A misleading claim about arbitrations

NY Times:

Arbitration Everywhere, Stacking the Deck of Justice

With a clause in complex contracts that few people read, corporations have insulated themselves from lawsuits and locked Americans into a system where arbitrators overwhelmingly favor business.

I have been involved in scores of arbitration over the years both as an arbitrator  and representing clients from individuals to companies.  I made it to be a practice to be fair to all sides and let them all get their say, and I found that to be the case in cases where I represented people and companies.

One of the things arbitration did do and I think was a good thing was it stopped the legal extortion that some trial lawyers engaged in where a market move against a companies stock would be used as an excuse to bring a class action  that the companies and the brokerage firms would be forced to settle for their litigation cost in defending the case.  This created a terrible waste of resources and was very unfair.  In fact class action abuse by trial lawyers was a much more significant problem than arbitration clauses.