Curing Consumer Warranty Woes Through Regulated Arbitration
61 Pages Posted: 21 Sep 2008
Date Written: September 19, 2008
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.
Keywords: contract, consumer, dispute resolution, consumer law, commercial law, arbitration, statutory remedies, warranty remedies, Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act, MMWA
JEL Classification: K12, K41
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation