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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: 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.