How Can I Sign Ohio Banking Arbitration Agreement

How can i industry sign banking ohio arbitration agreement

we rollin welcome to the radio broadcast of cover your assets I'm attorney David Meyer managing partner of the law firm of Meyer Wilson this radio show shines light on investment fraud and its impact on Main Street investors we're the voice of the individual investor Main Street versus Wall Street's what I like to say today we're going to talk about a vote in Congress this week that will impact every single person listening to this radio show if you have a checking account savings account this will impact your pocketbook I was a it was a law that was just passed or the Senate just passed on Tuesday night while many of us were sleeping and it's what I refer to as the big banks lawsuit immunity act this week Wall Street won big in Congress and consumers lost big time it's right around Halloween and this is pretty spooky news this will definitely scare you I look forward to talking about in this show and as a result of the Senate bill that was passed late on Tuesday night lawmakers made it just about impossible for us to sue banks and other financial companies for deceptive business practices or fraud we're going to get into this quite a bit but if you cannot listen to this entire show now we put the radio show up on our law firms website on Monday mornings and the law firms website is www.pevs.com that's the website for my law firm and if you haven't listened to this show before I want to introduce myself again my name is David Mayer again I'm the managing partner of the law firm of Meyer Wilson our firm is devoted solely to investor claims and class actions and the investment fraud lawyers at Meyer Wilson chased down the bad financial advisers and brokers across the country who lie cheat and steal from their clients we have a saying at Meyer Wilson there's only one thing to do with a crooked stockbroker and that's straighten them out our consumer class-action lawyers pursue large-scale consumer fraud in state and federal courts across the country over the past 18 years we've recovered over 350 million dollars of cash for our clients again our website you can learn more about our website at www.investmentpitch.com for many years virtually all banks credit card companies student loan lenders auto lenders and other financial services company have included it as boilerplate small print language in their customer agreements a provisions that forced consumers to waive their right to go to court waive their right to a jury and force them that if they have any complaints against the company they must pursue those in private secret binding arbitration these agreements that are stuck in small prints in the customer agreements also ban the customer from joining with other customers who might have similar problems and pursuing a group or a class-action lawsuit they're called pre dispute arbitration agreements in class action waivers and they've really become ubiquitous they're basically in in every form agreement with most financial services companies and they're they're called forced pre dispute arbitration agreements because you are agreeing so to speak although most people don't even realize realize that these provisions are stuck in the in the agreements but they're called pre dispute arbitration agreements because you agree to give up your right to a jury into a court prior to the time there's actual or dispute these are not post dispute agreements that are called pre dispute arbitration agreements and they're in such small print and they're buried most of them online you click that you agree without either reading them but they've become extremely popular for banks and other financial institutions because it basically gives them a free pass to you know take advantage and operate in these fraudulent schemes at times and there's no real legal remedy for consumers because most people if they see a five dollar charge on their bank statement or a two dollar charge or a fifty cent charge on their bank statement they may not realize it and then if another person realizes it and wants to pursue it in court by banding together these previous two pre-dispute arbitration agreements prevent them from doing that so so that's been going on for a long time and as a result of the mortgage crisis that led to the Great Recession Congress formed an entity called the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and they formed it this was Congress formed as a result of the financial crisis they formed as a watchdog group it was part of the dodd-frank financial regulatory reform that passed in 2010 I believe and the bureau was designed to be independent and that new law the dodd-frank law called upon the Consumer Financial Protection Board also known as the CFPB to study the use of mandatory arbitration clauses so now we fast forward from 2010 to when the CFPB was formed - let's go to May of 2016 the CFPB issued a proposed rule prohibiting pre dispute arbitration agreements in consumer finance services agreements so this proposed rule would prohibit mandatory pre-dispute arbitration agreements in consumer agreements for items such as checking accounts savings accounts credit cards student loans payday loans automobile leases and other types of consumer loans now there are some exceptions in this proposed rule for example there was an exception for brokers that were governed by the SEC and FINRA we'll talk about that a little bit later but the this arbitration rule was the result of more than five years of careful research and open deliberate deliberation by the CFPB and there's a study they issued and you can find it online the CFP CFPB found that blocking these group lawsuits or class-action lawsuits made it nearly impossible for most consumers to get justice and relief for the wrongdoing it basically prevented the consumers from holding these big