The National Arbitration Forum Blog

The use of ADR will continue to mitigate the combined effects of increased caseloads and shrinking budgets on courts' ability to resolve consumer disputes. For example, observers in New Jersey have pointed out that a higher volume of court cases has not totally clogged courtrooms because the state utilizes mediation to stem the tide of consumer disputes. About 70 percent of cases not ending in default judgment are resolved through a state-supported ADR process. The converse is also true; eliminating ADR methods further burdens courts during tough economic conditions.

Congress is currently considering the AFA, a measure that would broadly prohibit a wide range of consumer, employment, and franchise disputes from proceeding to arbitration. Instead, all such disputes would be channeled to court litigation and become part of the crushing backlog of cases pending before America's overextended courts. In July of 2006, the Boston Globe found "a court system compromised" in Massachusetts, with many debtors intimidated, steamrolled, and even threatened with jail in courts unable to properly handle the steady wave of debt collection cases. In today's worsening economic climate, it takes little imagination to see the Globe's description of debtor's courts writ large across the country if the AFA is enacted into law and compels essentially all consumer disputes to litigation.