"the courts"? More like "in the state or Federal courts in King County, Washington". This probably isn't the equivalent of a patent troll insisting on a trial in East Texas, but they definitely cherry-picked a friendly jurisdiction.
Cherry-picked? That suggests they went out of their way to arbitrarily pick something just because it had the ideal set of judges or laws. It's simpler than that - it's where they're headquartered. Pretty much every contract ever drafted picks the home jurisdiction of the drafting party as the chosen venue (if not arbitration) and chosen law, absent some specific reason to do otherwise.
Sure, Amazon is a very big player there, but by no means the only big player (e.g. MS and Boeing are also based there), and all the full procedural and substantive protections of the US and Washington judicial systems apply, aside from the right to a jury. Everything is much more restricted in arbitration.
Two things. First, a venue selection clause is basically one of the most basic formalities that is done in a contract; a lawyer not putting it in would be seen as somewhat akin to a programmer who submitted code that didn't compile.
Secondly, and more importantly for you, even without a venue selection clause, you would still have to establish that the court you sued in has personal jurisdiction over Amazon anyways. That is trivial in the jurisdiction of Amazon's headquarters, and is more difficult in any other jurisdiction. Indeed, even if you try to sue Amazon in a different jurisdiction, there would be a decent chance that Amazon motions to move to a different jurisdiction anyways. So at the end of the day, even without this clause, you'd still likely end up suing in them in King County, Washington anyways.
Can you elaborate? Amazon’s headquarters is in King County, it seems perfectly reasonable that they’d fall into their local jurisdiction. How is that cherry picked?
It's not like I have a solution, but with a sufficiently large enough Big Employer Company in a town/city, it all but guarantees a plaintiff against won't get a fair trial when damn near everyone in town or the city is 2 or less degrees of separation from a job at that company.
In Boston the city employee to resident ratio was one of the lowest in the nation and while Thomas "Chuckles" Menino cultured an air of being a friendly grandpa patriarch who couldn't keep track of which team name corresponded to which sport...reality was that city workers were an ersatz campaign worker army, infamous for being fiercely loyal, and demanding loyalty from family and neighbors. "Are you voting for Not Menino? Because if you do, I'm gonna lose my job, Bill." There were newspaper stories about families nearly getting into fistfights over this stuff.
Menino stepped down, Marty Walsh stepped up (and promptly got involved in some scandals involving his staff pushing for union work on construction sites.) He's been appointed federal secretary of labor, so the deputy mayor suddenly was in charge. This current election cycle seems heavily focused on identity politics, social justice, etc.
It's a subject some politicians are more than happy to discuss because it sidesteps how massively wasteful and incompetent the city workforce is; nothing gets done unless you're on good terms with the "neighborhood liaison" or know someone. It's a miracle they manage to even keep their office chair seats warm. When nearby Somerville (which is basically the municipal version of the Italian mob) is more functional, that's not a good look...
