over-broad interpretations of the commerce clause, it's all mental masturbation, or, he really doesn't disagree with those interpretations and he is just mugging for the crowd.
(Score: 4, Informative) by meustrus on Tuesday October 31 2017, @09:47PM (1 child)
Because the CFPB was created by Democrats so it is automatically evil. Republicans are supposed to look at everything bad and see a liberal conspiracy. Since liberals gave the CFPB the authority to make this rule, this rule must be part of the liberal conspiracy to steal our freedoms.
Disclaimer: Probably no Republican has this literal thought...besides the hypocrites at the top that are pushing the idea that the "unhinged" liberal conspiracy is "coming to get you".
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 2, Offtopic) by meustrus on Wednesday November 01 2017, @03:08PM
Go ahead and mod this one -1 Off-Topic.
"Informative" is not the right mod for my comment above. I would appreciate "Insightful" or "Interesting", but "Informative" should be reserved for well-sourced information. No matter how much you agree with me, my ideas are not "Informative" unless they are based on hard data. This one is not. It's based purely on my own subjective experience.
Please stop modding these comments "Informative". I don't deserve it.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 3, Informative) by Fluffeh on Tuesday October 31 2017, @11:35PM (4 children)
I was thinking the same thing the moment I read it actually. THere are some very consumer friendly laws in Australia that override this sort of thing actually - you just can't sign away certain rights:
https://www.choice.com.au/shopping/consumer-rights-and-advice/your-rights/articles/unfair-contracts [choice.com.au]
The section that defines what happens in an "Unfair Contract"
(Emphasis mine)
And then amoung the many definitions of unfair items:
(Score: 2) by Mykl on Wednesday November 01 2017, @03:57AM (3 children)
This is something that continues to puzzle me. I know that we can all sometimes act against our own interests at times in politics, but it seems that the citizens of the US have raised this to an art form. If you don't like this law then simply vote out the party that is furthest from what you want, or vote in the party that is nearest to what you want.
Yes, yes, there are lots of issues to consider together, and you shouldn't be a one-policy voter, but this one clearly shows who has your back and who is in it for themselves (or their corporate masters).
I struggle to understand how a group of politicians can enact such a consumer-hostile law and not expect massive backlash from it.
My prediction - instead of Class Action lawsuits, these companies will now be flooded with 1-star reviews on Facebook et al. Either that or the CEO will be accused of having sex with underage animals or something.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Whoever on Wednesday November 01 2017, @05:16AM
Because they like one thing that the current Republicans have done and it dominates everything: normalized racism. Republican voters would prefer to be poorer as long as the darker-skinned people are poorer than them.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday November 01 2017, @03:11PM
[...]
I disagree that it is consumer-hostile. Litigation is a considerable cost-driver for everything in the US and has resulted in a lot of stupid, costly decisions over the years. Arbitration is a band aid over that.
(Score: 2) by nobu_the_bard on Wednesday November 01 2017, @04:03PM
This is because of a misconception that the party in power is the one causing this specific problem and the party that's not in power (because there's only two, right?) wouldn't have caused it, and the voters chose the wrong party. They didn't choose the wrong party, in this specific sense. The other party would either have made either this precise mistake or something that was functionally similar, most likely. The only difference would be how they sell it to their supporters.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by khallow on Wednesday November 01 2017, @05:03AM
It's always been possible. For example, consenting to a search by police when they don't have the slightest reason to search you or waiving your right to have an attorney present while the police question you.
As to the CFPB, it's not their job to come up with laws, that's Congress's job. Sure, the public needs some protection from abusive arbitration schemes, but lawsuits are way out of control. That's why arbitration is such a thing in the first place. We need to keep in mind that one of the big donors to the Democrats, the side that created the CFPB, are lawyers. Arbitrage cuts enormously into their business.
My view is that the CFPB should be dismantled. It doesn't serve a legitimate role (there's lots of federal agencies that already serve to protect consumers from bad suppliers). And by being funded through the Federal Reserve rather than Congress, they're way too independent of Congress and the President. That creates a precedence that future presidents can take advantage of to create their own very independent organizations.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by arcz on Tuesday October 31 2017, @07:25PM (1 child)
Ordinary Voters have been brainwashed into thinking stuff like immigration matters. This matters, and it's getting us majorly fucked. We need to identify the bad politicians who vote for this crap and build a new political party, the constitution party, or something. Or maybe just hijack the republican party. Meh.
(Score: 5, Informative) by stretch611 on Tuesday October 31 2017, @08:24PM
Normally, I have independent views... Our 2 party system sucks.
BUT... in this particular case, It was a solid *R* next to those voting for this.
From NPR News [npr.org]:
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P