Bay Area Houston

Most Americans don’t even know what the 7th Amendment of the Constitution is until they need to use the protections it used to provide under the Bill of Rights.

Here it is:
In Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise reexamined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.

So the bottom line is that the Bill of Rights protects your right to a civil trial like when your new home has a construction defect or your new or used car is a lemon. You have (had) the right under the US Constitution to file a lawsuit. Unfortunately that right has now been limited with many contracts requiring you to surrender your rights to the Constitution as a requirement to a purchase.

Homebuilders started using this little scheme back in the mid 90’s. If you buy a new home you will have to sign an agreement to resolve all disputes by mandatory, binding, arbitration. It is not an option. New and used car dealers require it also. If you look at your credit card agreements and cell phone contracts they have mandatory arbitration clauses. A few years ago the home insurance industry attempted to use arbitration clauses in their contracts but it was turned down by the Texas Department of Insurance and for good reason.

Arbitration has been sold as being faster, cheaper, and better than our Constitutional rights to a trial. That is not completely true. In fact the car dealers in Texas sponsored a bill to prohibit the use of mandatory binding arbitration claiming it gave an unfair advantage to the car makers. It passed but the dealers still use it with their consumers. But faster, cheaper, or better, isn’t the issue. You have no choice. If you buy the house, the car, the cell phone contract, you sign the agreement. Period.

Sometimes arbitration works out for the consumer (sometimes) but if it doesn’t then you lose. It’s binding. You can’t appeal. It’s also in secret so no one will ever know what happened. And most of all, it is mandatory. I have many stories I could tell. I

So while you were clutching your pearls and your guns you lost.

My favorite story:
Back in 1996 Mr and Mrs Cull filed a suit against Bob Perry Homes for a defective foundation. They went to arbitration. The arbitrator awarded them $800,000 to cover the cost of the home, mental anguish, and more. Bob Perry went to the Supreme Court to overturn the “binding” arbitration and actually won! So the owners had to go back to a civil trial. The jury awarded them $51 Million. I met the Culls and attended the hearing in the Texas Supreme Court.

One thing seems to be pretty sure based upon what I have heard at TribFest these past few days. We are about as close to losing our democracy as we have ever been since the civil war.

I just listened to former Congressman Adam Kinzinger raising the alarm (again) about what is happening to our country, the possibility of becoming a facist nation, Donald Trump winning again, the collapse of democracy, and possible violence in the upcoming elections. It was actually a really great hour of rehashing what we already know. We knew it last year. And possibly the year before. I haven’t heard too many suggestions on what to do besides “we have to get people to vote” as if that is a novel idea.

With a little help from a friend I began to wonder “Now what?”. OK. We are on the path of facism. Now what do we do? Kinzinger said, and I agree, that we need to have an uncomfortable coalition of the true conservative republicans (what’s left of them) and the left to work together to save our country. As he has said to real conservatives “We may not like all of Joe Biden’s policies, but we can live through them, but we (our country) will not live through another trump presidency.” He is right.

In 2024 we are going to need help from everyone in order to rid our country of this cancer called Trump. Everyone on the left and every remaining conservative on the right. We all need to quit with the bitching about [pick your particular issue] and realize we are on the brink of losing it all. If Trump is re-elected your particular issue will no longer be an issue.

FFS. Focus people.