financial institutions accountable for their wrongdoing and the reason why even it makes sense for example and I mentioned this earlier nobody is going to pursue a claim over ten dollars but if you band together you know that can add a lot of money I've always said it's a lot easier to defraud 1 million people out of 50 dollars that it is to cheat one person out of 50 million dollars but either way that's a 50 million dollar fraud and with these pre-dispute arbitration agreements and class action waivers these types of 50 million dollar frauds these $50.00 frauds on a million people nothing nothing happens because nobody goes to an arbitration this private secret arbitration that's governed by an arbitration Institute that most people don't even aren't even familiar with nobody does that and since they can't go to court and band together then that type of fraud what you know is just let's go so let me give you another example because this is something we hear all the time at our law firm at Meijer Wilson and it involves the what's known as the telephone Consumer Protection and in an effort to address a growing number of telephone marketing calls for razzing caused by telemarketers Congress in 1991 passed what was not what's known as the telephone Consumer Protection Act the TCPA and a TCB a restricts telephone solicitations or telemarketing and it restricts the use of telemarketing through the use of automated telephone equipment so robo calls this law passed in 1991 puts significant restrictions on companies using telemarketing efforts through the use of robo calls and we all get these on our cell phones it was specifically designed primarily for cell phones we all get these calls even today on our cell phones for robo calls I mean I get several week and and and the TCPA was designed to prevent that so let me give you a specific example let's say you open up a bank account at a major national bank when you open up that checking account and you want to posit a couple hundred dollars in there you signed an ostomy agreement in that custom agreement generally will prohibit you as I mentioned at the outset of the show will prevent you from ever pursuing or joining a group or class-action lawsuit for any type of claim you may have so let's say you start getting calls a robo calls and we we know what they re you pick up your phone and there's a delay of couples couple seconds just the computer that's dialing millions and millions of phone calls a day that realizes with a computer that you've picked up your phone there's a couple second there might be a beep and then someone comes on the phone everyone knows that's a robo call and if you are getting that call on your cell phone and if you don't consent to that call then that call may be a violation of the TCPA so let's go back to the situation where you have the account with the bank and that bank also has a credit card division so the credit card division gets your name and your cell phone number because you have an account at the bank and they call you using a robo dial to solicit you to market a new service another credit card for example and you say look I don't want this credit card no thank you and by the way I'm revoking consent I do not want you to call me with these computers and robots on my cell phones it's annoying and I don't want it so please stop well let's say they continue to call you with the Robo calling device on your cell phone and that's a violation of the TCPA and for every violation of the TCPA under certain circumstances that company is responsible for a $500 penalty now but because you've signed the customer agreements open up the checking account that agreement right now will prevent you for pursuing any class action so even though that company is making millions of calls to millions of people some times a day many of those folks are getting calls on their cell phones where they and consented to those calls or revoke consent then that company is violating potentially violating that federal statute millions of millions of times and there's absolutely no accountability in court because who was going to find a lawyer to file an arbitration in the secret you know arbitration process to file a claim for $500 nobody's going to do that and we get calls weekly at our firm saying I am getting these robo calls from such a tuts bank or such a touch financial institution I don't want them to keep calling I begged them to stop they will not stop when I tell them there's really nothing you can do about it because you are prohibited with the pre-dispute arbitration clause and class action waiver you are prohibited from pursuing or joining a class-action suit so because of that these companies have no incentive to stop doing it doesn't matter that there's a statute prohibiting it doesn't matter that we are all annoyed beyond reasonableness to pour these calls because there's nothing we can do about it in the legal system so that's how that's a real-life example and know all of us are getting these annoying cause a lot of them are are scams but many of them are from reputable companies that are trying to solicit a service and there are rules to prevent those kind of calls from going to your cellphone's if you don't consent but because of these pre dispute arbitration provision and class action waivers there's very little we can do about it oftentimes so the CFPB rule which would have gone into effect in 2018 if Congress would not have would not have overturned it this week would prevent financial institutions like banks and credit card companies from striking lawsuits filed by wronged consumers so therefore these companies would have been prevented from putting in these boilerplate forced arbitration and class action waivers in their agreements from from their customers it would not have banned a lot of the opposition from Wall Street and the financial services companies their lobbyists were