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In the US, can a state court issue a subpoena against, arrest, try, convict, or jail the US president? The US president has the authority to grant a pardon to a person other than himself in respect of a federal crime, even before the person has been indicted. There has also been some discussion over whether he can issue a federal self-pardon. But he does not have the right to issue a pardon for a state crime. My question is this: what authority do state criminal courts have over the US president? In particular, could they issue an enforceable subpoena against him, order his arrest, try, convict, or jail him?	With regard to subpoenas, the Supreme Court's recent ruling in Trump v. Vance makes it clear that states can issue subpoenas to sitting presidents. (The case in question involved a subpoena to a third party for the president's records, not to the president himself, but the opinion makes it clear that the court would apply the same reasoning in either situation.) The questions of what actions a state may take to enforce such a subpoena if it is not complied with, or of arrest / indictment / trial by a state, have never arisen and thus have not been resolved by courts.	To start, for this hypothetical to happen, a whole bunch of decisions contrary to sanity have to happen: The Vice President and President Pro Tempore do not invoke the 25th Amendment to temporarily remove the President from office Congress does not issue Articles of Impeachment The President does not pardon himself The District Attorney decides to prosecute the sitting President rather than waiting for his term to be over There are probably more I'm missing. With that out of the way, in theory there's no law that says a President cannot serve while in prison, and simply being a felon does not disqualify him from the Presidency. The judge might order that while he was still serving as President, he serve his time under house arrest - he'd constantly be surrounded by police officers, so it would be pretty difficult for him to run, and it would keep him as as able as possible to keep performing the official functions of the office. The judge could also just defer his sentence. Putting him in regular prison would have serious national security implications, both in terms of protecting his person and in allowing him to effectively serve as Commander-in-Chief, so the government could probably make a compelling case against putting a sitting President in prison. According to this Senate Report, the President will also continue to receive Secret Service protection once he leaves office, so long as he is not removed by Impeachment. There doesn't seem to be a provision against that protection if the President is in prison, so the Secret Service would be obliged to find a way to protect him while he is in prison. Most likely this would mean he would be put in an isolated prison wing, possibly with Secret Service protecting his section.	Perhaps. The relevant law is assembled into notes on 3 USC 102. The original act of 1963 defines President-elect in this manner: (c) The terms 'President-elect' and 'Vice-President-elect' as used in this Act shall mean such persons as are the apparent successful candidates for the office of President and Vice President, respectively, as ascertained by the Administrator following the general elections held to determine the electors of President and Vice President in accordance with title 3, United States Code, sections 1 and 2. There is no specific statutory provision directing the Administrator of the GSA to ascertain who is that President-Elect. The administration is apparently taking a position similar to that taken by the Clinton administration, that states determine who has been elected, and the states have not officially determined who has been elected: nor has a candidate conceded. If a court orders the Administrator to make the ascertainment, I expect that the administration would appeal the ruling up to the Supreme Court. This letter, addressed to the Administrator, gives the legal rationale.	Different people have suggested different things as to what constitutes, "the unitary executive theory". The US Supreme Court is not likely to simply adopt such a theory in general terms. It will, instead, rule on a specific case that comes before it, and state the principles behind that ruling. There are a number of Supreme Court rulings saying that a President must abide by laws limiting presidential authority, perhaps the most famous is Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 343 U.S. 579 (1952) in which the Court rules that the President did not have authority to seize steel mills to put a stop to a labor dispute that was allegedly endangering national security during the Korean War. Congress had passed a law providing a different method of dealing with such situations, and President Truman did not follow the method established by that law. The President has broad power over the operations of executive branch agencies, possibly including the right to order an investigation halted for whatever reasons seem good to the president. If such a case came before the courts and they supported the President, presumably they would hold that the President's actions did not constitute obstruction of justice or any other crime. I find it highly unlikely that the Supreme Court would rule that the President may "act against the rule of law", but they might rule that in particular cases the law implicitly grants the President power to take certain actions that others may not take.	