Jamie Leigh Jones & Arbitration Fairness

Jamie Leigh Jones is taking Halliburton to arbitration. Jones served as a contractor for KBR/Halliburton at Camp Hope. She was drugged and raped by an unknown number of men. Jones' father called Rep. Ted Poe to rescue Jones from her own employers.

"We contacted the State Department first," Poe told ABCNews.com, "and told them of the urgency of rescuing an American citizen" -- from her American employer.

Poe says his office contacted the State Department, which quickly dispatched agents from the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad to Jones' camp, where they rescued her from the container.

Jones' contract forbids her from suing Halliburton or KBR in court. State Department rules, during the Bush administration, exempts contractors from being prosecuted of crimes committed in Iraq.

Jones was recently interviewed by on All Things Considered how Halliburton is using arbitration. The difficulty with arbitration is employees rarely win against their employers. Information about the rulings is not made public. Arbitration was designed to protect corporations. The little guy doesn't even enter into the equation.

Arbitration is a closed, private process, often with little or no written record. But one state, California, changed its law to require that arbitration results be publicly recorded. Public Citizen staff reviewed 34,000 California cases, and Arkush says the results speak volumes.

"Overall, consumers lost 94 percent of the time," he says.

The arbitration industry disputes that number. But it does not disagree that corporations win more of the time. The disagreement is about whether this is evidence of bias or a reflection that corporations bring stronger cases.

Mike Kelly, spokesman for the National Arbitration Forum — one of the country's largest arbitration firms — says it's the latter.

"You're not going to bring a case that you're going to lose," he says. "Frankly, you're not going to bring a case that you think you have a chance to lose."

A judge ruled Jones is allowed to take her case to court. There are many other female contracters that have been sexually assaulted. Their legal options are less certain.

"Unfortunately, my case is not an isolated incident," she said Tuesday. "With the misuse of arbitration, we have made corporate entities in this country above the law."

Rep. Hank Johnson is sponsoring the Arbitration Fairness Act of 2009. Jones has endorsed the bill. Russ Feingold has introduced an arbitration reform bill in the Senate.


Jones spoke in Washington for the Abitration Fairness Act.



Transcript of Jones' speech.