eSignature Licitness for Arbitration Agreement in United States

How to eSign a document: e-signature licitness for Arbitration Agreement in United States

[Music] hi this is kevin baldwin from baldwin and vernon attorneys at law in independence missouri today i want to talk to you about arbitration agreements and what they are and how you might be subject to one without even knowing it first let's start with the american legal system one of the things that the americans the colonists our founding fathers asked for in the declaration of independence to the king when they filed that complaint against the king they said they wanted trial by jury they went trial by jury for civil claims that was one of the demands in the declaration of independence later when they made the constitution of the united states the seventh amendment to the united states constitution is the right to a civil jury trial for any controversy in excess of twenty dollars now back then twenty dollars was a lot of money but you have that right under the law in a civil matter you have had the right to bring your case before a jury and have the facts determined by the members of your community unfortunately in the last several years arbitration agreements have been employed by companies to try and subvert that process and here's what i mean by that arbitration is where you have agreed contractually to give up your seventh amendment right you have agreed to give up your constitutional right and to have your claims against your employer submitted to a third party arbitrator now you might say well why is that a bad thing isn't that like a judge no it's not like a judge arbitrators are private individuals and private organizations the nice thing about a judge is a judge usually is either elected or he's on that bench for life which means he is unbiased he is straightforward and anybody that comes before him all they have to do is file their filing fee to file their claim with the court and that could be a few hundred dollars and once you do that you get to start in what is the engine of our justice system in america arbitration is different now companies have foisted arbitration on people by claiming oh it's cheaper it's easier no it's neither one of those things well it is cheaper but it's cheaper for the company meaning that you are far less likely to get a significant recovery from an arbitrator than you are from a jury a jury may hear your facts and be outraged and say we cannot allow that in our community we want to send a message so we're going to give you x number of dollars for your actual damages for your lost wages and your emotional stress and then we're going to hit them with punitive we don't want them to do that anymore arbitration takes that all away now you might still be able to get the puno damages but the problem is with arbitration itself oftentimes it is a shortened version of a trial also the arbitrators list themselves most of them were former big defense firm people and they often don't give large awards in fact one of the problems that i think myself and other planets lawyers have with them is that they rely on those companies to pay them more often than not part of the arbitration agreement is that the company will pay for the arbitrator sounds great but do you really want to put your fate of your claim and your rights in the hands of somebody who's being paid by your former employer no you don't in addition those arbitrators want to keep arbitrating now who's going to have more arbitrations you are the company the company will because they have claim after claim after claim so then it just begs the issue of can the arbitrator truly be fair and impartial or are they trying to curry favor with this company in curry favor they might either find against you or in an egregious case they might award damages in your favor but they might be a lot different than what a juror would give you they might be a lot less now there's always a few outliers where an arbitrator has awarded a large sum of money it's been my experience when i see those arbitrations that company will usually never agree to use that arbitrator again now let's talk about arbitration for a minute how did you end up in arbitration how do you not know you're an arbitration well the problem with that is arbitration uh has been used in the past by unions union arbitration but that's a good thing because unions engage in what's called collective bargaining and they have power the power of a union most of them their claims are are taken through the arbitration provision however certain things are taken out of arbitration such as any type of sexual harassment claim or age discrimination complaint that you might have against the employer in general that is not handled by arbitration it can go through arbitration or you can take it to a court of law that's fantastic also professional athletes often have an arbitration clause in their contract regarding damages if they're cut or they're injured and how much money's owed them whether or not they have an escape clause or the or the team tries to get rid of them for uh for non-conforming actions such as domestic violence things like that and that's fine those are all covered under arbitration because the party is equal bargaining more often than not if you're an employee just a regular employee at a large corporation you signed an arbitration agreement at the time you came on board the company and many times you don't even know what you signed what you agreed to sign at that time was to waive any and all claims that you might have under the title seven of civil rights act of 64 for sexual harassment gender discrimination race discrimination national origin discrimination religious discrimination or age discrimination or the adea or even disability discrimination under the ad triple a also it goes to state causes of actions as well oftentimes it is any employment claim you could make under the law you have now waived the right to file a lawsuit and you're in arbitration again the problem with that is most people don't know that's where they're at in addition secrecy can be an issue and we learned about that most recently in the last several years with the harvey weinstein issues whenever he had a complaint lodged against him a lot of times those happened in arbitration and the people were never allowed to say what happened or what he was doing more famously i think was gretchen carlson fox news fox news made all of its uh people sign arbitration agreements now she actually ended up outside of arbitration but the problem is the process is so secret that we'll never know how her lawyers got her out of the arbitration agreement but she has now taken a stance against mandatory arbitration for employees problem is is if you have an arbitration agreement it does maturely affect the value of your case also whether or not you can bring your case where you can bring your case and when you can bring your case so one of the things you want to find out first and foremost even before you file a charge of discrimination is do we have an arbitration agreement look to your policy manual oftentimes your policy manual will refer to it now the funny thing is you generally don't have a contract for employment here in america 99 of the workers in america do not have a contract or not under a contract more often than not they're what's called at will employees and i will tell you right now the employers don't want you to have a contract because then you can enforce your rights against them usually the only contract you have with your employer might be an arbitration contract and as many as 60 million people in this country today have an arbitra arbitration contract and the majority of those people are unaware what that really means because you just sign off on it when you start your job and it's put there with your w-9s or your w-2s or your other tax forms your 1099s whatever you're signing with them or i've received the policy manual there you go and you may not even realize that you've signed that arbitration agreement but the courts have said including the united states supreme court has said that that is okay that you are agreeing to arbitration even if you didn't fully understand it you had the opportunity to decide what it was it's your job to figure out whether or not that maturely affects your employment or your rights so in closing arbitration bad i think it's bad um however if you're subject to arbitration you still need to be represented and you still need the assistance of a lawyer to help you in your discrimination complaints especially in how to select an arbitrator how to present your case in arbitration and how to do discovery because under the general rules of litigation regarding employment if you're in state or federal court you're you do get discovery the difference is in arbitration sometimes you are not allowed discovery how can you put your case on if you can't gather the evidence because most of the evidence is held by your employer once again this is kevin baldwin at baldwin vernon if you are in need of an attorney please give us a call if you have an arbitration agreement please give us a call let us take a look at it thank you very much have a good day [Music]