Drivers claim Uber won’t pay fees to launch forced arbitration cases

Refusal to proceed with arbitration has been a problem.[1] Surprisingly, there's still litigation over whether this voids the arbitration clause. At the appellate level, several courts have ruled that it does.[2]

The 9th Circuit dealt with this in another case.[3] "On the assumption that Brown's narrative is true, this case displays a dark side of our nation's policy in favor of arbitration. When a defendant in a judicial forum refuses to respond to a complaint that is properly filed and served, the court has the power to enter and enforce a default judgment. Arbitration works differently. The American Arbitration Association could not compel Dillard's to pay its share of the filing fee, and in the absence of the fee it could not proceed. Brown had no choice but to come to court. Many people in Brown's position would simply have given up. Because she did not, we have the occasion to make clear that when an employer enters into an agreement requiring its employees to arbitrate, it must participate in the process or lose its right to arbitrate."

[1] https://www.bdlfirm.com/arbitration-the-consequences-of-a-pa...

[2] https://www.arbitrationnation.com/tag/roach-v-bm-motoring/

[3] https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-9th-circuit/1105777.html

So they require you to do forced arbitration, then just refuse to act on it (or act very slowly).

From a business stand point, of course they would. Most of these cases will at best require time and money to sort out, and at worse cost them even more money (compensating a driver for damages or lost wages). So why wouldn't they let these get tied up in bureaucracy until the drivers decide it's not worth the effort?

Force arbitration is bullshit and anti-consumer.

Forced arbitration is a violation of human rights. Access to the courts should always be available. These clauses should join “sell yourself into slavery” as examples of obvious things you can’t do in a contract.

Forced arbitration being lawful is one thing, but the employer both being able to force arbitration AND pick the arbitrator who is on their payroll should be illegal.

In effect you've taken a process out of an independent court and put it with a private business which is being paid by one of the parties. Seems super sketchy even to the point of criminality.

When a lot of money is at stake, it is no surprise that litigants abuse the legal system.

Uber is contractually required to pay the up-front arbitration fees so that the JAMS arbitrations can move forward. I super-slow-walks the process. What is the remedy?

Well, JAMS itself does not really have a remedy. It is a private organization that moves forward with the arbitration process as its rules are complied with and as it gets paid.

Nor is there an obvious remedy in the courts for individual failings in this or that arbitration procedure. Courts normally are not even involved in such processes.

Only when a clear pattern emerges (as it now has) can a court intervene to remedy a problem such as this.

In the meantime, what has happened? A lot of time has passed. A lot of the claimants (I am sure) have become discouraged and have possibly lost their motivation to move forward with their claims. And Uber has moved well along the path toward ultimate success in winning it all in its market, currently resting on a valuation of $120B.

Is any of this defensible? No. Will Uber try to defend it? Yes, through double-talk and prevarication. Will it be doing so in good faith? Not at all. Will the aggrieved drivers be able to overcome it? Perhaps, but they will likely get too little, too late. And, for Uber, it will be a historic liability that vanishes into the ether as it looks backwards on eventually settling the claims while basking in its massive success.

In a just world, things like this should not happen and perhaps Uber will be upended by something or other along the way anyway. But this sort of cynical abuse of legal processes in neither rare nor the exception in cases where modern litigants have the means and opportunity to gain massively from the abuses. It is not the exception but the rule.

And this in turn illustrates the obvious limits of using law as a solution for society's problems. The law can and does help solve problems to a point. But it is always subject to abuse and, in the end, money, power, and corrupt motives often work to undercut its effectiveness. This sort of case is Exhibit A to prove the point.

Allowing people to "sign" away their 7th amendment rights, in some cases in order to simply maintain already paid for services, is ridiculous. Arbitration should be between equal parties (i.e. businesses, you and your neighbor) or you should only agree to it with advice from a lawyer.

These clauses are just more corporate abuse.

What rube at the 9th circuit fell for the 'ol "of course we'll act in good faith" argument??

In the long run I think this kind of practice will only hurt Uber - they have huge issues with driver retention any way, and their dream of self driving cars is laughable. Lyft (who's only a little better, but still better) will continue to gain ground in the US especially and will eventually become the market leader in mobility.

