Sobre el efecto vinculante de cláusulas arbitrales en contratos con consumidores y la jurisprudencia del Tribunal Supremo de Estados Unidos.

En días pasados leí una interesante columna de Michelle Singletary en el Washington Post. Abordaba la cuestión de la obligada sumisión de los consumidores a las cláusulas de arbitraje que introducen en los contratos distintas empresas. La legalidad de ese tipo de pactos arbitrales fue declarada por el Tribunal Supremo en distintas sentencias que la información reproduce:

“Despite the complaints from consumer advocates, mandatory arbitration clauses aren’t going away. This month, the Supreme Court ruled 8 to 1 in favor of CompuCredit, overturning a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit that cardholders could sue the company. The customers filed their class-action lawsuit after discovering that their Aspire Visa cards, which were marketed to people with poor credit scores, came with a lot of hidden fees. Consumers complained that a card promoted as having an upfront $300 credit line was hit with initial fees totaling $257, leaving them with not much of an available balance.

The key to the case was the federal Credit Repair Organizations Act, which was enacted to address deceptive and abusive credit-repair business practices. Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the majority, said the law wasn’t clear on whether consumers had a right to sue in court.

“Had Congress meant to prohibit these very common provisions in the CROA, it would have done so in a manner less obtuse,” Scalia wrote.

In the lone dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said the other justices were not considering the law as a consumer might.

“Congress enacted the CROA with vulnerable consumers in mind — consumers likely to read the words ‘right to sue’ to mean the right to litigate in court, not the obligation to submit disputes to binding arbitration,” Ginsburg wrote.

In another case last year, the Supreme Court sided with AT&T Mobility, deciding that the company could force customers to settle their disputes through arbitration”.

Pero a pesar de esa admisión por parte del Tribunal Supremo las asociaciones de consumidores vienen denunciando la desigualdad que significa la sumisión a instituciones arbitrales. Se dice que determinadas Cortes arbitrales presentan una clara tendencia a favor de las empresas y en perjuicio de los consumidores:

“A 2007 Public Citizen report claimed that arbitrators working for the National Arbitration Forum, at the time one of the largest U.S. administrators of consumer arbitrations, had ruled against consumers 94 percent of the time. Two years after that study, Minnesota’s attorney general filed suit against the arbitration company, alleging that it worked with creditors against the interests of consumers. As part of a settlement agreement and without admitting any wrongdoing, the National Arbitration Forum got out of the consumer arbitration arena”.

Algunas referencias cercanas a este problema aparecen en nuestro ordenamiento dentro del “Sistema Arbitral del Consumo”, en los artículos 57 y 58 de la Ley General para la Defensa de los Consumidores y Usuarios (aprobada por Real Decreto Legislativo 1/2007, de 16 de noviembre). Cabe citar en particular, el art. 57.4:

“4. Los convenios arbitrales con los consumidores distintos del arbitraje de consumo previsto en este artículo, sólo podrán pactarse una vez surgido el conflicto material o controversia entre las partes del contrato, salvo que se trate de la sumisión a órganos de arbitraje institucionales creados por normas legales o reglamentarias para un sector o un supuesto específico.

Los convenios arbitrales pactados contraviniendo lo dispuesto en el párrafo precedente serán nulos”.

Madrid, 1de febrero de 2012