{"id":186173,"date":"2014-04-17T19:04:00","date_gmt":"2014-04-18T00:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2014\/04\/17\/would-you-like-a-loss-of-civil-rights-with-your-breakfast-cereal\/"},"modified":"2014-04-17T19:04:00","modified_gmt":"2014-04-18T00:04:00","slug":"would-you-like-a-loss-of-civil-rights-with-your-breakfast-cereal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2014\/04\/17\/would-you-like-a-loss-of-civil-rights-with-your-breakfast-cereal\/","title":{"rendered":"Would You Like a Loss of Civil Rights with Your Breakfast Cereal?"},"content":{"rendered":"

General Mills is looking to make binding arbitration mandatory for people who take their lives into their hands when they eat their food<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Might downloading a 50-cent coupon for Cheerios cost you legal rights?<\/span>

<\/span>General Mills, the maker of cereals like Cheerios and Chex as well as brands like Bisquick and Betty Crocker, has quietly added language to its website to alert consumers that they give up their right to sue the company if they download coupons, \u201cjoin\u201d it in online communities like Facebook, enter a company-sponsored sweepstakes or contest or interact with it in a variety of other ways.<\/span>

<\/span>Instead, anyone who has received anything that could be construed as a benefit and who then has a dispute with the company over its products will have to use informal negotiation via email or go through arbitration to seek relief, according to the new terms posted on its site.<\/span>

<\/span>In language added on Tuesday after The New York Times contacted it about the changes, General Mills seemed to go even further, suggesting that buying its products would bind consumers to those terms.<\/span>

<\/span>\u201cWe\u2019ve updated our privacy policy,\u201d the company wrote in a thin, gray bar across the top of its home page. \u201cPlease note we also have new legal terms which require all disputes related to the purchase or use of any General Mills product or service to be resolved through binding arbitration.\u201d<\/span>

<\/span>\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span>

<\/span>The change in legal terms, which occurred shortly after a judge refused to dismiss a case brought against the company by consumers in California, made General Mills one of the first, if not the first, major food companies to seek to impose what legal experts call \u201cforced arbitration\u201d on consumers.<\/span>

<\/span>\u201cAlthough this is the first case I\u2019ve seen of a food company moving in this direction, others will follow \u2014 why wouldn\u2019t you?\u201d said Julia Duncan, director of federal programs and an arbitration expert at the American Association for Justice, a trade group representing plaintiff trial lawyers. \u201cIt\u2019s essentially trying to protect the company from all accountability, even when it lies, or say, an employee deliberately adds broken glass to a product.\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

You have problem with Corporate Capitalist \u2122\u00ae\u00a9<\/sup>, comrade?*<\/sup><\/p>\n

We really need to pass Al Franken’s Arbitration Fairness Act<\/a>, and put an end to this bullsh%$.<\/p>\n

*<\/sup>H\/t CZ at the Stellar Parthenon BBS<\/a> for this quote.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

General Mills is looking to make binding arbitration mandatory for people who take their lives into their hands when they eat their food: Might downloading a 50-cent coupon for Cheerios cost you legal rights?General Mills, the maker of cereals like Cheerios and Chex as well as brands like Bisquick and Betty Crocker, has quietly added …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[970,969,1012,972,985],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-186173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corruption","category-evil","category-food","category-justice","category-regulation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186173"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=186173"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186173\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=186173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=186173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}