Verizon Customer Fails to Avoid Arbitration Over Data Dispute

Verizon Communications can arbitrate a customer’s class action complaint that it has been selling her data without her permission in violation of the Telecommunications Act of 1996.

The plaintiff cannot “avoid the consequence of her arbitration agreement” with Verizon, Judge Colleen McMahon of the US District Court of the Southern District of New York said Tuesday. She could’ve chosen not to do business with Verizon, but instead signed its contract.

• “I view as unfortunate the fact that, over the past half century, so many disputes among commercially unequal parties have been diverted from courts of law to private ‘courts,’” but ...