San Francisco City Attorney Sues NAF
My semi-favorite debt collector, er, I mean arbitration service, the National Arbitration Forum (NAF), has been sued by the San Francisco city attorney. The San Francisco Chronicle reports the story here. Different contributors have discussed the NAF here on Credit Slips (see here, here, here, and here), noting the high win rate for creditors and describing how the NAF acts almost as if they are a disguised debt collection agency. According to the article, the lawsuit makes very similar allegations against the NAF.
The lawsuit also names Bank of America as a defendant, which makes me wonder if that part of the lawsuit (not the part against the NAF) will be preempted under the Supreme Court's Watters decision from last spring (see here).
There seems to be a simple solution to this problem. The government maintains a list of qualified arbitrators and randomly assigns an arbitrator to each case. Each side gets three strikes. Once all strikes are used (i.e. by the time the seventh randomly chosen arbitrator has been appointed), nobody has any choice over the arbitrator any more.
Posted by: SGC | April 28, 2008 at 02:02 PM
victim of ID theft and bank employee actions. Bank's won't respond to two months of requests for documents. Took case to AAA - because I have a case against bank(s)treated badly. Told I would have to agree to a special open ended rate to bring case. So excluded from remedy. Sent complaint to State of CA Atty General - haven't heard anything. Now heading to Bankruptcy because can't get my case heard.
Posted by: linda jones | July 31, 2008 at 09:39 AM