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."

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.

Lawmaker ignores housing issue
State Rep. John Kuempel is more interested in dogs and cats than he is in his own constituents.Homeowners all over Cibolo have been suffering from new homes with foundation failures caused by the shoddy construction practices of major home builders and we sought help from Rep. Kuempel. We asked him to file a bill in the Legislature to provide home buyers with the opportunity to have their lemon homes bought back by the builder when they have repeatedly failed to remedy significant problems... In the last days before the bill filing deadline, he wouldn't even meet with his constituents; instead he filed HB 1449, a bill to license and regulate dog and cat dealers.

Cibolo backs efforts for home buyer legislation
By a 6-0 vote, the Cibolo City Council Feb. 26 passed a resolution supporting state legislation that would provide protections and remedies for homeowners whose homes have structural problems. Cibolo is the first area city to support the home buyer protection legislation. Issues with substandard home building, Hartman said, have come up in cities across the state.  “We are trying to show it is not just a Cibolo, Metrocom, or San Antonio problem,” the mayor said. “It is way beyond our community. We need to address this at the state level and give home buyers protection.”

Critics call roofing legislation a job killer
A bill in the state Senate would require roofing contractors to be licensed and regulated for the first time inTexas...Legislators say the bill, which exempts new construction, would help consumers... a substitute bill is being written that is "a little less stringent."

Company avoids document fees
The Campbells purchased what they were told was a brand new home in October 2004, but within months after moving in, they realized the structure of the home -- and their investment -- was unsound.

Don’t Miss this Opportunity at the Texas Capitol
Attention: Tuesday February 12, 2013 at 10 AM. Your help is needed! Home Owners for Better Building and aggrieved homeowners will kick off Legislative Days and Home Lemon Law Campaign at the Texas State Capitol. Joining us at the Capitol will be Cibolo Mayor Hartman and Mayor Pro-Tem Liparoto. 

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Cibolo approves stricter home standards
City Manager Robert Herrera said the new homebuilding standards, approved Jan. 8 by Cibolo City Council, are among the strongest in the area and will help improve the quality of homes being built in the city. I think that speaks well of the city of Cibolo,” Herrera said, “in trying to protect the largest asset most of our residents will have when they live in our community.” The stricter standards require homebuilders or developers to conduct geo-technical tests on each lot and disclose to the city and home buyers the locations of home sites that are constructed on 24 inches or more of fill.

Faulty Foundations: Homebuilders exploit loophole
SAN ANTONIO - How solid is the house you are sitting in right now? For thousands of people in San Antonio… that's a troubling answer. Cracked walls and broken concrete are often blamed on the shifting soil of south Texas. But there is often another reason: shifty homebuilders. Your home's foundation may be crumbling underneath you right now. And that may be because your homebuilder took a shortcut when constructing the foundation.

BR home builder booked on felony theft, misapplication of payments
Quinn Martin, 7912 Willow Grove Blvd., Baton Rouge, was booked into East Baton Rouge Parish Prison by state attorney general investigators on 54 counts of misapplication of payments by a contractor and four counts of felony theft. Martin’s Baton Rouge-based company, QMI Custom Homes, entered into homebuilding contracts, worth a total of $1,865,477, with four different parties in 2012, the warrants say.

Four paths toward a better 2013 in business
Herewith is a short wish list about what might make it a happy one for investors, taxpayers, home buyers and consumers...Angelo Mozilo - "This is not caused by any act of Countrywide or by any act of MBIA," he said. '`It was caused by an event that was unforeseen by anyone, because if anybody foresaw it, you would never have insured it, we would never have originated the loan.

How Can You Properly Thank HUD for your New Home Foundation Flaws?
Year after year, the U.S. Taxpayer is forced to subsidize shoddy homebuilding. Homebuilders are able to squeeze more profits from each and every house because they are never held accountable by the federal government for the fraud perpetrated on homeowners.  Year after year, an incredible number of house foundations fail.

CONSUMER ALERT:National Association of Home Builders
NAHB and its lobbyist want to make sure Congress does not empower the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) with regulatory powers over its industry.   Their objective is to assure limitations of builder responsibility for use of defective products.  In a letter drafted with the usual building industry political style to the Speaker of the House over concerns with H.R. 4212, Contaminated Drywall Safety Act of 2012, which seeks to prevent the introduction of unsafe drywall, ...

High Court Finds Arbitration Clauses in CC&Rs Enforceable
An arbitration clause in a declaration of covenants, conditions, and restrictions for a condominium process may be binding on a homeowners’ association, even though such an entity did not exist when the CC&Rs were recorded, the state Supreme Court ruled yesterday.