Arbitration Horror Stories

This is a major victory for advocates of arbitration reform!

9 March 2009

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court has ruled that consumers can sometimes resist credit card companies’ push to move their dispute over finance charges and late fees to arbitration. The justices voted 5-4 Monday in favor of Betty Vaden in her dispute with Discover Bank.
Discover sued Vaden in Maryland state court in 2003, claiming she hadn’t paid more than $10,000 that was owing on her account. Vaden filed a class-action counterclaim, saying the company’s finance charges and late fees violated state law. The bank then asked a federal court to force Vaden into arbitration over her claim.

But Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, writing for the majority, said state courts sometimes are the proper place for such lawsuits. “Here, the controversy between Discover and Vaden was triggered by Discover’s garden-variety, state-law debt-collection claim against Vaden,” Ginsburg said. Many credit card customer service agreements require disagreements over charges to be resolved using binding arbitration because it is cheaper and faster than a lawsuit, industry officials say. But they also argue that some state courts, reluctant to let go of lawsuits, are hostile to arbitration.

A study by the Public Citizen consumer advocacy group found that arbitrators often rule in favor of the credit card companies.
In this case, the issue was whether a federal court could step into what had been a state court lawsuit to order the parties into arbitration.
Discover sued Vaden in Maryland state court in 2003, claiming she hadn’t paid more than $10,000 that was owing on her account. Vaden filed a class-action counterclaim, saying the company’s finance charges and late fees violated state law.
The bank then asked a federal court to force Vaden into arbitration over her claim.

The case is Vaden v. Discover Bank, 07-773.