NYTimes City Section Letter 8/12/07 p.9To the Editor:
In "Mandatory Fairness" (Op-Ed, July 22), Dirk Olin correctly praises the Legislature's failure to pass an immunity for arbitrators law. In my two-lawyer firm in Brooklyn we regularly speak to average working people who are victims of a civil wrong and discover that they will have no access to the legal system because at the courthouse door they must answer the question, "How much justice can you afford?"Arbitration is a good idea and a can make justice more accessible to everyday people. Putting arbitrators in a position of dependence on being chosen by the large corporate arbitration users tilts the playing field unfairly.One way to try to fix the problem would be to end the process of having the parties choose their arbitrator. If we forbid "judge shopping" in a courthouse, the same should apply in arbitrations. The arbitration system needs an arbitrary referral process, the administration of which would be subsidized by an annual fee from the volume users so that arbitrators get randomly assigned by a computer.
Robert M. Salzman
Downtown Brooklyn
