Political Quotes

“As I understand from the Senator's response to my last question, if you force the victims of low-dollar but multi-victim fraud to have arbitration as their only remedy, you are way less likely to get consumers asserting their rights, and ultimately you may have low-dollar, multi-consumer frauds that remain very remunerative for the crooked outfit conducting the massive fraud. I get the Senator's point that the incentives are such that it is very hard for an individual consumer to be willing to pursue that claim. If there is no way to aggregate themselves together into a class action, then there is really no way to pursue that claim. But my second question goes to a further point, which is that the power of a court in a matter like that includes the power not just to award damages but to provide other relief: to direct the company to quit the fraud, to give orders to people to clean up their act, to promise never to do it again, and so forth. I am not aware of any arbitration panel that has ever been given that authority or has ever used their limited power as arbiters or arbitrators to try to influence the behavior of the corporation. Is there not also a significant difference between an individual consumer being forced to go to an often stacked arbitration panel to pursue a claim that is so small, it is not worth their money, and the simple power to provide the real remedy the public seeks, as the Senator so wisely said, to protect the next consumer?…”