Franken Does Truth a Service
8 October 2009Franken gets testy over statisticsby Eric Roper of the Star Tribune
The senator spent the bulk of his time attempting to debunk the witness, particularly a statistic in his testimony that employees have a 63 percent chance of
[…]prevailingin arbitration compared to 43 percent in litigation.De Bernardo eventually conceded that he did not know whether $50 would be considered "prevailing" in the statistic,[…].
While Franken has at times resorted to worse intellectual dishonesty than in this case he exposes, here he is right on the mark. As Franken's line of questioning and the answer that it elicts show, the statistic in question tells us virtually nothing about whether the outcomes of arbitration would be considered equally or more favorable to employees than are the outcomes of litigation. It is, in other words, a garbage statistic.
Firms are entitled to require arbitration as a condition of doing business with them, but those who deal with these firms are likewise entitled to require that there be no such imposition as their own condition of doing business.
Tags: Al Franken, arbitration, contracts, litigation, statistics
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