Boogahz:
Granted, I have not read the actual decision, but I can understand how a person should not be able to ignore the arbitration arrangement they agreed to. If that portion of the service agreement can be thrown out by the consumer, what other portion could be thrown out as well? Could they just ignore any other process from the service contract because they don't like it? The way to do that is to read the contract/agreement before you agree to it.
There's not really much of a choice to it. Take cell phones. I would vguess that every significant mobile company includes a class action waiver as part of its terms. Reading the contract doesn't help you, because if you object to that portion of the agreement, the company will not negotiate with you: They'll tell you to fuck off. So, if you want a cell phone, you are waiving your class action rights with respect to that phone. Same with many/most other consumer products, certainly those that involve recurring service-- internet and the like. For many people, going without cell phones and internet and such is not really an option. It's disingenuous to say that it's an agreement that was 'agreed to,' rather, it's a condition that was imposed on you by a corporation.
Of course it's also true that consumers shouldn't simply be free to disregard those parts of a contract that they dislike. That's not how it worked prior to this decision. In order to have a court disregard a portion of a contract, the consumer had to prove that the contract was "unconscionable," because it was against public policy or the like, which is a very difficult bar to clear.
An outright ban is not the answer, but how could they still be an option (based solely on this article)? Would they force each member through arbitration before allowing them to be considered part of a class-action suit? The companies know that fewer people will participate in arbitration than a lawsuit. Who wants to go in 1:1 with the company and another individual when you could be part of a mob of people that will not have to even show up in a court?
This is not an outright ban on all class actions. It's a decision that allows corporations to unilaterally ban class actions amongst consumers of their products. Thus, it's a de facto ban on almost all consumer class actions-- which is only a subset, albeit a large one, of class actions generally.
To the cases toward which this applies, it's a total ban. The consumers must go through arbitration; they have no other recourse. After arbitration is over, they still cannot be part of a class action suit, or an individual suit, or any further legal action whatsoever.
People don't go through individualized arbitration because it's simply not economically feasible to do so: You have to waste a lot of time, and probably a lot of money hiring a lawyer, to contest what is generally a small amount of money. Nobody is going to spend $1000 and an entire day contesting the extra $100 that's been slapped onto their cell phone bill over the course of a year.
