TPLJ’s Class Action Preservation Project

From their press release:

Trial Lawyers for Public Justice (TLPJ), a national public interest law firm, is launching a major new project – The Class Action Preservation Project – to fight a growing attempt by corporations to deprive consumers and employees of their legal rights.

Throughout America, corporations are trying to avoid accountability for cheating and discriminating against their customers and workers by slipping class actions bans into the fine print of their form agreements. The Class Action Preservation Project will battle this growing threat to Americans’ rights.

“Corporations are trying to write their own ‘get out of jail free’ cards by slipping class actions bans into their form agreements,” said TLPJ Foundation President Thomas M. Dempsey of Los Angeles. “They hope no one will notice until it’s too late. We all have to stop them or justice can never be done.”

The press release (which I snarkily observe repeats [with minor variation] the “slipping class actions [sic] bans into their form agreements” phrase in the space of two paragraphs) also cites to Cardozo Law School Professor Myriam Gilles‘s very interesting Michigan Law Review article [PDF] on contractual avoidance of class actions.