arguing that this would now ban arbitration but this rule would not have banned arbitration but unlike the current system the consumers would then under this new rule they'd have the option to voluntarily agree to the form after the dispute arose no one thinks about any of this stuff sometimes lawyers of course we do because this is what we do for a living but most folks who sign up for a credit card or an auto loan they never think about where what form they may choose to use to pursue any complaints because no one thinks or no one hopes of course that they're ever going to have a problem at the outset it's always a post dispute issue so this rule hadn't been allowed to go into effect would have still permitted consumers if it was such a great process then consumers would have chose would choose to use it after the dispute rose and so this rule what rule was proposed by the CFPB in May of 2016 it was supposed to go into effect in 2018 and then Congress first the house and then the Senate proposed a bill to repeal the rule so the rule would not go into effect but every consumer group was in favor of the rule banning forced arbitration and class action waivers the military member groups the senior citizen groups the civil rights group every consumer group I did the research in every group that represented consumers was in favor of the rule by the CFPB we're going to take a short break we come back we're going to talk about the bill in particular and who was really behind this bill that passed under the cover of darkness this week in the Senate we'll be right back I'm David Meyer with cover your assets all right about eleven more minutes okay very good all right ready to roll burn - okay here we go welcome back I am David Meyer with covering your assets I'm the managing partner of the law firm of Meyer Wilson and we're talking about a new law that was passed by the Senate under the cover of darkness I've got a blog I wrote about this the morning after the law passed you could find it on investor claims calm that's October 25th the title of my blog is Congress votes in the middle of the night to give big banks immunity from lawsuits this is the Senate vote it was 51 to 50 and many of us were asleep during the vote but this vote repeals the rule put in place by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in fact it was so close that pence vice-president pants had to come in and put in the the tie vote so it was 51 to 50 there were two Republican senators that voted against the bill which means they voted to let the CFPB rule go into effect but as I mentioned prior to the break every consumer group was in favor of this rule banning forced arbitration and class action waivers in fact a poll that was done by the Republican leading American future fund found that 67% of those surveyed were in favor of the rule proposed by the CFPB banning these clauses including 64% of Republicans so all consumer groups were in favor of the proposed rule from the CFPB banning these clauses all the consumer groups were in favor of it the majority of the voters Republican and Democrats were in favor of the rule but despite that the veldt the bill was voted on a Tuesday night and it was entirely this bill that was voted on Tuesday night by the Senate to kill the rule was entirely and exclusively supported by the finance industry and it wasn't 80/20 90/10 it was 100% exclusively financed and supported by the finance industry they spent the financial industry when this rule was proposed in 2016 Wall Street lobbyists the lobbyists for the finance companies really went to war they spent millions of dollars lobbying Congress to overturn the CFPB rule this has been an effort for a couple years now on behalf of Wall Street lobbyists to overturn this bill again it was a late night vote it was 5050 with vents with pence vice president pants breaking the tie so now this we'll allow big banks to enjoy absolute immunity from customer lawsuits of any kind it's a huge win for Wall Street lobbyists so there's now no incentive to prevent abuses such as the the Equifax data breach or Wells Fargo opening up millions of fraudulent accounts without permission there's now no incentive for this not to happen because there's not going to be any remedy in court I'm going to talk about the Wells Fargo Equifax data scandal because I think a lot of people are familiar with the fact that over the last few years Wells Fargo opened up I believe three and a half million fake accounts there they actually opened up fake accounts with their customers with their cus omers did not authorize did not know about three and a half million accounts so what happened when that came to light well consumers their customers were upset wanted to pursue claims for the damages caused by having over three million accounts opened without their approval Wells Fargo's say sorry you can't sue us because you signed a prenup arbitration agreement in class action waiver that was where the response and you can see in Congress I think it was the CEO of Wells Fargo in testimony standing by this pre dispute arbitration provision as a way to defeat a legal recourse for opening up three and a half million fake accounts so what's interesting in this case with Wells Fargo is they got so much heat because it was such a big deal that Congress got involved and ultimately in this instance I believe Wells Fargo caved and said okay we're going to allow we're going to waive the mandatory pre-dispute arbitration waiver and class action waiver and we're going to let this case go to court there was a class action I think they agreed to pay something like a hundred and fifty million dollars but that's a perfect example that was a huge fraud and Wells Fargo just agreed to waive that provision but banks are not going to do that on cases that don't get that kind of publicity it was only because in that instance they got so much publicity