| When a lot of money is at stake, it is no surprise that litigants abuse the legal system. Uber is contractually required to pay the up-front arbitration fees so that the JAMS arbitrations can move forward. I super-slow-walks the process. What is the remedy? Well, JAMS itself does not really have a remedy. It is a private organization that moves forward with the arbitration process as its rules are complied with and as it gets paid. Nor is there an obvious remedy in the courts for individual failings in this or that arbitration procedure. Courts normally are not even involved in such processes. Only when a clear pattern emerges (as it now has) can a court intervene to remedy a problem such as this. In the meantime, what has happened? A lot of time has passed. A lot of the claimants (I am sure) have become discouraged and have possibly lost their motivation to move forward with their claims. And Uber has moved well along the path toward ultimate success in winning it all in its market, currently resting on a valuation of $120B. Is any of this defensible? No. Will Uber try to defend it? Yes, through double-talk and prevarication. Will it be doing so in good faith? Not at all. Will the aggrieved drivers be able to overcome it? Perhaps, but they will likely get too little, too late. And, for Uber, it will be a historic liability that vanishes into the ether as it looks backwards on eventually settling the claims while basking in its massive success. In a just world, things like this should not happen and perhaps Uber will be upended by something or other along the way anyway. But this sort of cynical abuse of legal processes in neither rare nor the exception in cases where modern litigants have the means and opportunity to gain massively from the abuses. It is not the exception but the rule. And this in turn illustrates the obvious limits of using law as a solution for society's problems. The law can and does help solve problems to a point. But it is always subject to abuse and, in the end, money, power, and corrupt motives often work to undercut its effectiveness. This sort of case is Exhibit A to prove the point. |
This problem is a result of people being prevented from using the normal legal process to handle their disputes. "The limits of the law" only applies here so far the Supreme Court has ever-expansively applied the Federal Arbitration Act to override the laws of the states.