As mentioned in an earlier post on this blog, the U.S. Supreme Court will soon consider whether companies can ban class action lawsuits in the fine print of their contracts with consumers when it hears argument in AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion. In its briefs, AT&T Mobility (“AT&T”) asks the Supreme Court to, in effect, create a federal law to gut state consumer protection laws.
AT&T knows that there have been many times over the years where it, and other cell phone and long distance phone companies, have been caught overcharging or otherwise cheating large numbers of consumers in ways that only involve a small amount of money for the individual consumer but which add up to many millions of dollars for the consumers combined. In lots of cases in the past, consumers have filed class actions against AT&T and other phone companies under state consumer protection acts that stopped the illegal behavior for all of the customers, and won refunds for all of the customers. Continue reading “Will the Supreme Court invent a federal law to gut state consumer protection laws?”