Imagine living in a country where you can be stripped of your rights at any time by corporations, your boss, the government, or any old millionaire or billionaire that wants to. They can steal from you, maim your son, sexually assault your daughter, murder your parents, and your pet, and you have no right to take them to court. Instead, you have to go to a secret court where you are guaranteed to lose. And not only that, you will also be bankrupted and have everything you own taken from you in the process.
00:04:09.080And speaking of apps, I want to start today with a story about Uber.
00:04:12.920And I'll let Tiffany Cianci, who we met in my first episode on Candace, explain what happened with Uber last year.
00:04:19.980If I told you that ordering a burger or a pizza on a food delivery app could cost you to forfeit your constitutionally protected rights, would you believe me?
00:04:28.500Well, my friends, I'm here to show you how Uber is proving to the world today that Disney walked so that they could run you over with a truck, literally.
00:04:38.380And there's not a damn thing you could do about it.
00:04:42.340It was just a couple of months ago that the entire world became enraged when we learned that Disney was trying to stop a man from suing them in court when his wife was wrongfully killed in a terrible incident involving an allergy at one of their restaurants.
00:04:57.060And they claimed the reason he had no right to go to court was because years before he had signed up for a trial for Disney+.
00:05:04.680Now, neither you nor I would ever have thought that signing up for a trial for a TV watching program would somehow not keep us safe in a park where we go on rides that have physical threats.
00:05:16.480But that is exactly what Disney alleged and what they were arguing in court.
00:05:20.040Throughout the Disney debacle, I went on a series of podcasts and interviews where people were saying, there's no way this can happen.
00:05:36.660My friends, let me introduce you to Georgia and John McKinty.
00:05:41.000Now, Georgia and John were sitting in the backseat of an Uber when it ran a red light and T-boned another vehicle back in March of 2022.
00:05:48.460Their injuries were horrific, with Georgia sustaining cervical and lumbar spine fractures, rib fractures, herniations, traumatic injuries in her abdomen, her pelvic floor, and John suffering a fractured sternum, fractures to his left arm, his wrist.
00:06:03.520They both had severe whiplash and a host of other serious injuries.
00:06:07.560It was more than a year before Georgia could work.
00:06:09.940They racked up massive medical bills and eventually got an attorney who sued the driver and Uber on their behalf.
00:06:16.780Now, what came next was Uber trying to force the couple into forced arbitration, citing Terms of Services' click-wrapped box they had checked, apparently, when they ordered a pizza years earlier.
00:06:29.280Except they said, we never ordered a pizza.
00:06:43.720However, Uber appealed that decision and the judges agreed with the company that its Terms of Service were enforceable and forced them back to arbitration.
00:06:54.940We'll get into other examples of how corporations and private equity will go to ridiculous lengths to trap you into arbitration agreements that you never agreed to later.
00:07:03.740But every single one of these agreements is you signing away your rights to due process in a court of law.
00:07:09.580And it's becoming so popular these days among corporations and private equity who are buying up so many different parts of our world that now, more and more, as an American, you have rights only if you stay in your house and don't go out to do anything.
00:07:23.020Except all the things in your house tend to come with arbitration agreements, too.
00:07:26.880And more and more arbitration agreements are being included in lease contracts themselves.
00:07:32.000So be sure that nothing goes wrong inside your house either, or you'll wind up in secret court anyways.
00:07:38.120And if you do happen to wind up in arbitration, just know that an American is more likely to be struck by lightning than win a monetary award in forced arbitration against a corporation.
00:07:49.600More Americans are struck by lightning each year than win monetary awards in arbitration against corporations.
00:07:55.360So let me tell you a story, and we'll check off our first crime from our list earlier, sexual assault.
00:08:03.100In 2017, BuzzFeed News ran a story about more than 180 women who had been sexually assaulted while receiving massages at the nation's largest massage chain, Massage Envy.
00:08:13.520They have more than 1,200 locations across the U.S.
00:08:17.160When you check in for your massage, you sign their terms and conditions.
00:08:20.480You don't actually read them, but if you did, you would see that they include a forced arbitration clause where you agree to settle any claims or disputes against Massage Envy in secret arbitration.
00:08:31.580Some of the stories that have eventually come out are horrible, and I'm not going to read them to you.
00:08:39.100And although Massage Envy makes great corporate PR statements like, quote,
00:08:44.100Massage Envy is committed to promoting a safe environment for members, guests, and service providers at each of our 1,200 franchise locations nationwide,
00:08:52.260we urge anyone that experiences anything other than a safe, quality massage to report it immediately to the franchise location so that it can be investigated.
00:09:02.680In many of the cases, there are allegations therapists were allowed to remain employed or were shuffled to another Massage Envy location.
00:09:10.820Fortunately, tragically, there were eventually so many individual cases of sexual assault that some of the women started to break their silence and the news started to pick up the story.
00:09:20.380But, despite all that breaking in 2017, Massage Envy continues to face this same problem.
00:09:26.600Or, maybe we should call it a feature.
00:09:28.760In 2022, one of these instances actually led to an arrest and a trial in court after a woman was raped and contracted herpes.
00:09:37.100Once she came forward, they found out other women had been assaulted by the same therapist and he had continued to work at Massage Envy.
00:09:43.880So, it may seem like the justice system prevailed and they got the guy.
00:09:48.140In one instance, in one specific county, a couple women were lucky enough to find some amount of legal recourse.
00:09:54.400The other 180 or quite likely more cases, not so much.
00:09:59.460And we don't even have any understanding of how many the total number might be because of forced arbitration agreements that everyone's signing when they check in for their massage.
00:10:08.820Not to mention that 90% of women never even report sexual assault because they think, for whatever reason, that no one will believe them.
00:10:18.820Now, take into account that more than half of women in the workplace are subject to forced arbitration clauses in their employment contract.
00:10:26.820And you start to get a sense of how much sexual assault is hidden in secret courts every year.
00:10:32.180That's not to mention the staggering number of cases that are silenced before they're even brought because plaintiffs rightly realize that they have virtually no chance of winning and will be bankrupted in the process of fighting.
00:10:44.740And you have virtually no chance of winning because arbitration is not like regular court.
00:10:50.020It's a for-profit racket where the rules are explicitly written so that there are no rules.
00:10:55.620I think it's pertinent at the outset here to show you where this secret court system comes from in the first place.
00:11:02.200This is directly from the U.S. Code, and this is just the first page of many that define arbitration.
00:11:07.920But I'm just going to read some of this text so you can get a sense for what we're working with here.
00:11:11.660Yes, if that language sounds outdated, that's because it is.
00:11:37.460The FAA, Federal Arbitration Act, was first enacted in 1925.
00:11:43.000Don't even get me started on the Commerce Clause in the Constitution, which is the basis for the government allowing themselves all up in your business all over the place.