Short answer: Maybe. Long answer: The answer here varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. Normally, the process goes like this: The application for the warrant is usually made under seal or otherwise in secret to prevent the target from trying to hide evidence. So before it's been executed, you can pretty much forget about accessing it. After the warrant is executed, though, there are differing answers to this question. The Supreme Court gave us a test for this kind of question in Press-Enterprise II, which held that the First Amendment gives us a qualified right to access court proceedings and records. The right applies when public access makes sense using the "experience and logic" test: Has the Anglo-Saxon experience typically been to provide access, and does logic tell us that access has beneficial effects for the judicial process? But lower courts have disagreed about how to apply the test. The Eighth Circuit allowed access to warrants in a defense-industry corruption investigation in In re Search Warrant for Secretarial Area-Gunn, but the Ninth Circuit denied access in to warrants in the same investigation in Times Mirror Co. v. U.S. I think, though, that the Ninth Circuit decision would have come out differently if the investigation had already ended. Just to mix things up further, the Fourth Circuit has also allowed access, but based on common law principles of access, rather than the First Amendment. That was Baltimore Sun Co. v. Goetz. Same in the Second Circuit: In re Application of Newsday, Inc. Individual states also have their own rules, but those are of course subject to limits under the First Amendment. When I wanted a copy of a warrant, I would go first to the clerk of the court whose judge signed the warrant. I would tell them what I was looking for, and I pretty much always got it. I would rarely submit a FOIA request, especially if the warrant was issued by a federal agency. Those requests sit in a queue for months or years without being reviewed, and the agency virtually always denies the request anyway. When law enforcement agencies and courts have copies of the same record, you're almost always going to have better luck getting access from the courts, which are set to open by default. If the court denies the request, try again after there's an indictment, and again after the trial.	The Indiana constitution is phrased differently to the US constitution in such a way to exclude pre-emptive pardons: (Indiana) The Governor may grant reprieves, commutations, and pardons, after conviction, for all offenses except treason and cases of impeachment (US constitution) he shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment. (my emphasis) The Indiana constitution explicitly states that the Governor may grant pardons after conviction and does not give the Governor the power to grant pardons before conviction. By contrast, the Supreme court has judged that the President may issue pardons after commission, that is after the offence has been committed, and potentially before the arrest, trial, conviction or punishment. They can't issue pardons for crimes not yet committed. The scope of pardons issued by the Governor is limited; this power is subject to regulation by law issued by the Legislature, and (if there is no regulation giving sole power of pardon to the president) the Legislature may form a council to review pardons. The council's advice and consent must be sought. In fact, the Legislature appoints the Parole Board to this role. So the Parole Board gives advice and consent to pardons issued by the Governor. In practice, therefore, the Parole Board makes these decisions, as Governors rarely refuse pardons recommended by the Board. Generally, though, pardons are rare, Mike Pence granted only three during his tenure as Governor. References: Constituion of Indiana Guide to pardons in Indiana	The President has the power under Article II of the U.S. Constitution to faithfully execute the laws enacted by Congress. Any power that the President has to regulate international travel of non-U.S. citizens arises from statutes enacted by Congress that give the President (or the executive branch more generally) that authority. Immigration laws, in practice, give very substantial discretionary authority to the President, and public health laws probably also do so. I don't have chapter and verse to cite to you regarding which specific statutes provide that authority, without considerably more research, but that is the general idea. The primary statute regulating immigration is the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 (and more generally, Title 8 of the United States Code). It is not uncommon in the United States for there to be disputes over how much discretion a President has under a particular statute in the United States, because unlike parliamentary systems of government, the execution of laws and the passage of law is split between different branches of the federal government in the Presidential system of the United States, rather than being fused with a Prime Minster who serves at the pleasure of the legislature.	