Forced Arbitration: Killing the Right to Sue Big Companies, One TOS Agreement at a Time  So-called forced arbitration clauses say that in the event of a dispute, you won't be able to file a class-action suit. Instead, your dispute will be settled one-on-one in a private arbitration forum. These clauses are commonly inserted into terms of service agreements, which you must agree to if you want to use the product or service. For years, this practice was prohibited by law in many states. But in 2011 the Supreme Court ruled in AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion that all state laws prohibiting forced arbitration clauses are preempted by the 1925 Federal Arbitration Act. And that opened the floodgates.

SEC's Aguilar Calls for End to Mandatory Arbitration Clauses
Such clauses, which are standard in brokerage contracts and often included by registered investment advisers, require any client claim of losses to be settled in binding arbitration instead of the courts. "Investors should not have their option of choosing between arbitration and the traditional judicial process taken away from them at the very beginning of their relationship with their brokers and advisers," Securities and Exchange Commission member Luis Aguilar said in prepared remarks for the North American Securities Administrators Association's annual conference in Washington on Tuesday. "By providing investors with the ability to choose the forum in which to bring their legal claims and protect their legal rights, we enhance investor protection and add more teeth to our federal securities laws."

Proposed ‘lemon law’ for new homes would only cover vets
The measure enjoys support among residents of Schertz and Cibolo, where foundation problems with dozens of relatively new homes — attributed largely to expansive soil — have caused heartaches for homeowners and headaches for municipal officials. Both cities have moved to strengthen their building codes. Cibolo Mayor Jennifer Hartman said her city has a high number of veterans but said the protections in HB 1887 should be expanded to cover all homeowners... She has successfully solicited support for the legislation from Guadalupe and Bexar County commissioners and from the Northeast Economic Partnership, a regional alliance of eight cities that includes Cibolo.

EDITORIAL: Home buyers need relief from the state
After a disastrous experience with the Texas Residential Constructio Commission, which ended in the agency being abolished, the Legislature has done little to address consumer and builder concerns that prompted the agency's creation...The agency was so flawed it did more harm than good to homebuyers and was dissolved in 2009... Legislation proposed by Democratic Reps. Joe Farias of San Antonio and Lon Burnam of Fort Worth would offer relief for homebuyers, but it does not protect all consumers...These problems are not unique to any region, and state lawmakers need to address them. Sidestepping the issues is unacceptable.

Hightower: Corporate kangaroo courts supplant our Seventh Amendment rights
Being wronged by a corporation is painful enough, but just try getting your day in court. Most Americans don’t realize it, but our Seventh Amendment right to a fair jury trial against corporate wrongdoers has quietly been stripped from us. Instead, we are now shunted into a stacked-deck game called “Binding Mandatory Arbitration.” Proponents of the process hail it as superior to the courts — “faster, cheaper and more efficient!” they exclaim. All you really need to know about today’s process is that it’s the product of years of conceptual monkey-wrenching by corporate lobbyists, Congress, the Supreme Court and hired-gun lobbying firms looking to milk the system for steady profits. First and foremost, these fixers have turned a voluntary process into the exact opposite: mandatory. Let’s look at this mess.