The title of this submission "McDonalds is giving free French fries in return for waiving the right to sue" is also editorialized compared to the linked article's title "McDonald's New Terms And Conditions Have People Deleting The App" which is directly against the HN guidelines.
Lawsuits are things that occur within a public court of law, by definition.
Two parties concluding a dispute privately, without government involvement, is not a lawsuit. Even if someone does sue over the arbitration contract itself should apply, that's a separate legal question from the underlying tort.
And yes, that can mean without any papers filed anywhere.
Hell, you can sue for peace.
> A father brought a civil suit after his son had been sexually assaulted and stalked at boarding school by another student when he was 12. He argued that St. John’s was on notice of the perpetrator’s strange behavior towards the child, knew of other incidents of physical and sexual assaults on other students on campus and breached its duty to protect them.
> The court found that the arbitration agreement was valid and enforceable and ordered all claims into arbitration.
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> Family members brought a wrongful death lawsuit after 90-year-old resident Charlotte Fischer died from an assault allegedly committed by a Colorow employee. The county coroner ruled her death a homicide. According to reports, a nurse’s assistant allegedly threw her against a wall and fractured her hip; he was charged with third-degree assault.[5] When Fischer entered the facility, her daughter filled out the admissions paperwork. Among the documents signed as part of the entry packet: an arbitration agreement compelling arbitration for any claim arising from or relating to Fischer’s relationship with the facility.
> the Colorado Supreme Court disagreed, ruling that only substantial compliance with the formatting requirements of the Act was needed and, as such, the case could be forced into arbitration.
Basically the difference between ordinary mistakes versus "WTF were you thinking".
https://www.nursinghomelawcenter.org/significant-award-made-...
$2.7 million for a nursing home negligent death arbitration is pretty large.
In an ideal world, yes, a regular consumer could just make that observation and *poof* common sense would prevail... but I'm very cynical that it'll work that way in practice.
The multi-billion dollar global corporation and its battalions of lawyers will say that your tort falls under the words "arising from" and is resolved "exclusively" by private arbitration:
> You agree that [...] any claim or dispute (whether in contract, tort, or otherwise) you may have [...] arising from or related to the online services or these terms will be resolved exclusively by final and binding arbitration
Are there examples of consumers cheaply and easily escaping this kind of language without spending oodles of time and money trying to "put the system on trial" first?
(I’m not saying it’s easy to sue a large company once in court. I think everyone understands that would be a complex process and either require legal funds assistance or such a lucrative case (e coli, boiling coffee) that good lawyers would accept contingency.)
Again, I agree that's how things ought to be, but in practice it seems like the "wrong" outcomes are still happening anyway.
For example [0] a company allegedly sold a customers products contaminated with bedbugs--a physical, tangible good with a harmful defect--and one guy started a class-action lawsuit over it. However the company managed to get a judge to cancel the lawsuit and force everything back into arbitration, based on the website ToS.
If you read the details [1] you'll see the consumer made all the sensible arguments just like the ones you're saying would easily prevail against McDonalds... but they didn't work.
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[0] https://www.consumerreports.org/mandatory-binding-arbitratio...
It's a troubling case and I understand why you are afraid of judges accepting spurious arguments from corporate defense, and I understand how many people don't appreciate how the difference in wording affects them and so can be intimidated.
Maybe it’s worse because they are doing it preemptively without saying it aloud until it’s too late.
This whole practice of “by breathing in our airspace you’ve agreed to arbitration” has to stop.
https://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en-us/terms-and-conditions.html
I wonder how one can tell if one has agreed to a particular T&C at any point. Do companies have to maintain an api so I can query if I have agreed to a particular version of the T&C?
90% of companies just have a Boolean in a db.
(Edit: eu for context)
"Our Terms and Conditions have changed. Please take a moment to review the new McDonald’s Terms and Conditions by clicking on the link. These include a binding arbitration provision and waiver of your right to a trial in court, including your right to a jury trial, as well as updates to the arbitration and dispute resolution process. By continuing to use our website, you are indicating that you have reviewed and agree to these Terms and Conditions including the binding arbitration provision. You are also indicating that you understand that you are agreeing to a legally binding contract and intend to do so."
> Our Terms and Conditions have changed. Please take a moment to review the new McDonald’s Terms and Conditions by clicking on the link. These include a binding arbitration provision and waiver of your right to a trial in court, including your right to a jury trial, as well as updates to the arbitration and dispute resolution process. By continuing to use our website, you are indicating that you have reviewed and agree to these Terms and Conditions including the binding arbitration provision. You are also indicating that you understand that you are agreeing to a legally binding contract and intend to do so.
They are very prominently noting the "right to trial in court" being waived; they refer to it three times in a five-sentence paragraph. This is on a fast food website where people are buying burgers and fries, is someone's "right to a jury trial" usually a thing in someone's mind when they go to a fast food chain to download an app and get fun prizes and stuff? It seems to be for McDonalds itself. Then they try to claim that clicking this banner is a legally binding contract, even though it has no idea what my name or address is; which is ludicrous for a website. But for the app, and by the time you're getting your free food, it's likely a little more well thought out.
It seems extremely obvious that McDonalds is trying to get as many of their customers as possible to click this button and reduce the number of people with the right to sue them in court. The "free french fries" thing is unusually generous, which means clicking this button is worth a lot of money for them.
None of this seems "sensationalist" to me. It seems perfectly clear and obvious once the two pieces are put together. Hence I put these pieces together in my headline and a lot of other people have gotten it now too.
This shit desperately needs to just be made illegal across the board.