The president has the power to issue an executive order, which must either be supported by the Constitution or by some act of Congress. If a president were to apparently overstep his authority, someone would have to sue him and the Supreme Court would decide whether he did have that authority. For example, Truman thought that he had the power to nationalize steel mills, but Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 343 U.S. 579 determined otherwise. There have been few cases where courts have overturned an executive order. Matters of immigration are not outside of the executive power of POTUS. Obama issued a dozen orders aimed at stopping deportation of illegal immigrants. The matter ended up in SCOTUS, which tersely declined to overturn the lower court ruling (that he didn't have that power). Congress can restate the law to clearly take away a power (assuming it is not a constitutional power, and immigration is not a constitutional power / duty). In this sense, the president can "write laws" the same way that various federal regulatory agencies can "write laws", or how courts can "write laws". The subject matter of such laws is limited, so while an act of Congress is limited only by the Constitution, executive-branch law has further underlying statutory limits. Only Congress can unilaterally pass a statute: the power to write law is available to pretty much all branches of government. As for immigration statutes, 8 USC 1182 provides the general hook for such a presidential decree – the code would require major rewriting to clearly take away that power. It has to be remembered that Congress creates laws and cannot enforce them: the executive branch enforces them. Any law whatsoever restricting immigration therefore involves the president.
Tenant is asking to repair a built-in closet. It was fine when they moved in I own a small studio apt. in a co-op building located in Brooklyn, NY USA. My tenant, who's been renting this studio for ~ 3 years, is asking to repair one of the built-in closets. This closet was fine when this tenant moved in. I made a few repairs to it before signing the lease. Based on the photo they provided, it is very hard to tell whether this problem has been caused by wear-and-tear or any intentional / unintentional damage. My question is -- Who is responsible for making these repairs? If its the tenant, is there a regulation I can refer to when speaking to the them. If its the landlord, what's stopping the tenant from damaging something else in the house(.e.g kitchen cabinets) and claiming the same story, and how can I protect my property?	Fair wear and tear Means the normal deterioration of a property from ordinary, everyday use. Exposure to the elements, time, as well as day to day living can cause fair wear and tear. Breakages as a result of normal use are also wear and tear. Damage is either intentional or a result of usage that is not normal. So, if the closet has failed through normal use - throwing a wheel on a runner, a hinge or latch breaking in normal use - then it's your responsibility. If it is a result of abnormal use - slamming, continuing to operate when something is clearly wrong - then it's your tenant's responsibility. However, there are commercial consideration beyond the legal ones. A tenant with a 3-year record of on-time rental payments and no other demands beyond a broken closet? Fix it and keep the tenant happy.	The key here is the provision "through no fault of his own". A landlord who relies on this provision would need to be able to demonstrate what the cause of the delay was, and that s/he had not been reasonably able to avoid it. Nor could a landlord simply fail to take steps to repair the problem, whatever it might be. If the problem will clearly take more than 30 days to fix (Isay the building burned down), the prospective tenant would have the right to cancel the lease at once. True, in such a case the tenant would be put to the trouble and expense of finding another place at short notice, but then the landlord would have lost his income from the property. The provision allocates the losses between the parties in such a case. If the property is not available at the specified time for the lease to start, but could be available a few days later, the quoted provision would not allow the landlord to just ignore the situation and end the lease. The landlord is allowed only a "reasonable time" to fix the problem, and taking significantly longer than is needed would not be "reasonable".	Just think of the subtenant cum owner as two separate people with two separate roles. Tenant = T Subtenant = ST Old owner = OO New Owner = NO The rights of the tenant vis-avis the new owner will be informed by the lease and the local laws. Generally, if the sale happens in the middle of the existing lease, the NO is obligated by the terms, as is the T. NO cannot just kick T out, and T cannot just break the lease. The lease may say what could happen and local laws will apply. Likewise, ST has whatever contract with T that previously existed. Pretend NO and ST are different people. If T owes NO $1000 per month, and ST owes T $400 a month, that continues even though ST and NO are the same person. Depends on what kind of dispute. See above. All contracts continue, subject to whatever the lease with the original owner and the subtenancy agreement say abut modifying or breaking the lease and sublease. Local laws apply. Note, if the subtenancy was "off the books" or was done when not allowed by the original owner, and if it was not in a place that the local law says owners cannot deny subleasing, then tenant might not have any protection. ST, now that he is owner could just move out and stop paying. On the other hand, even if he is the owner, he cannot just say "I am the owner now, so I am moving back in for free" because the original lease gave the tenant use of the whole property. But ST could just drop out because T always owed OO, and now NO, the full rent. Do you mean if rather than sublease, they were both on the original lease? Interesting, but just imagine it as the obligations before the sale = the obligations after the sale. I don't know though. There are some tax implications for an owner occupied rental.	