View: Samsung ordered to pay arbitration fees for 36,000 biometric privacy plaintiffs

The Chicago federal judge who just ordered Samsung Electronics to arbitrate Illinois biometric privacy breach claims by nearly 36,000 Samsung device owners is not the first judge to note the irony of compelling a corporate defendant to abide by the terms of the very contract it imposed on consumers.

But U.S. District Judge Harry Leinenweber is one of only a handful of judges – and apparently the first outside of California – to back up his order compelling arbitration with a ruling that the defendant must pay millions of dollars in arbitration fees to launch the cases. (California is unique because state law imposes sanctions on mass arbitration defendants that refuse to pay fees.)