Friday, May 29, 2009

Cour Strikes Class Action Ban in Arbitration Agreement

Class action bans in arbitration agreements have always been a cause for concern, and I have always taken the position that such bans are illegal. While some clever attorney had the idea to jam that sentence into an arbitration agreement, the ban has nothing to do with arbitration, and is in reality a complete ban on anytype of dispute resolution in some circumstances.

The reality is that there is nothing to get in an  uproar about, since the bans are illegal. The latest decision striking the class action ban was yesterday, in the Federal District Court in Seattle, when the court refused to enforce ATT's ban on its customer's participation in class actions.

Class action by ex-AT&T Wireless customers allowed