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consumer alert

Last April, the U.S. Supreme ruled that corporations can use forced arbitration clauses to deny people the right to band together in class actions.

In practice, the ruling means if a company decides to illegally charge an extra $10 to its 10 million customers, there is virtually no way for the customers to hold the company accountable for stealing $100 million.

Contracts that use the fine print to ban class actions require each consumer to file his or her claim individually — a burden that virtually no one takes on for a small amount of money.

This is corporate mugging on a grand scale.

The Arbitration Fairness Act (S. 987, H.R. 1873) would fix this injustice. The Consumer Mobile Fairness Act (S. 1652) would specifically fix the problem in contracts for millions of American cell phone and mobile device users.

Don’t let Big Business rig the justice system.

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