MARCH 16, 2015 - Charles Beard, a sergeant in the Army National Guard, says he was on duty in the Iraqi city of Tikrit when men came to his California home to repossess the family car. Unless his wife handed over the keys, she would go to jail, they said.
The men took the car, even though federal law requires lenders to obtain court orders before seizing the vehicles of active duty service members.
Sergeant Beard had no redress in court: His lawsuit against the auto lender was thrown out because of a clause in his contract that forced any dispute into mandatory arbitration, a private system for resolving complaints where the courtroom rules of evidence do not apply. In the cloistered legal universe of mandatory arbitration, the companies sometimes pick the arbiters, and the results, which cannot be appealed, are almost never made public.
That is the experience for many Americans who are contractually obligated to resolve their disputes with investment advisers or lenders in this way. But it is supposed to be different for the troops who are deployed abroad, say military lawyers, state authorities and Pentagon officials.
Over the years, Congress has given service members a number of protections — some dating to the Civil War — from repossessions and foreclosures.
Efforts to maintain that special status for service members has run into resistance from the financial industry, including many of the same banks that promote the work they do for veterans. While using mandatory arbitration, some companies repeatedly violate the federal protections, leaving troops and their families vulnerable to predatory lending, the military lawyers and government officials say. read more>>>
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