Well, “thrown out” is probably not a technically correct legal term, but the result is the same. Back in 2009 a pair of disgruntled IBOs, husband and wife Kerry Murphy and Cheryl Rhodes, of Cloverdale, British Columbia, filed a class action lawsuit against Amway Canada. This of course made news with the anti-Amway brigade, but funnily enough some other news didn’t – way back in November of last year, the Court sided with Amway and said their complaint should go through Amway’s arbitration system.
I should clarify – not their complaint. In what has to be one of the least successful attempts at a class action ever, Murphy and Rhodes launched this lawsuit and promoted their class action through press releases and websites. The result? Well, in a class action, one of the tasks of the Judge is to determine if there is a sufficiently large group of people with the same grievance. In May 2011, his wife Cheryl Rhodes curiously withdrew from the class action. So we’re down to one, and in the judgement, the Judge had this to say -
the plaintiff has only provided evidence of one claim – his own for the amount of $15,000. …. Absent any convincing evidence of multiple claims or multiple defendants, the issue of the reasonableness of a partial stay is simply not triggered.
So it became his complaint. Just Kerry Murphy. No Cheryl Rhodes, and nobody else stood up to offer further claims. It gets even worse for Mr Murphy-
THIS COURT ORDERS that the defendant’s Motion to Stay and to Compel Arbitration is allowed. Costs shall be awarded to the defendant.
It seems to me highly likely that the defendants (Amway) costs for a case like this are going to far, far exceed the $15000 Murphy claimed he lost doing Amway during his four times as an IBO. I notice looking through the court records that Robert FitzPatrick provided an affidavit in support of Murphy and Rhodes. I have little doubt that anti-MLM zealots like FitzPatrick encouraged this action.
FitzPatrick and his ilk are causing real financial damage to people by leading them astray with their falsehoods and anti-mlm zealotry.
Murphy has appealed the case. I feel sorry for him.
It’s very interesting to see people criticize MLM or even someone trying to better their life with an ethical, legal, fair business model and they have anything else to offer you in return. You encourage people to stop dreaming, stop getting “brainwashed”, stop drinking the coolaid, etc… but you will never see them giving you another options or offer you a better deal. It’s very funny to me how people just like to just indulge and want to get ahead somehow where we’ve seen since the early stages of life things worth our while will require some sacrifice from us. Show me a child who never fell while trying to walk, i’ll show you a child who can’t walk! show me a person who never failed in business, took crap for anybody, i’ll show you a person who really hasn’t succeeded. So let’s stop the crusade against mlm in general shall we and let people expect better of themselves.
thank you.
Four times?
An IBO four different times, and then tries to launch a class actions suit.
That’s…interesting.
Seriously…? Why can’t you just go “live” your life instead of stealing hope from other people’s life. If someone buys a coffee shop franchise store… then doesn’t bother to show up to run the store…. should they sue the coffee shop franchisor because it fails? It’s a business like any other.
Just get over it. You failed because you gave up. The sooner you just man up and accept it… the sooner you’ll be able to get on with your life and spend time with your family.
Privately held companies are regulated for sure. But my point is why do you think there are so many cheating companies, partnership firms, doing all possible illegal activities which are also registered in the governement books. Mere registration is not enough, and as long as you are not having public equity government regulations obviously get limited – which I meant above. There are thousands of MLMs which are registered but involved in fraudulant activities. It is always easy to criticise someone’s knowledge, but why there are so many IBOs who come in with dream to get what is promised and end-up shouting against their respective MLM? One person feeling offended by a company is not a big issue, so many court battles do not come for nothing. MLM/Amway cults always think in dream. Do you mean to say all people who are so called Amway success stories were perfect on earth? I do not think so, but if the business model is designed to make larger percentage of the people fail, then we call it as a scam and this website is designed for defending one!
(1) Privately held companies aren’t subject to government regulations? That’s news to me. And all the privately held companies that are subject to all the government laws and regulations ….
(2) Anyone running a business obviously keeps all bills and “other proofs” for tax purposes. Seems to me you’re implying that people likely to fail at Amway and try to sue did not treat the business opportunity like a business. I agree there.
(3) You clearly haven’t actually read the lawsuit in question, which is against Amway, not any “systems”, and has allegations about Amway, not “systems”.
If you’re going to go around publicly calling a company a scam, I suggest you actually start reading about it, as well as accusations about it, in legitimate sources.
Well, the problem with these lawsuits is that “officially” Amway does not endorse any of those activities which are targeted by people who file suits. The “Systems” which preach financial freedom are the real culprits, but for normal people, both are same. These “Systems” follow every possible psychological methods to keep people in the dark, and force people to work against “rules” of Amway.
Nobody joins Amway or any MLM to sue it, and therefore they do not have the bills and other proofs that can hold good in a court of law. Just as anybody they join and follow the one who introduced to it.
Every pro Amway, pro MLM cultist defends by saying it is the fault of IBO to fail in the business. However, Amway does not stop collaborating with all those “Business Education Systems”. This itself vindicates the fact that Amway is run by the success of those affiliate systems and hence reason for losses to so many IBOs.
Amway being a privately held company, it is not subjected to government regulations, no one can prove that Amway is at fault at any count from a public interest litigation point of view.