that just from a PR standpoint they couldn't withstand all the the bad press so they said we know everyone hates these pre dispute arbitration agreements we know that the majority of the public can't stand them and because they were finally shining light on them in this one case we're gonna we're gonna let it let it go to court and let the local legal process work but could you imagine if it hadn't got that much press and all the other frauds and all the other deceptive practices they're out there that don't get that kind of fraud that 150 million dollars that was paid back to the consumers in any other case it's not gonna happen those frauds will continue as so long as these pre dispute arbitration and class-action agreements are allowed to stand because they're never gonna see the light of day no one's going to pursue these cases in court let's talk about the Equifax data breach that was something like a hundred million accounts that were exposed and again there's a class action waiver and pre dispute arbitration agreement so these are just two examples of cases that lawyers like me see every day and only a couple of them see the light of day because they're so massive but every day there are 5 million 10 million 20 million 30 million dollar scams that impact millions of American and they all get some - of doubt of the carpet because of these puted pre dispute arbitration agreements and it's a real shame that the Wall Street lobbyists won and consumers lost big time because this could continue now because there's no incentive to stop it so what happens next you know we saw in the past two years just these big big tunes these scans with Equifax and Wells Fargo so now that the the Senate has passed this bill the house had passed one a while ago the president is expected to sign the bill to completely repeal the CFPB's rule and also prevent a similar rule in the future so they basically killed it so now these pre dispute arbitration agreements are going to stand these financial service agreements and so what's gonna happen next time there's a fraud I mean it's gonna happen again we see it all the time but what happens the next time when there's a big enough one that catches the attention of the nation and then we're gonna look back at this vote are there gonna be any consequences I mean I don't know we'll see but this is an example of the type of fraud that completely gets washed away and uncovered and it's going to be really interesting in six months or twelve months we see another fraud like the Wells Fargo scam or the Equifax data breach when the customers are going to be prevented from pursuing any legal recourse because of these pre-dispute mandatory arbitration agreements so you know stay tuned on that I want to talk briefly because if you listen to my show you know that a lot of the work we do is on behalf of individual investors who've suffered losses as the result of fraud or misconduct by their broker investment advisor or brokerage firm and cases that we pursue on behalf of individual investors who have claims against their brokers do go through a separate type of arbitration process through the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority FINRA so a lot of the work we do is FINRA arbitration so on the one hand you know we spend a lot of time and energy representing folks we represented over a thousand individual investors all throughout the country and claims against their brokers in FINRA arbitration and and that is that has been the way since a Supreme Court decision in 1987 in my opinion though FINRA arbitration is much different than the arbitration for individual consumers that might have small claims for five or ten dollars because no but on the consumer side what we've been talking about for most of the show nobody's going to do that so it's not all the time that arbitration is super bad is that nobody is going to actually employ or utilize that venue because nobody's going to hire a lawyer over $10 or $100 or $500 but if you go to your broker and entrust them with your life saving and they steal it or they recommend an inappropriate investment and you lose your life savings well that obviously is a large enough amount that's worth hiring a lawyer a lawyer like me that's going to represent you on a contingency fee we're going to advance the expenses and we're going to pursue it through the mandatory FINRA arbitration process that process is also binding but the process has been improved a lot as a result of you know the the work that lawyers like me have done to improve the process the selection of arbitrators is a very is a decently vetted process the the exchange of documents through discovery that has been the FINRA arbitration process has been worked on and improved upon and dissected over the last twenty or thirty years and it's a decent system there are certainly flaws and lawyers like me are working hard to continue to improve arbitrators selection the diversity of the arbitration pool and there's a lot of issues that were dealing with but it's it's a lot different than a typical consumer situation that might have a small claim that's prevented from pursuing a court case because the claim may be too small so I wanted to make sure that that everyone our listeners understood the difference between the work we do on behalf of individual investors in FINRA arbitration as opposed to the problems in the consumer arbitration context with respect to the financial services so I hope you enjoyed the show if you missed part of the show again it'll be on our website Monday morning and investor claims calm you'll be able to listen to the entire show along with prior shows as well so until next time thank you for listening I am David Meyer at the law firm of Meyer Wilson signing off on career assets thank you excellent all right hope that wasn't distracting I was going for three perfect I appreciate everybody that have