you want to go through jury selection, taking several people away from their daily routine, so you can argue with T-Mobile about your phone bill?
a) If it's worth the cost of hiring a lawyer and paying court fees, then yes, I'll absolutely pull in more than a dozen registered voters to do what they signed up to do when they registered to vote.
b) It's my understanding that access to Small Claims court is also often barred by these binding arbitration agreements... so even if it's small enough to not require a lawyer (let alone a jury), you may be prevented from seeking redress in open court.
It's not.
> b) It's my understanding that access to Small Claims court is also often barred by these binding arbitration agreements... so even if it's small enough to not require a lawyer (let alone a jury), you may be prevented from seeking redress in open court.
Sounds like you agree that smaller situations should not escalate to a jury?
It's highly conditional. When parties absolutely cannot come to an agreement in disputes about matters of contract or law, that's what the courts are for. Being strongarmed into giving up access to the courts absolutely should be illegal. (Mutual pre-agreement between peer parties to go to arbitration rather than court is totally A-OK.)
> Sounds like you agree that smaller situations should not escalate to a jury?
Small Claims court exists for a very good reason, as do bench trials.
However, things that appear small (e.g. billing disputes) can be very, very large due to a multitude of factors (e.g. number of people who are "mistakenly" being incorrectly billed). That's why the court issues subpoenas, lawyers and the court issue binding demands for evidence preservation, and the entire discovery process exists. On top of that, court proceedings are by default a matter of public record; in part so others can be made aware of the misbehaviors of others... and potentially join in on an action or file one of their own if they're also a wronged party.
When one's only redress is behind closed doors and one is legally bound by NDA to not speak about the arbitration proceedings, it's dirt-simple to hide the scope of malfeasance and frustrate organized action.
But alas, the "will of the people" isn't used for civil suits. Wonder why (genuinely. Feels backwards for a jury to decide on something more technical like a criminal trial but not to have an opinion on civilities, which is more subjective).
If these companies knew normal people would be judging them maybe they wouldn't act like dicks so often.
Smaller cases could use smaller juries though.
Oh wait, this reinvents the court system.
The person you are responding to is entirely aware of that. I'm not sure what point you're making.