Court Opinion

ID: 9625960
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 07:57:08.014431+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:59:26.253207
License: Public Domain

*147Justice MITCHELL
dissenting.
One effect of the majority’s election to honor and enforce forum selection clauses in contracts is to allow private parties to determine whether North Carolina’s courts will exercise their jurisdiction over cases involving citizens of this state, often when those citizens are most helpless. For this and other reasons, I believe that forum selection clauses are contrary to public policy and should not be recognized by this Court as being valid and binding. See generally Francis M. Dougherty, Annotation, Validity of Contractual Provisions Limiting Place or Court in Which Action May he Brought, 31 A.L.R. 4th 404, 409-414 (1984) (citing cases).
I fear that under the majority’s ruling today, this state’s citizens will be left helpless to protect themselves from forum selection clauses in many contracts. Admiralty cases involving international contracts between sophisticated multinational business entities, such as M/S Bremen v. Zapata Off-Shore Co., 407 U.S. 1, 32 L. Ed. 2d 513 (1972), are not controlling on the issue of state law presented here and are not at all persuasive authority in the more ordinary run of contract cases. For example, contract terms printed in product warranties usually are offered to consumers on a take-it-or-leave-it basis, with consumers having neither an opportunity for bargaining nor the power to bargain. See, e.g., Lee Goldman, My Way and the Highway: The Law and Economics of Choice of Forum Clauses in Consumer Form Contracts, 86 Nw. U. L. Rev. 700 (1992). Further, the release from forum selection clauses that the majority promises if a party carries the burden of demonstrating that a challenged clause is the product of fraud or unequal bargaining power is entirely theoretical and illusory. Id. The very citizens who have the least bargaining power and are most apt to be taken advantage of will also be the citizens who will have the fewest resources available for attempting to carry their burden of proving that a forum selection clause is the product of fraud or unequal bargaining power or is otherwise unfair or unreasonable.
“In sum, economic, political, and social interests favor nonenforcement of forum selection clauses in consumer contracts.” Id. at 730; See also John McKinley Kirby, Note, Consumer’s Right to Sue at Home Jeopardized Through Forum Selection Clause in Carnival Cruise Lines v. Shute, 70 N.C.L. Rev. 888 (1992). By its opinion in the present case, the majority elects to place tens of thousands of our citizens at the mercy of those who will take *148advantage of them by the use of forum selection clauses. In my view, it does so without substantially promoting any desirable counterbalancing public purpose.
For the foregoing reasons, I dissent.
Justices Frye and Webb join in this dissenting opinion.