Amy Schmitz of Colorado has written Curing Consumer Warranty Woes Through Regulated Arbitration, 23 Ohio State Journal of Dispute Resolution. Here's the abstract:
This article proposes legislative procedural reforms accounting for the realities of consumer arbitration that have threatened and denied consumers' access to remedies for companies' violations of public, or statutory, warranty remedies under the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act (MMWA). Furthermore, the Article proposes to clarify and expand the MMWA's current dispute resolution template in order to resolve judicial disagreement regarding the template's application and foster beneficial use of finding arbitration. Accordingly, this is not a call to ban all pre-dispute arbitration clauses in consumer contracts, but is instead an invitation for more politically palatable reforms that preserve both companies' savings and consumers' access to warranty remedies through arbitration. The time is ripe for legislative reforms that account for the importance of procedural justice and temper contractors' and courts' deference to consumer form contracts.
If you click on the name of the article, it should take you to the SSRN web site where the abstract of the article is posted. That web site usually has a button you can click to get the article itself. SSRN may require a license to get the article; I'm not sure. If so, you can get the article from the journal in which it's published or to be published. Another option is to email the author and ask for a copy; most will respond to such requests. Clicking on the name of the author will bring you to information about them, including sometimes their email address.
Posted by: Jeff Sovern | Monday, March 30, 2009 at 12:18 PM
how can I get a copy of the article- keen to see the impact.
JM AUSTRALIA
Posted by: JUDY McGowan | Saturday, March 28, 2009 at 07:37 AM