Say you bought a cell phone. Suppose the outfit that sold it to you said you'd get it for "free". Say also the seller — let's call it AT&T — billed you 7.75 percent of what the phone would've cost if you'd purchased it at retail. How would you feel about the freeness of the phone?
Not so good, Blawgletter guesses. And yet the seller — which we must still refer to as AT&T — insists it did nothing wrong.
Alright. Fine. Okie dokie.
But AT&T takes things further. It also adds to its contracts with customers like you a clause that bars you from suing on behalf of anyone else. The attempt has worked in some states but seldom in federal court.
Which fact seems to have persuaded AT&T to add a sweetener, at least in the Golden State. If you, the California customer, convince the arbitrator to award more than AT&T offered in settlement, you get a smacking $7,500. But the district court and Ninth Circuit didn't accept the AT&T argument. The latter said, in holding the class ban unconscionable under state law:
The $7,500 premium is available only if AT&T does not make a settlement offer to the aggrieved customer in a sum equal to or higher than is ultimately awarded in arbitration, and before an arbitrator is selected. This means that if a customer files for arbitration against AT&T, predictably AT&T will simply pay the face value of the claim before the selection of an arbitrator to avoid potentially paying $7,500. Thus, the maximum gain to a customer for the hassle of arbitratng a $30.22 dispute is still just $30.22. . . . As a result, aggrieved customers will predictably no file claims — even if the odds are that after the letter-writing and arbitrator choosing they will get a $30.22 offer — thereby "greatly reduc[ing] the aggregate liability" AT&T faces for allegedly mulcting small sums of money from many consumers.
Laster v. AT&T Mobility LLC, No. 08-56394, at 14397-98 (9th Cir. Oct. 27, 2009).
