Opinion: Blame Congress for failing to prevent Equifax’s outrageous arbitration clause

To the editor: The growth of arbitration clauses is a result of Congress’ continuing fecklessness. (“The real outrage isn’t Equifax’s arbitration clause — it’s all the others,” Sept. 12)

The federal courts established the current class-action rules in 1966. Let’s assume the rules were put in place to give numerous plaintiffs with factually similar claims a vehicle to bring those claims without inundating the courts. Let’s also assume that the rules no longer are working well.

Rather than fix the system by coming up with new and better rules to allow consumers to economically and effectively bring small claims, Congress has outsourced the job to private arbitration. One of the central jobs of Congress is to establish mechanisms to settle disputes.

Congress has abandoned its job and left us at the mercy of a private legal system set up by large corporations.

Gary Reiss, Santa Monica

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To the editor: I am really disgusted by what happened at Equifax, even though I got a message saying that the company does not “believe” my information has been breached.

Really? It does not “believe” this happened? What about a yes-or-no answer? I’m hoping that every member of Congress had his or her information stolen so that maybe they’ll do something to control the credit agencies, because the hacking of personal information for more than 140 million Americans should not be ignored or forgiven.

I’m so happy that Equifax is offering free credit monitoring for a year, though. This is such a wonderful gesture on its part. It smacks of hiring the fox to guard the henhouse.

Cal Teraoka, Huntington Beach

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