Home Court Advantage: How the Building Industry Uses Forced Arbitration to
Evade Accountability
Millions of new home purchasers each year are forced into binding mandatory
arbitration by deceptive “warranties,” and those warranties may violate the law
in as many as 17 states, Public Citizen has found. These warranties are
particularly insidious because consumers often do not learn of their details
until after moving into their new houses. The process is inherently secretive,
and arbitration firms routinely flout the few laws that require them to disclose
basic information about their cases. “The arbitration companies know that their
futures depend on keeping the people who hire them happy, and that means the
builders and warranty companies,” said David Arkush, the director of Public
Citizen’s Congress Watch division. “As a result, the system is stacked against
the consumer.”
Learn more about forced arbitration at fairarbitrationnow.org.