Racism

[cali]

Last edited Fri Jun 21, 2013, 11:33 AM - Edit history (1)

Made you look. Actually this is an issue based post that wasn't getting any attention so I thought what the hell I know how to get people flocking to this thread.

Anyone who thinks this country is anything but fucked, corrupt as shit and controlled to a, well, controlling degree, by corporate interests, just is not paying attention. Or they're in heavy denial.

The Supreme Court Just Made It Easier for Big Business to Screw the Little Guy

In a little-known case called American Express v. Italian Colors Restaurant, the Supreme Court today issued yet another decision making it easier for big corporations to use their market power to screw over consumers and small businesses. Thursday's 5-3 decision affirmed the right of big corporations to use mandatory arbitration clauses in contracts to force small businesses to challenge monopolistic practices in private arbitration rather than through class actions in court. The case shows once again that the conservative majority, led by Chief Justice John Roberts, has no problem with judicial activism when it comes to bolstering corporate power.

Here's the background on this decision:

The case, Italian Colors v. American Express,was brought by a California Italian restaurant and a group of other small businesses that tried to sue the credit card behemoth for antitrust violations. They allege Amex used its monopoly power to force them to accept its bank-issued knock-off credit cards as a condition of taking regular, more elite American Express cards—and then charging them 30 percent higher fees for the privilege.

The small businesses’ claims were pretty small individually, not more than around $5,000 per shop. So, to make their case worth enough for a lawyer to take it, they banded together to file a class action on behalf of all small businesses affected by the practice. In response, Amex invoked the small print in its contract with them: a clause that not only banned the companies from suing individually but also prevented them from bringing a class action. Instead, Amex insisted the contract required each little businesses to submit to the decision of a private arbitrator paid by Amex, and individually press their claims. (Arbitration is heavily stacked in favor of the big companies, as you can read more about here and here.)

<snip>

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/06/consumers-get-screwed-scotus-american-express-decision-small-biz?google_editors_picks=true

[cali]

1. Kagan's dissent

Justice Elena Kagan gets this point. In her biting dissent aimed squarely at Scalia, she called the majority opinion a "betrayal of our precedents and of federal statutes like antitrust laws." She observed that the court would never uphold an arbitration agreement that explicitly banned merchants from bringing an antitrust claim, yet that's effectively what the Amex contract does by compelling merchants to give up the option of class actions in court. She noted that by ignoring several precedents, the majority is providing companies "every incentive to draft their agreements to extract backdoor waivers of statutory rights." That is, they will use contracts to immunize themselves from laws they don't like.

Kagan was blunt: "If the arbitration clause is enforceable, Amex has insulated itself from antitrust liability—even if it has in fact violated the law. The monopolist gets to use its monopoly power to insist on a contract effectively depriving its victims of all legal recourse. And here is the nutshell version of today’s opinion, admirably flaunted rather than camouflaged: Too darn bad."