Real Genius

Actually funny.

U.S. District Judge William Alsup plainly suspected that DoorDash wielded the arbitration agreements signed by its workers as weapons to discourage the workers from filing claims.

His suspicions were aroused when the company, facing thousands of arbitration claims, refused to pay its share of the filing fees. That prompted the arbitration agency, the American Arbitration Assn., to cancel all the arbitration cases.

For decades, Alsup observed in a blistering order issued Monday, employers have forced arbitration clauses upon their workers. “DoorDash, faced with having to actually honor its side of the bargain, now blanches at the cost,” he wrote.

Instead, Doordash is trying to force the workers to sue it in court, a much more costly and burdensome process. “Irony upon irony,” Alsup wrote, in ordering the arbitrations to proceed. “This hypocrisy will not be blessed, at least by this order.”