Consumer Law

Amy Schmitz on Consumer Warranty Arbitration

By Jeff Sovern

Amy Schmitz of Colorado has written Curing Consumer Warranty Woes Through Regulated Arbitration, 23 Ohio State Journal of Dispute Resolution.  Here's the abstract: 

This article proposes legislative procedural reforms accounting for the realities of consumer arbitration that have threatened and denied consumers' access to remedies for companies' violations of public, or statutory, warranty remedies under the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act (MMWA). Furthermore, the Article proposes to clarify and expand the MMWA's current dispute resolution template in order to resolve judicial disagreement regarding the template's application and foster beneficial use of finding arbitration. Accordingly, this is not a call to ban all pre-dispute arbitration clauses in consumer contracts, but is instead an invitation for more politically palatable reforms that preserve both companies' savings and consumers' access to warranty remedies through arbitration. The time is ripe for legislative reforms that account for the importance of procedural justice and temper contractors' and courts' deference to consumer form contracts.

Full post as published by CL&P Blog on March 27, 2009 (boomark / email).