> 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.”).