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Despite a California court’s decision that the lawsuit could go forward, Breyer said the Supreme Court’s Concepcion decision in effect made the California law invalid.īusiness groups and conservative legal organizations said the decision was another lesson for state courts. At the time, California’s law did just that.īut the court’s ruling in 2011 changed the legal background, Breyer said. The fine print in the customer agreement said that contract disputes would be settled through individual arbitration rather than class actions unless “the law of your state” prevents such arrangements. The case began in 2008 when Amy Imburgia and Kathy Greiner filed class-action lawsuits claiming that DirecTV wrongly charged outsize cancellation fees - some as high as $480. “The fact that Concepcion was a closely divided case, resulting in a decision from which four justices dissented,” has no bearing on the obligation of lower courts to follow its holding, Breyer wrote.Īnd that decision made California’s protection of class arbitration invalid, Breyer wrote. It said that the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) preempts state rules that keep class-arbitration bans from being enforced. Concepcion that proved fatal to the California consumers. with writing Monday’s decision, even though he dissented in the court’s 2011 decision in AT&T v. Breyer was tasked by Chief Justice John G. “These decisions have predictably resulted in the deprivation of consumers’ rights to seek redress for losses, and turning the coin, they have insulated powerful economic interests from liability for violations of consumer protection laws,” wrote Ginsburg, who was joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Those rulings brought a sharp dissent from Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The action continues the court’s string of rulings that cut back on class-action suits and strengthens the power of companies to insist that consumer complaints must be settled by arbitration, which is generally seen as more advantageous for businesses. The court ruled 6 to 3 that its previous decisions on the subject mean that California consumers may not rely on a state law that would have allowed consumers the right to band together to sue.
HAS THE ATT CLASS ACTIO SUIT BEEN SETTLED TV
The Supreme Court said Monday that a class-action suit against satellite TV provider DirecTV over early-termination fees cannot go forward, because such complaints must be settled by private arbitration hearings.