Business Law 9th Edition by Henry Cheeseman

تمرين 1

Class Action Waiver
"Arbitration is poorly suited to the higher stakes of class litigation."
-Scalia, Justice
Class actions allow many complainants to join together to challenge legally a defendant whom they believe has harmed them under similar circumstances. Class actions have been hailed as a means for the average citizen to get redress against large corporations who engage in illegal activities. To curtail class actions in arbitration, many companies put class action waivers in their arbitration agreements. This prevents defendants subject to the class action waiver from joining together to pursue a single defendant in an arbitration proceeding.
AT T Mobility LLC (AT T) includes such an arbitration agreement and class action waiver in their consumer contracts. When a customer brought a class action against AT T for allegedly cheating him out of $30.22 in the purchase of a phone, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the class action waiver in the arbitration agreement as legal, thus denying the consumer class status. Therefore, consumers must arbitrate their claims against businesses that include class action waivers in their contracts individually and not within a class of consumers. AT T Mobility LLC v. Concepcion, 131 S.Ct. 1740, 2011 U.S. Lexis 3367 (Supreme Court of the United States, 2011)
Why do employers place class action waivers in their arbitration agreements? How important is this U.S. Supreme Court decision?