Alternative Dispute Resolution
Consumers Won More than Half of Arbitrations Studied
Posted Mar 12, 2009, 12:09 pm CST
By Debra Cassens Weiss
Arbitration of consumer disputes is not the business friendly forum that some critics charge, according to the results of a new study by Northwestern law school.
The study of 301 cases handled by the American Arbitration Association found that consumers won some relief in 53 percent of the cases they filed and recovered an average of $19,255, according to stories in the Chicago Tribune and the Wall Street Journal Law Blog. Business claimants won relief in about 84 percent of their filed cases and recovered an average of $20,648, according to an executive summary by the school’s Searle Civil Justice Institute, which conducted the study.
The average time to resolve cases was about seven months, and the average fee for consumers seeking less than $10,000 was $96.
Lisa Rickard, president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's Institute for Legal Reform, told the Wall Street Journal Law Blog that the report “helps prove that arbitration continues to provide consumers with fair, inexpensive and unbiased access to justice.”
Paul Bland, a staff lawyer at Public Justice, cautioned that the report focuses on only one arbitration firm. “I see companies shopping for the arbitration firms that will rule for them the most often,” he told the Law Blog.
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