Corporatocracy steals fair trial rights without us realizing

Elsewhere in this edition you will find a story about a local attorney’s motion to the State Supreme Court to extend the right for class action lawsuits to Mississippi citizens in state courts. Presently, ours is the only state that does not allow class action lawsuits.
The truth is that in recent years most of us have already lost our right to sue in federal or state courts, either by signing away the right or by having it taken from us in the fine print of a contract. Instead, we have agreed to “binding arbitration.”
Binding arbitration has become the darling of the corporatocracy (a partnership of “too-big-to-fail” corporations, the extremely wealthy elite, and corporate-collaborator government officials) that runs this country. When we agree to binding arbitration — either by signing at the bottom of one of many pages of fine printed presented to us for signing before the bank will loan us their money or by overlooking a notice (again on a page of blah-blah legal jargon in fine print) from a credit card company — we no longer have a right to sue in court.
The extent to which binding arbitration puts the consumer at a disadvantage when he or she is wronged by a corporation is huge. The corporation, with its greater resources, can offer to settle for a lowball figure and sit on it while the consumer finally gives up and takes it. There is no level playing field.
And leveling the playing field is what a class action lawsuit allows. The wronged individual with limited resources is no match in court for the corporation with its layers of lawyers, but if the corporation has wronged a number of individuals, class action allows them to band together in one legal action with pooled resources.
Unfortunately, class action lawsuits get a bad rap when lawyers’ TV ads make a every grievance sound like a ticket to get rich quick, and that image of lawyers is promoted by the corporatocracy.  And remember the story about the lady who ordered hot coffee from McDonalds and then sued when she spilled it on herself. The corporatocracy really ran with that to promote tort reform. Yet we never heard the full story, a least not from them. If you’d like to learn the rest of the story, watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2ktM-lIfeQ