Why Financial Firms Want to Keep You Out of Court

By Elizabeth Dexheimer, Bloomberg News

When consumers sign up for a new credit card or checking account, often buried in the fine print of the contract is an arbitration clause. Invented by corporate lawyers, it typically requires consumers to resolve disputes privately through arbitration, not the courts, and bars them from joining together in so-called class-action lawsuits when they feel they’ve been wronged. Over the last decade, these clauses have seeped into millions of financial contracts, according to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The bureau found the clauses were harmful to consumers and on July 10 issued a regulation restricting ...