There are two types of damages, actual and punitive, and for actual damages you set the value of the claim by .. adding up all the damage caused. This is how you can get really big numbers like $145bn. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1118202/
(That size of damages terrified various other companies with liability problems, who quickly got the law changed to minimize the range of things they could potentially be held liable for as a result of their products: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protection_of_Lawful_Commerce_... )
That's not arbitration though, that's a jury trial of a class action lawsuit. The UDAP law that the parent responded talking about (that I learned of today) specifically entitles you to up to three times the amount of damages you're claiming for, plus legal fees.
The flip side is it prevents aggregating all damages into a single class claim.
If everyone who had a claim actually arbitrated every time, it would be much more expensive for companies to handle than settling an entire class of claims all at once. The problem is companies know most people will not make a claim if it takes them any significant effort, and if the reward amount won’t be very large.
It becomes especially awkward when those companies have their bluff called, get an onslaught of arbitration claims, and then try to backpedal into a class action. “We were just using an anti-class action language because we thought that would scare away litigation but now we want it” is not a super compelling story to have to tell a fair judge.
This news article [0] is more recent. It seems they settled for more than 3x the figure in the original article. They also agreed to injunctive terms, the most noteworthy (to me) being "Bar Intuit from requiring users to re-enter data when they upgrade from a free product and then return to the free product".
Is there a limit on the amount of time a company can delay arbitration once you file? Is there any sort of "default judgement" mechanism that can be used against companies that drag their feet?
There are two types of damages, actual and punitive, and for actual damages you set the value of the claim by .. adding up all the damage caused. This is how you can get really big numbers like $145bn. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1118202/
(That size of damages terrified various other companies with liability problems, who quickly got the law changed to minimize the range of things they could potentially be held liable for as a result of their products: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protection_of_Lawful_Commerce_... )