AT&T Wants Location Data Class Action Arbitrated

An AT&T customer is fighting back against the phone and internet company’s efforts to end a data privacy class action lawsuit in arbitration.

Plaintiff Tyler Morrison filed his AT&T data sharing class action lawsuit in April, claiming that the telecom unlawfully shared consumer data with third parties without their consent. Now, the company is attempting to have the claim ended in arbitration.

According to the company, federal and state courts have upheld their arbitration agreement as “consumer-friendly” and the company argues that Morrison’s claims should be handled through arbitration.

However, Morrison disagrees. In his opposition to the motion to compel arbitration and stay litigation, Morrison says that if the claims are ended in arbitration, the court would be denying all 100 million AT&T customers “any redress in a public forum,” and would be effectively shielding the hearings from the public.

Morrison calls AT&T’s arbitration clause “unconscionable,” in contrast to the company’s claims that it is consumer-friendly.

According to Morrison, the data sharing class action lawsuit should continue so the public can know if AT&T did indeed violate federal law by selling CPI and CPNI to third party data aggregators.

Morrison notes that in AT&T’s argument in favor of arbitration, AT&T correctly stated that courts have interpreted the Federal Arbitration Act to “favor enforcing written arbitration agreements after it is proven that a written arbitration agreement exists between the parties.”

However, Morrison says that this point is moot because to honor this favor of enforcing written arbitration agreements, the Court must first determine that AT&T has the authority to enforce the arbitration agreement between AT&T and himself.

Morrison then goes on to say that AT&T should not have this authority because the arbitration clause is “procedurally and substantively unconscionable,” problems which render it unenforceable.

The plaintiff states that AT&T’s clause is unconscionable as defined by Maryland law because customers did not have a meaningful choice in deciding whether to accept or reject the terms of the arbitration agreement.

Morrison claims that the arbitration agreement is extremely unfair, citing an earlier decision made on another case by the Court of Appeals of Maryland.

The AT&T data sharing class action lawsuit argues that all of AT&T’s customers faced a similar situation, because none of them were offered a meaningful choice that allowed them to either accept or reject the arbitration agreement with AT&T.

Morrison states that the other three major cell phone carriers — T-Mobile, Verizon, or Sprint have similar clauses, so he could not have simply gotten out of AT&T’s arbitration clause by choosing to do business with another carrier — he says he was forced into AT&T’s agreement or would have been forced into another similar agreement to receive the essential phone service.

Morrison is represented by Cory J. Zajdel, Jeffrey C. Toppe, and David M. Trojanowski of Z Law LLC.

The AT&T Data Sharing Class Action Lawsuit is Tyler Morrison v. AT&T Mobility LLC, Case No. 1:19-cv-01257, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland.

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