In a piece for Forbes (5/31, 10.34M), Diana Hembree writes that “after decades of hard work, naval electrician Michael de Vita had saved enough to retire,” but “to his shock, his life savings disappeared in the largest securities fraud scandal the country had ever seen,” and “in a double whammy, his mother lost her late husband’s million-dollar nest egg to the same fraud.” According to Hembree, “de Vita was able to recover his money in class-action lawsuits that recouped $11 billion for veterans and other investors cheated out of their savings by investment advisor Bernie Madoff and others, according to John Kamin of The American Legion,” but “this spring the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission signaled it may reverse decades of bipartisan policy by reconsidering shareholders’ right to such class action suits.” SEC Chairman Jay Clayton “has said that when companies offer shares to the public in an IPO, the SEC will consider approving clauses or bylaws that require shareholders to seek forced arbitration for their grievances – a process heavily stacked in favor of corporations. Such clauses would scrap investors’ right to band together and sue for fraud.”
Gretchen Carlsen argues against forced arbitration. In a piece for Fortune (5/31, 3.91M), Gretchen Carlsen writes that “last week, the #MeToo movement got a wake up call from the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Epic Systems Corp v. Lewis,” which “allows companies to make forced arbitration a condition of employment, and prohibits workers from taking collective legal action against employers.” According to Carlsen, “it’s bad news for the 60 million Americans subject to forced arbitration, and even worse for the one in three women victimized by workplace sexual harassment,” but, Carlsen argues, “this is not the end of #MeToo or the empowerment revolution kicked off by my 2016 settlement with Roger Ailes.” Forced arbitration “is a sexual harasser’s best friend: It keeps proceedings secret, findings sealed, and victims silent,” but “of the thousands of women I spoke to while writing Be Fierce, the vast majority who complained about harassment never worked in their chosen careers again.”
