…give up your right to sue our asses even if our products suck and don’t do what we told you that they could do. And guess what the kicker is? That’s right! We’ve all signed our names to a contract with that phrase, or a similar one, in it. That’s because technology companies, like Apple for instance (I only bring them up here because I hate them sooooooooooooooo much, but all tech companies, and many other firms, are guilty of this practice) slip this into their contracts for consumer products like, I don’t know, cell phones. Yeah, you probably signed a similar contract when you bought your cell phone.
And to be fair to the bastard companies which use this tactic, the actual phrasing of the part of the contract that you sign means that you can’t participate in a class action lawsuit against the company and if you do sue the company individually you HAVE to have it mediated by a third party mediator instead of it going before a judge or jury. So you can still sue them, just don’t expect to ever see a court room, but do expect to be all on your own, and expect the mediator to be “in the pocket” of the company you are suing (There are some serious problems with the mediation system right now which basically make it damned hard for a mediator to rule in favor of a plaintiff and still keep their job.)
So now you’re thinking to yourself, “What the heck man! I thought I had a right to sue anyone I wanted to!” Well the California Court system, and several other states to boot, would agree with you. They’ve all ruled these kind of carte blanch “We’re immune to suing” statements in contracts as unconscionable (Which, if you don’t know what that word means, it’s kinda like inconceivable but you don’t have to be a short, smug, Sicilian man to say it (Yes that was a reference to what you think it was)) And now we’ve gotten to the U.S. Supreme Court.
So it’s go time boys and girls. The Supreme Court will basically be ruling as whether we’ve got the right to band together and stand up against a company and say in one voice “Dammit Apple! You’re overcharging the crap out of us for stuff that’s not that good in the first place!” or maybe something more legitimate like “Hey, you’re phone promised wifi and it doesn’t have it. WTF mate?”
This should be a good case. We’ve got a pretty heavy hitter, AT&T going to bat on the side of corporate America on this one, and AT&T doesn’t lose many battles, unless they happen to be anti-trust cases and even then they kinda side step those issues fairly easily. On the other side of the field we have a California couple who sued AT&T over being charged for a free phone, being backed by groups like the NAACP. Should be a good fight. I’ll be interested to hear the ruling sometime next July.
