Thread

1. oceansky · 1790000838 · focus · HN ↗

   Good outcome, but forced arbitration should still be illegal.

   1. TZubiri · 1790003430 · focus · HN ↗

      What's the line? If 2 brothers sign a contract, can't they decide their father will be the judge if disputes arise?

      If there's a sports match, shouldn't the sports arbiter be able to decide whether some team scored a goal or not?

      These are all valid civil contracts. It only affects the civil claims, never criminal, and the venue for disputing the arbitration clause (if you believe arbitration wasn't legal to begin with) are the public courts anyways, who will delegate or not to the private court.

      Almost all countries recognize it and it has a quite defensible theory.

      1. throwaway173738 · 1790004080 · focus · HN ↗

         It sure is contextual. And nobody would disagree with your examples. The difference here seems to be more of a power imbalance than any objection to terms. In particular, terms of service are often very dense documents. Many people are only presented these documents at the moment they sign up for a service. And people are not usually careful in these situations. I bet most of the Uber signups were outside of bars or venues where someone really needed to get home. So there’s some duress there. So it’s probably not that cut and dried. It’s more analogous to presenting a contract to harvest your wheat field the day before a big rain. If you’re the only guy with a combine for miles then that puts you in a position of relative power. And historically the US hasn’t permitted people to exploit their positions to the maximum extent, usually when it would be immoral by the standards of society. I think this exists in a gray area. It’s not that easy.

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