SoylentNews

owl [soylentnews.org] writes:

Oct 29 (Reuters) - In a case against entertainment behemoth Live Nation (LYV.N) , opens new tab, a U.S. appeals court has rejected a common corporate tactic to combat mass consumer arbitration and has cast doubt on whether companies can force consumers into consolidated arbitration protocols.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Monday that Live Nation, the parent company of Ticketmaster, cannot compel its customers to arbitrate antitrust claims because Live Nation’s mandatory arbitration provisions were too unfair to be enforceable.

As my Reuters colleague Mike Scarcella reported, the appeals court concluded that the mass arbitration protocol offered by Live Nation’s arbitration provider, New Era, featured rules that were “so dense, convoluted and internally contradictory to be borderline unintelligible.” (New Era disputed that characterization, insisting that its rules are “objective [and] easy to understand.”)

...

In a concurrence, VanDyke said flatly, “The Federal Arbitration Act just does not apply to the type of mass ‘arbitration’ contemplated by Live Nation's agreements.”

That has to be a chilling sentence for companies relying on batch-and-bellwether protocols to mitigate the time and expense of defending thousands of arbitration demands.

Original Submission