Jams
No Justice with JAMS

On February 23, I signed a retainer agreement with a former attorney which called for binding arbitration in the event of any dispute with him. The agreement also stated that my rights to any discovery during an arbitration process would be waived. Because of this, one would logically conclude that any protests made regarding exhibits presented by this attroney would be scutinized by the arbitrator. However, at JAMS, exactly the opposite occurred.

I sued the attorney for malpractice and selected JAMS as the arbitrator. The matter was heard and decided over a two day arbitration hearing at the JAMS office in Orange, California. Prior to the arbitration, I requested copies of the attorney's phone records, knowing that phone communication would be an issue during the hearing.in keeping to the arbitration agreement, the arbitrator rejected my requests.

Two business days prior to the arbitration, the attorney and I exchanged exhibits which were to be used during the arbitration. The attorney provided five, poorly copied, incomplete emails, printed from a computer sometime in 2008. The full dates were missing. My case ended and my file was returned to me in meaning that these emails were printed for the purpose of the arbitration. Of the five emails, two were complete and utter fabrications. Protests were made over the validity of the two emails to the arbitrator, which repeatedly fell on deaf ears.in a court of law, persons are held to a code of evidence.in arbritration, the arbitrator can and will allow that which he chooses.

All the evidence pointed to these two emails being fraudulent and all common sense was ignored by the arbitrator. On the second day of the arbitration, the attorney produced another fraudulent exhibit, even through the arbitration rules call for the production and viewing of all exhibits prior to the start of arbitration. The arbitrator allowed the exhibit as it is his right to control the arbitration process as he choses.

The new fraudulent exhibit was a photocopied, handwritten timesheet. The attorney submitted this as proof he had placed a call to me at a crucial time in my case. Prior to the arbitration, I submitted full, complete and detailed copies of all phone records as proof that no contact was made by the attorney. After the first day of the arbitration, the attorney fabricated the timesheet after reviewing my detailed phone records and landing on a single incoming call from an unavailable caller. The attorney testified that his office phone was neither restricted nor blocked and that he made an attempt to obtain his phone records, but just couldn't get them.

Believe it or not, the arbitrator ruled in the attorney's favor. He actually took the word and a handwritten document over actual phone records. All the hard evidence pointed in the other direction, however, all the hard evidence was completely ignored.

Since the arbitration, I hired a computer forensic examiner, to view the two fraudulent emails. Being that the copies are just that, it is nearly impossible to disprove their validity. As such, the forensic examiner consentrated her search on the purported attachment to one of the emails, a settlement supposidly from the defense in my case. It was discovered that the attachment was created more then an hour after the email containing it was sent. Thus proving, not only the email was fraudulently created, but the settlement the attorney sent me during my case, was created by him.

With truth and evidence now in hand, the only recourse in binding arbitation is to file a petition to vacate an arbitration award, which I have filed and am now awaiting a hearing date.in the event that the award is reversed, with statistics not being in my favor, I will be once again thrown back into arbitration where common sence and logic are not tools used by the arbitrators at JAMS and where truth and justice is not their goal.

After obtaining the evidence I needed, I contacted JAMS to discuss the procedure in the event the award is vacated. I advised the individual that had been assigned to my case that there was now clear evidence that fraud had been committed during my arbitration. This too was met with deaf ears. JAMS simply didn't care.

The arbitrator in my case was paid a rather handsome figure for ignoring the evidence and what appeared to be simply, his day dreaming. He will not be returning the funds he received for ignoring the job he was hired to do.instead, I will be asked once again to pay for the services of an arbritrator with rules to be made up as we go along.

The "claimed" intent of an arbitration clause is to find a cost effective and quick path to resolving a dispute, when in fact, just the opposite is true. Selecting JAMS as the arbitrator was a terrible mistake.in my case, not only did they ingore the truth, they rewarded a criminal.

Company: Jams
Country: USA
State: California
City: Los Angeles
Address: 707 Wilshire Blvd. 46th Floor
Phone: 2132539778

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