indago
03-17-2015, 07:20 PM
From The New York Times 16 March 2015:
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Charles Beard, a sergeant in the Army National Guard, says he was on duty in the Iraqi city of Tikrit when men came to his California home to repossess the family car. Unless his wife handed over the keys, she would go to jail, they said. The men took the car, even though federal law requires lenders to obtain court orders before seizing the vehicles of active duty service members. Sergeant Beard had no redress in court: His lawsuit against the auto lender was thrown out because of a clause in his contract that forced any dispute into mandatory arbitration, a private system for resolving complaints where the courtroom rules of evidence do not apply. In the cloistered legal universe of mandatory arbitration, the companies sometimes pick the arbiters, and the results, which cannot be appealed, are almost never made public.
...It took more than four years after Sergeant Beard’s car was repossessed before an arbiter ruled on his case against Santander Consumer. ...“I tried to fight for everybody, but it only ended up with me,” said Sergeant Beard, who adds that such repossessions “will destroy soldiers in combat by putting them in a position where they can’t help their loved ones.”
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article (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/17/business/wronged-troops-are-denied-recourse-by-arbitration-clauses.html?ref=todayspaper&_r=0)
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Charles Beard, a sergeant in the Army National Guard, says he was on duty in the Iraqi city of Tikrit when men came to his California home to repossess the family car. Unless his wife handed over the keys, she would go to jail, they said. The men took the car, even though federal law requires lenders to obtain court orders before seizing the vehicles of active duty service members. Sergeant Beard had no redress in court: His lawsuit against the auto lender was thrown out because of a clause in his contract that forced any dispute into mandatory arbitration, a private system for resolving complaints where the courtroom rules of evidence do not apply. In the cloistered legal universe of mandatory arbitration, the companies sometimes pick the arbiters, and the results, which cannot be appealed, are almost never made public.
...It took more than four years after Sergeant Beard’s car was repossessed before an arbiter ruled on his case against Santander Consumer. ...“I tried to fight for everybody, but it only ended up with me,” said Sergeant Beard, who adds that such repossessions “will destroy soldiers in combat by putting them in a position where they can’t help their loved ones.”
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article (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/17/business/wronged-troops-are-denied-recourse-by-arbitration-clauses.html?ref=todayspaper&_r=0)