Synovus Financial Corp.

Supreme Court Backs Credit Card Binding Arbitration

The U.

S. Supreme Court dealt at least a partial setback Tuesday to credit card customers seeking to break free from the bonds of binding arbitration, the often business-friendly procedure that blocks consumers from taking their complaints to court.On an 8-1 vote, the court reaffirmed that one of several, sometimes conflicting, federal laws permits credit card companies to enforce the binding  arbitration clauses once universally found in credit card agreements and still present in millions of those contracts.The ruling runs counter to a recent trend in which several leading banks and other credit card issuers, including JPMorgan Chase , Bank of America and Capital One Financial Corp., dropped the arbitration requirement from their consumer agreements or announced that they will not enforce it.Those actions by credit card issuers came amid intense pressure from some state officials and many consumer advocates, few of whom were pleased by the Supreme Court's action Tuesday.'Disappointing...

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