[clubm8]

>Last June, for instance, I wrote about a Fitbit lawyer’s all-too-candid admission that no rational litigant would pay a $750 filing fee to arbitrate a claim over a product that costs $162

Sometimes it's not about the money - sometimes it's about sending a message.

[daveFNbuck]

For Fitbit, it's about the money. They reduce their costs with this strategy, and they don't care about your message.

[clubm8]

> For Fitbit, it's about the money. They reduce their costs with this strategy, and they don't care about your message.

I'm saying this is a dangerous line of thinking. What happens when someone does spend the money? Or finances a large group of people to exercise their rights?

(Recall the Gawker case - they threat modeled that Hulk Hogan couldn't afford to seek relief in the courts. But they pissed off someone much richer than Hogan, who was happy to help him access legal relief.)

[daveFNbuck]

When people do spend the money, Fitbit is in the same situation they'd be in if they hadn't added that barrier.

[nkrisc]

If I had millions to spare, I might help finance many thousands of simultaneous forced arbitration cases against some companies who engage in this forced arbitration bullshit.

[daveFNbuck]

If you did this to Fitbit, you'd have to spend $750 for each arbitration, plus advertising costs to find people who need arbitration. Fitbit will lose up to $162 each time you do this, plus their costs to attend the arbitration.

Let's assume their average cost is $200 and yours is $800. Are you willing to spend a million dollars to cost Fitbit $250k? This wouldn't hurt Fitbit much, and it's going to be a lot of work to find, vet, and distribute money to the 1,250 people who are willing to undergo arbitration.

Even if your plan worked, you'd just have spent a bunch of money to make Fitbit live up to some of the legal obligations it was using arbitration to avoid. This wouldn't change anything going forward.

The main benefit would be to the people who got their $162 in value. If that's your goal, you could help a lot more of those people if you just gave each of them $162 rather than spending $750 to help them go through the process.

Or you could spend your millions lobbying to change the laws so Fitbit can't require arbitration with a $750 fee.

[WrtCdEvrydy]

You don't need thousands. $750 is far more than a lawyer will charge for 2-3 hours of their time. It just so happens that's more than most customers will spend on forced arbitration as well.

[pseingatl]

State courts charge filing fees. So do federal courts. Fees in both courts now approach $750. The losing party in both courts and arbitrations is taxed costs, which include the filing fee. Figure on paying $400/hour for a lawyer to handle an international arbitration with a $10k downstroke. Same for a federal practitioner. You might do slightly better in state court.

[daveFNbuck]

If you're trying to recover damages for a $162 purchase, wouldn't you either be in small claims court or part of a class action suit?

[patcon]

> sometimes it's about sending a message

Important rhetorical question (spoken kindly, despite word choice): Whose message? As in, who gets to send this message that's alluded to? It will be a certain sort of person, with a certain sort of capacity, and anyone else who wants to send a message can get f*cked. The resulting state of any system will reflect this asymmetry.

(Not implying that you were saying the above was fair, just wanted to draw out this aspect for others that the "message" line might resonate with :)

[lozenge]

Without being able to start a class action, the message sent by a court will be pretty minimal.