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Terms of service gone wild

 
 
 
ksen

ksen

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http://www.thewire.com/business/2014/04/can-a-facebook-like-protect-a-company-from-lawsuits/360811/

Cereal giant General Mills recently updated its legal policies to decree that if you, the happy consumer, download any GM coupons, like any of their Facebook pages, or participate in their contests, you officially waive your right to sue them in court. Take a bow, #brands.

According to the new privacy rules posted on its website, interacting in any way with a General Mills product forbids consumers from suing in cases in which serious problems arise; for example, a mislabeled ingredient list fails to mention a product contains peanuts. Instead, these consumers will be pushed into "forced arbitration," The New York Times reports, a tactic often used by corporations to protect them from finicky juries and stricter standards of liability.
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Sounds awesome.
 
By reading this post, you waive the right to sue me for any sort of slander, libel or other defamations of your character, you child-molesting Nazi.
 
I too have updated my terms of service to say anytime General Mills accepts my payment they agree to send me $1 million.

Should be just as legit.
 
The bigger issue is the overall tort system in the US which is fundamentally broken and that needs to be reformed. Until it is I can not fault companies for trying to go around it.
Between "deep pockets" doctrine, way too "strict liability", too low a burden of proof even for punitive damages, dollar amounts freely invented by jurors, generally way too litigious culture and law schools spewing out way too many graduates, some of whom make Saul Goodman look like a boyscout, the whole system is a nightmare!
 
Derec said:
The bigger issue is the overall tort system in the US which is fundamentally broken and that needs to be reformed. Until it is I can not fault companies for trying to go around it.
Between "deep pockets" doctrine, way too "strict liability", too low a burden of proof even for punitive damages, dollar amounts freely invented by jurors, generally way too litigious culture and law schools spewing out way too many graduates, some of whom make Saul Goodman look like a boyscout, the whole system is a nightmare!
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You do of course have actual evidence that these thing are happening? Because by nearly all measures the tort system isn't as you describe it.
 
The "you can't sue us...we're BFF's!" defense. That will work right up until the first time they get sued.

aa
 
Derec said:
The bigger issue is the overall tort system in the US which is fundamentally broken and that needs to be reformed. Until it is I can not fault companies for trying to go around it.
Between "deep pockets" doctrine, way too "strict liability", too low a burden of proof even for punitive damages, dollar amounts freely invented by jurors, generally way too litigious culture and law schools spewing out way too many graduates, some of whom make Saul Goodman look like a boyscout, the whole system is a nightmare!
Click to expand...

I worked for an industrial contractor and I ran many construction projects all over the country. I was involved in many court adjudicated lawsuits and many arbitrations. I don't think that based on my personal experience with arbitration and lawsuits that I agree with you.

I think that companies settle too quickly and too easily. They believe like you do that the system is stacked against them. My company had a policy of not settling suits just to avoid the expense of defending against them. If we sthought that we were right and that the suit was just being filed in the hope that we would settle for the quick $100,000 or so we would refuse to settle. We found the exact oppose of what you are saying. We found judges who quickly recognized what was going on and who made it as hard on the plaintiff as they could.

A common one was the workers comp cases. Many workers treat workers compensation as a kind of job end bonus. They file for workers' comp when they smell the end of the work coming. Many seem to suffer the exact same injury near the end of every construction job that they work. Workers comp is no fault insurance, they don't have to prove fault, only that they suffered the injury. There isn't much that we can do about that, it is in the hands of our workers comp insurance carrier. But the payout is pretty low, especially if half of the amount goes to a lawyer. So many of the poor injured workers will file a lawsuit to try to stampede us into tossing an extra 100k their way for a little work with a word processor.

These we always take to trial. I have had lawyers tell me that I would settle eventually. I have given them a list of lawyers to call to find out that we won't settle, eventually. It was effective in about 95% of the cases. Every once in a while one would go to trial with us. In the three times that this happened we never lost a judgement.

We did lose some cases when a subcontractor sued us. These we bent over backwards to settle before a suit was filed. We needed subs and we needed the reputation that we treated subs fairly. But every once in a while there was no option, you had to go to trial. It does require that you be realistic about your position. If you were at fault you shouldn't do it. But when we did we never found the system stacked against us as you described. I was always impressed with the judges and the juries. They quickly understood what was going on. I didn't see any jury out to punish us. The juries that I saw really worked hard to understand the case. I saw juries that made a mistake, it is a human business after all, but I never saw one that was malicious as you said. I came away with a true appreciation of the fairness of the system, even the arbitration system.

I think that many companies get into trouble because they don't have a realistic view of their own position. They get naturally defensive. They convice themselves that they were as pure as the new fallen snow.There is the natural inclination of the employees involved to underplay any fault of theirs.

A contractor is allowed to make a profit on a job for example. If he grossly underbid and you as a customer knows this because all of the other bids were considerably higher and about the same you do not have the right to the work at the lower price. Even with a signed contract. The very least that any jury or arbitration board is going to do is to force you to pay the cost of the work. They might keep the contractor from a profit but finally the customer receives the value of the cost to the contractor of the work. The customer is going to make money from that investment every year if it is a production facility or is going to realize the value when they sell it. The only chance that the contractor has to make money is for the construction work.



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By accepting this $ you waive any arbitration clauses you may have presented.
 
I read an article on this one this morning. It gets better. Some restraunts apparently have signs stating that by walking through the door, you waive your right to sue.
 
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