Arbitration is expensive and favors business over consumers. Furthermore, it is an arrogant concept based upon the notion that industry insiders are better able to deliver justice than judges and juries.
Arbitration is expensive because participants pay a private individual, or individuals, thousands of dollars a day to do the job of a judge who is paid with tax payer funds. Unlike the judge, the arbitrator has not been carefully vetted and appointed or elected through a democratic process. Instead, arbitrators are primarily industry insiders who have no accountability for their decisions – which are almost unreviewable. Rather than having a jury of your peers in arbitration the fact finder is from the same line of business as the defendant. The idea behind arbitration is that parties are free to agree to anything they like. In the abstract that is true but in the real world arbitration clauses are buried deep in contracts and seldom "agreed upon" by the consumer.
In the thirty plus years I have been practicing I have never heard a client say “Boy I am glad we had that arbitration clause.”
