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Comment by Teever | Hacker News Reader

I'd love to see a campaign to coordinate small claims court claims against abusive companies.

It could really fuck a company's day up if several hundred to thousand people across the world decides to seek redress from a small claims court on the same day.

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Can you use a small claims court if the rental contract has mandatory binding arbitration clause?

I don’t think you can unfortunately, and arbitration should be banned. I’m not sure how a system overriding the legal system is allowed.

It’s not overriding the legal system, it willfully sidestepping it. But obligating the contracted party to agree. The issue of course is that Hertz (in this case) can put whatever random requirements into the contract, and you can’t arbitrarily strike them. You still need/want their service.

That said, just because there’s an arbitration clause in the contract doesn’t mean you’re absolutely stuck. You can hire a lawyer and try to get out of it. They’re trying to keep you from doing something like that.

Reminds me of those contracts (that are completely formulaic and you definitely can't negotiate) that say "I agree this rate has been negotiated".

The Supreme Court has repeatedly and willfully ignored the plain meaning of the statutes, congressional intent in writing the FAA, as well the standard rules of statutory interpretation effectively rewriting Title 9 into something it was never intended.

At this point fixing it requires congressional action.

See https://arbitrationinformation.org/docs/problems/ and https://arbitrationinformation.org/docs/solutions/ for my complete writeup.

You absolutely can.

Now the company has to pay one of their lawyers ($$$) to show up, or the claim is a default judgement, which they have to pay.

So the lawyer shows up and says blah blah mandatory binding arbitration. The judge can interrupt and say "don't care, judgement against, pay the man". Or the opposite, in which case at least you cost them more than they cost you.

Which is why they probably take the default judgement and pay you.

Yeah, the key thing here is that even if the arbitration agreement is binding, they have to have someone actually show up and prove that to the judge.

So multiply that across even a few hundred times...

At least in some courts, I would think filing a motion to dismiss would be enough, without swnding a lawyer to court... but I have never been theough that process before so I can't say for sure?

Still takes time, and arbitration isn't all that scary, ao forcing them to arbitrate can also be a costly endeavor for them.

I would think this is possible. I've often agreed with the other party's lawyer that oral arguments on MtDs are unnecessary and then we just let the judge rule "on the papers" without anyone having to be there in person. The judge can then just file a written order with his ruling.

Bear in mind that motions and discovery are highly frowned upon in Small Claims courts that I've litigated in. And 95% of the time the court will rule in favor of the bigger party if they bring a lawyer, just out of general hatred of courts for unrepresented litigants.

In the latter case, don't they then ask the judge/arbitrator to also award them legal fees if (when, really) they win?

In most situations small claims court is generally self-represented, with claims for legal costs capped at a certain level dependent on the amount being claimed. For example, in NSW, Australia, there is a different cap for costs under $1000 vs $1000-$5k, and $5k-$20k. One might expect a judge to look poorly upon a large multinational sending a $2k/hr lawyer to a $500 hire car dispute.

Where I live, you can't claim a lawyer's fee in small claims court -- that's kinda the point of small claims.

> in which case at least you cost them more than they cost you

Did you really? Monetarily you did of course. How much time does it cost you though? It might cost the company a couple hours.

If the arbitrator is specified as the American Arbitration Association, usually yes. See section R-9 of the AAA Consumer Rules.[1]

JAMS just updated their "minimum standards" for consumer arbitration as of May 1, 2024, and they now seem to allow for transfer to small claims court.[2]

[1] https://adr.org/sites/default/files/Consumer_Rules_Web_0.pdf

[2] https://www.jamsadr.com/consumer-minimum-standards/

I'd be down to help build a service like this.

How can I reach out to you about this?

If it's to dispute small charges, the company doesn't need to show up and just accept the loss.

It still costs them to do this because they have to do the paperwork to handle it, the meetings to decide what to do, the confusion that will come from this, and the opportunity cost of these courses, as well as the bad publicity that will come from this announcement that the group doing this will of course release to social media.

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