Can you use a small claims court if the rental contract has mandatory binding arbitration clause?
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.
So multiply that across even a few hundred times...
Still takes time, and arbitration isn't all that scary, ao forcing them to arbitrate can also be a costly endeavor for them.
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.
Did you really? Monetarily you did of course. How much time does it cost you though? It might cost the company a couple hours.
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
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.
At this point fixing it requires congressional action.
See https://arbitrationinformation.org/docs/problems/ and https://arbitrationinformation.org/docs/solutions/ for my complete writeup.