> Uber ToS requires you to accept arbitration

First to be clear, I am speaking in general terms. I know nothing about this case, I don't want to know anything about this case, but I have just scrolled through people's thoughts on arbitration here and thought I should offer a general alternative perspective. To be clear I'm not interested in blindly defending Uber either. So here goes...

Arbitration clauses will be found pretty much everywhere. They come under the auspice of Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) of which the top-three ways are: mediation, arbitration and ombudsmen.

The whole point of ADR is that:

1. there are only so many courts in a given jurisdiction and there are only so many judges in any jurisdiction, and both courts and judges tend to have large backlogs.

2. added to which going to court is expensive and time consuming. And if the other side has deep pockets and you loose, you end up paying the hourly rates of very expensive lawyers in smart shoes that the opposition employed because 600+/hour/person is peanuts to them.

So that's where ADR comes in. Its more informal, its cheaper to do and the costs side if you loose are kept under control.

Because ADR is an informal environment, this can also work in your favour. The timetable and parameters are flexible and the final agreement reached can easily be better than whatever a judge might have handed down after listening to both side's lawyers bicker.

Of course, in most jurisdictions nothing stops you from going to court first if you like. But most modern-thinking judges tend to take a dim view if you turn up in front of them without having given some sort of ADR a go first.

Is it perfect, of course not. But neither are the courts. Your outcome in court is effectively dependent on both side's lawyers and what judge you get, so you having a better outcome in court is not necessarily guaranteed !

We all know the talking points from big corporations about why they force everyone into arbitration out of the goodness of their hearts. We don't need it regurgitated as if it's the truth.

> Of course, in most jurisdictions nothing stops you from going to court first if you like. But most modern-thinking judges tend to take a dim view if you turn up in front of them without having given some sort of ADR a go first.

But Uber's terms explicitly force consumers to waive their right to go to court if they want to access Uber's service.

Arbitration is fine. There's no reason people shouldn't be allowed to freely engage the services of an arbitrator.

What people take issue with is forced arbitration. The problem isn't really about the arbitration at all, the problem is the part where you lose access to the courts. That should not be allowed.

> Of course, in most jurisdictions nothing stops you from going to court first if you like. But most modern-thinking judges tend to take a dim view if you turn up in front of them without having given ADR a go first.

“Nothing is stopping you” - most TOSes mandate arbitration, and unless you have something particularly egregious and a sympathetic judge the first thing on the docket is going to be a Motion to Dismiss.

And agreed. For better or worse. My minor stepdaughter was involved in a car accident. No liability was found, and the other party tried to sue her in Small Claims court which, in my state, you can’t sue a minor in (as no attorneys are permitted, so you’d have a minor representing themselves). The judge noted this, and told the other party “if you want to sue you will need to sue her parents or guardians”… and then tried to push us into binding arbitration anyway.

Which of course got my insurance company upset and involving attorneys on procedural/constitutional law, about challenging the judges authority to push us into that given there was no jurisdiction to hear the case in the first place so there was none to enforce us into arbitration (which in itself was an entirely separate farce, including where the “neutral” arbitrator berated me and said “I don’t understand why, as a person, if you know your insurance is going to be the one paying, you don’t just agree to give them all they’re asking for.”).