Despite Disney, 'Infinite Arbitration' Not Going Away

Disney recently backtracked on its attempts to force arbitration on a widower who who filed a wrongful death lawsuit but, it said, had agreed to not take the company to court when he signed up for a free trial of its streaming service. This about-face, which followed a wave of bad publicity for Disney, may be the exception, not the rule, according to a law professor who specializes in arbitration.

David Horton calls these agreements "infinite arbitration" clauses because they force consumers to arbitrate all claims against a company—even claims that have no connection to the original agreement. And the University of California, Davis, professor says infinite arbitration claims are everywhere now, especially tucked into the online terms-of-service agreements that consumers rarely, actually read.

On this episode of our podcast, On The Merits, Horton talks about how the Supreme Court opened the door for these types of broad arbitration clauses, and why he thinks the issue could be heading back there in the future.

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