Arbitration's worst case scenario

I remember hearing about the case of Jamie Leigh Jones, the Halliburton employee who was savagely brutalized by a group of her company's firefighters.

One of those stories you can't quite believe when you hear it.

This woman was in Iraq for less than a week before being drugged, gang-raped, and assaulted to the point of disfigurment - by men who worked for her employer.

Not only were these men not prosecuted, they weren't even fired. As contractors abroad, they did not fall under US or Iraqi law.

Incredibly, the terms of Ms. Jones employment prevent her from pursuing a civil suit against her employer - she must use binding arbitration.

Yeah, as in: Sorry about what happened, but we feel you should address your alleged grievance through our private court system. We'll pick the arbitrator. It's totally fair. Trust us.

Here's a great stat from the one state that mandates disclosure of arbitration proceedings (emphasis mine):

...California, changed its law to require that arbitration results be publicly recorded. Public Citizen staff reviewed 34,000 California cases, and [Public Citizen's David] Arkush says the results speak volumes.

"Overall, consumers lost 94 percent of the time," he says.

Here's hoping Ms. Jones buries these bastards, then takes a hammer and tongs to this notion that secret arbitration can be just.