Press Release

Washington, DC – Corporations are increasingly using forced arbitration against their customers to take away their legal rights, with claims surging 467 percent year over year.

In 2021, consumers were more likely to be struck by lightning than win a monetary award in forced arbitration; in 2022, that win rate was slashed by a factor of five to just 0.7 percent. Despite individuals banning together via “mass arbitration” in an attempt to address the power imbalance created by forced arbitration, these claims had an even more abysmal win rate of 0.2 percent – underscoring the need for legislative and regulatory action to stop corporations from using this rigged system to evade accountability.

“Click to accept” or “click through” agreements contain forced arbitration clauses trapping consumers into a private, secret system where the corporation writes the rules and picks the arbitrator. Consumers never knowingly consent to forced arbitration. By the time they are scammed or defrauded, their hands are tied, and they are trapped simply because they have used a product or signed up for a service, making justice unreachable.

“Now more than ever corporations are able to hide misconduct and fraud behind forced arbitration clauses,” said AAJ President Sean Domnick. “Corporations continue to create new hurdles and costs to initiating a case, which means most consumers will never be able to practically seek accountability—this is because the entire goal of forced arbitration is to dissuade consumers from ever filing a case.”

Click here to read the full Forced Arbitration by Corporations Surges to Unprecedented Levels report.