I'm conflicted about this. I think forced arbitration is a terrible predatory practice. But I also think there are lots of frivolous class action lawsuits. All the claims cited here were from a single class action lawsuit that was thrown out.

I'm all for Uber drivers making more money but they filed a class action lawsuit asking for a different compensation structure than what was offered. They knew the deal when they signed up and it seems like a sketchy attorney took on their case for a big pay day and when that was thrown out they're now taking this next step. If I sign an agreement with an employer about my compensation, I don't have a realistic expectation that I'd be able to sue them when they continue to do what they told me they'd do and I'm no longer happy with it (my recourse is to walk away and work somewhere that better matches what I'm looking for).

Frivolous lawsuits drive up the cost for customers almost everywhere. It's a big reason why medical costs are so high. People see a big organization that has some cash and they think they can file a suit as a way to quick riches.

The author followed up with another post, "Uber Tells its Side of the Story in Mass Arbitration Fight with 12,500 drivers": https://www.reuters.com/article/legal-us-otc-uber/uber-tells...

So the law allows the perpetrator of a tort to be judge, jury, and executioner over its victims and then further allows that same perpetrator to lie to a federal court without repercussions and not even carry out the arbitration it promised. Finally, it gives the victims no further recourse against the perpetrator. And this is supposed to be just? The law has a loophole essentially saying that it doesn't need to apply if both parties agree. Absolute insanity really. What's the point of even having a civil court system then? Imagine if they did this with criminal cases. The insanity of the current system does not preclude that. What a failure of government to do one of its basic duties.

Uber must hold the world record for the slowest inevitable capsizing of a corporate ship ever.

How can anyone think that the court system is a panacea for dispute resolution? Or even that it is a better alternative? The courts are the emergency rooms of dispute resolution: on the civil side clogged with foreclosure cases, personal injury slip and falls, divorce protection orders and absent judges who are sitting on the criminal side because the criminal courts are drug courts. Federal courts have limited jurisdiction and criminal cases get priority. Except for bankruptcy, there is no civil side. Would you rather sit in an emergency room or see your own doctor? That is how arbitration is supposed to work. The friction point is the payment of fees. And there is no reason why the disputes of a class of people could not be submitted to arbitration. A lawyerless individual is much better off navigating an arbitration by himself than trying to navigate an American courtroom. Of course, if you don't want concierge justice, you are free to stand in line with everyone else. Understand though, that concierge justice comes at a price. The idiots at Uber simply don't want to pay the price.

Forced arbitration is broken, but not entirely useless.

The actual problem is vendor lock-in and the conflict of interest in those who choose the vendor.

There should be a law that allows you to pick whichever arbitrator you want (within limits, like picking court jurisdiction), rather than being forced into a single vendor.

Here's an interesting scenario which obtained in one of the courts that the arbitration refugees are dying to get into:

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/houston/...

This is true with any arbitration. If you sue someone it costs about $500 to get the case started in a government subsidized court. In private arbitration, it costs about $1,500. The person initiating the case has to pay, not the defendant. In this case, the drivers are initiating the cases so must pay the initial filing fee.

Give employees no legal recourse in actual courts, then make sure their sole remaining option doesn't get paid and doesn't start proceedings.

Let's say forced arbitration is acceptable (IMO, it's not). Why not make Uber provide a guarantee that arbitration must begin no later than 60 days after the claim is filed? Or would that be another example of the socialist regulations that are ruining free enterprise in America?

Meh. If they want to not perform on the arbitration clause, they get stuck with going to court. Seems like a win for employees?

This story is from December.

I'm getting really sick of large corporations essentially moulding bureaucracy to benefit themselves and fuck over everyone else.

I'm also seeing things like popup more frequently like NET90 payment terms... or accounting departments that won't pay someone unless they fill out a form 100% correctly (oh, and BTW if you fill out the form incorrectly they'll sit on their hands and NOT notify you... so you basically only find out via nagging).

If I owed my bank money you think I could sit around twiddling my thumbs waiting for them to guess what the proper request format is?

I recently had a company tell me that they only accept invoices ONE DAY A MONTH and there's nothing I can do about it. Uh, excuse me?

Forced arbitration is another wonderful example of course. Just sit around basically in a siege knowing that almost no individual person can outlast you (basically Uber's business model anyway, undercut the competition and put them out of business with time).