Courtesy of Pam Martens.
The New York Times has just completed a three-part investigative series on the evisceration across America of the U.S. Constitution’s guarantee of a right to a jury trial under the Seventh Amendment, which mandates: “In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise reexamined in any court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.”
Just as corporate prisons and corporate charter schools are proliferating across the American landscape with attendant horror stories, the doors to the Nation’s taxpayer funded courts have been largely closed to the average citizen. Consumers of everything from credit cards to phone service to nursing homes cannot obtain the product or service without surrendering their access to the U.S. court system through fine print buried in the corporate contract. The privatized system is referred to as pre-dispute arbitration or mandatory arbitration or forced arbitration. Many corporations impose it as a condition of employment as well.
The Times writes:
“Over the last 10 years, thousands of businesses across the country — from big corporations to storefront shops — have used arbitration to create an alternate system of justice. There, rules tend to favor businesses, and judges and juries have been replaced by arbitrators who commonly consider the companies their clients, The Times found.”
The Times, admirably, exposed a litany of abuses in rigged arbitration proceedings that left people worse off than before the arbitration. As Debbie Brenner of Peoria, Arizona tells The Times, “It was a kangaroo court. I can’t believe this is America.” Brenner’s case against a corporate run school for surgical technicians over failing to deliver on its promises was heard by a lawyer from the roster of arbitrators hearing cases for the American Arbitration Association (AAA), Dennis Negron. The proceeding was conducted in the corporate law offices of the firm representing the corporate school.
In addition to the $24,000 Brenner had paid to the school for tuition and the $12,000 her husband had withdrawn from his retirement account to pay for her legal expenses, Negron assigned the school’s legal fees of $354,210.77 to Brenner and fellow students who had also brought claims.
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