4 ms·
"As a result of the Concepcion case, it is essentially impossible to sue a U.S. cell phone carrier in a class action," Aschenbrener explained in an e-mail. "Con
by DannyBee 13y ago
"As a result of the Concepcion case, it is essentially impossible to sue a U.S. cell phone carrier in a class action," Aschenbrener explained in an e-mail. "Consequently, there is no effective check on the power of U.S. wireless companies.""
So, this is a pretty inaccurate statement.
It is more accurate to say "it is essentially impossible to sue them over contract disputes in class action lawsuits".
Additionally, you'd probably be better off filing 10000 arbitration actions than a class action lawsuit:
1. You can all do it in your spare time
2. You are not required to be lawyers to interact with the arbitrators.
3. AT&T is in no way set up to handle large scale arbitration
Heck, you could set up a firm to do nothing but manage arbitration claims against AT&T. Because it requires no licensing, you could let the moral equivalent of paralegals handle all of the work.
Class action lawsuits were meant to be about efficiency, not a tool for social change.
If AT&T doesn't want that efficiency, you should show them what the result is.
- comex 13y agoExcept that it's probably prohibitively difficult to convince 10,000 people individually to go to the hassle of filing an arbitration action just to get a small amount of money. I could be wrong, but I don't see this being a realistic method of going after companies for contract violations at all.
- DannyBee 13y ago1. You've just explained what exactly is wrong with class action lawsuits too - they claim to represent 10k people, but roughly all of those people actually aren't very involved at all, even though someone is claiming to represent them. 2. Unlike class actions, you can actually make it fairly easily to arbitrate, or you could compute the value of their claim, and then pay them half to do it for them.
- tptacek 13y agoYou don't think you could get 10,000 people to sign up to a web app that offers them free money and demands only that they sign the equivalent of petitions?
- makomk 13y agoDon't forget that filing an arbitration case almost always requires paying a fee of some kind.