Consumers Seek to Block T-Mobile Arbitration in 5G Case

The court should deny T-Mobile’s attempt to arbitrate legal claims stemming from the company shutting down its Sprint 5G network without properly alerting and compensating consumers, plaintiffs told the U.S. District Court for the Western Washington in a Nov. 3 filing (docket 2:22-cv-00843).

Plaintiff Juan Luis Garcia Moreno represents a class of Sprint customers who were allegedly affected by the network shutdown following T-Mobile’s purchase of Sprint in 2020. Garcia Moreno filed the lawsuit in June, alleging T-Mobile engaged in deceptive trade practices by shutting down the network “without adequately addressing network incompatibilities for numerous devices.” That includes the Samsung Galaxy S10 5G, LG V50 ThinQ 5G, HTC 5G Hub and OnePlus 7 Pro 5G, as well as several tablets, security systems and other devices.

T-Mobile filed a motion to compel arbitration, stating Garcia Moreno agreed to arbitrate claims “like this on an individual basis.” Garcia Moreno is challenging the “substantive conscionability,” or fairness, of the T-Mobile arbitration agreement. He asked the court to find the arbitration agreement “substantively unconscionable” because the company tried to eliminate a consumer’s right to seek an injunction in favor of protecting the public interest under Washington state’s Consumer Protection Act (CPA).

“The right of an individual to seek a public injunction to protect the public interest is a crucial substantive right under the CPA, central to its purpose,” the filing said. Case law makes clear that forcing litigants to waive substantive rights and remedies is “unconscionable,” Garcia Moreno argued. The U.S. Supreme Court and Washington state courts have recognized the Federal Arbitration Act can’t be used to “immunize arbitration clauses that significantly reduce or eliminate statutory remedies,” the filing said. Through a private right of action, CPA plaintiffs act as “private attorneys general in protecting the public’s interest,” Garcia Moreno said.

T-Mobile will likely cite the Supreme Court’s decision in Concepcion, where the high court found that a California “decisional rule forbidding class action waivers in most consumer arbitration agreements was preempted by the FAA because such a rule 'stands as an obstacle to the accomplishment and execution of the full purposes and objectives of Congress,’” the filing said. But this case doesn’t apply to the procedural constructs the Supreme Court laid out regarding the FAA, the filing said. T-Mobile isn’t attempting to streamline the process, which was the basis for the Concepcion decision, the fling said: The company is trying to truncate or eliminate consumers’ core statutory rights under the CPA. Because T-Mobile is trying to strip Moreno’s right to represent the public interest, the “Court should find that the agreement to arbitrate is substantively unconscionable and deny Defendant’s Motion to Compel,” the filing said.