Theft is of course illegal in all US states, and pretty much every other jurisdiction. In the US that is a matter of state law, not federal. It could be reported to the local police, but it might be hard to prove. Both landlord/tenant law and privacy law are largely matters of state law in the US, not federal law. Such laws vary a good deal in different states. In many states a landlord is allowed to enter the rented premises, usually on "reasonable" notice, or without notice if there is an emergency. If the landlord actually lives in another part of the house, and simply rents a room to the tenant, the landlord may be able to enter the room more freely than if it was a separate apartment or house. In many cases where there is a written lease or rental agreement, it will specify under what conditions the landlord or landlord's agent may enter, and how much notice is required. What does the lease in the current case say about that?	Nothing in the description strikes me as illegal or unlawful, so I am unsure of the grounds your friend would have for legal action. The questions a lawyer would ask (in addition to that) would be likely to include : How does your friend quantify the damage? The law is great for pursuing financial compensation, but does not handle abstract concepts. Has your friend used psychological counselling services, and what was the cost? What additional financial costs has your friend borne? If your friend has written to the University and has expected a response, what is the evidence of diminished trust? (The letter suggests otherwise.) Would a reasonable person (the proverbial "man in the street") be psychologically damaged by the events experienced by your friend? Is there evidence of a pre-existing condition? You've also mentioned yourself as a witness. Did you witness the eviction, or would you be attesting to your friend's state of mind? If the latter, what are your psychological qualifications? In the main Western jurisdictions, the answer to the question "can my friend sue?" is usually "yes", but whether they stood a chance of winning the suit would probably be a better question to ask. Your friend would only be likely to win a case against the University or the Security company if they could demonstrate unlawful or counter-contractual activity by staff, and were able to demonstrate financial damages that had been caused by that activity.	The owner would need to go through the eviction process, and would need to show that the tenant had violated the terms of the agreement. Conceivably, a tenant could be evicted for using the property to carry out a criminal enterprise, but the courts would have to decide if that is the case. The underlying issue would be whether allowing the tenant to remain would constitute a public nuisance threatening public safety and morals and would cause damage to the owner in the form of loss of value in the property. The owner's attorney would study the specifics and give an appraisal of the likelihood of succeeding in court.	The only avenue for tenant liability would be if the tenant is responsible for the damage. The courts have not assigned responsibility for damage resulting from other people's disagreement with a political expression to the person expressing the viewpoint. You are generally free to peacefully express yourself, and as a renter this would be part of your right of "quiet enjoyment of the premise". If there is a lease condition that says "no political signs", then maybe that's a violation of the contract, but that might also be an illegal term in your state or city (under landlord-tenant laws). Since you have the right to express your opinion, the courts must respect that right and not deem that engaging in political expression negates your other rights. In general, if someone commits a crime, the law does not say "but you take the blame if you express your political opinion".	In any legal dealing, there is always some risk. The signature constitutes definitive proof that you have a contract, but you still have a contract, because you have mutual acceptance. A far-fetched scenario is that the lessor could allege that they did not agree to the terms of he contract with you (perhaps claiming that you obtained a blank contract form from them and filled in details, but they didn't agree to those details). However, if they allow you to move in, that is sufficient constructive evidence of a contract, so they could not argue "We didn't agree to this". The main risk would be your lack of proof that they ever agreed to lease the place to you (no emails, no texts, no witnesses, no legally-recorded conversations). There may be specific state laws about providing a copy of the rental agreement, such as this California law, where they must provide a copy to the tenant within 15 days of execution by the tenant. This provides a collection of relevant state laws, though you may have to dig a bit because this is a hook into all of the laws about leases and not just about providing copies.
Can gold/silver bullion be used to buy/sell market goods? U.S. here, specifically NY state. Suppose I have an authentic gold coin ("bullion"). Vendor X is selling a product that she is willing to sell me for the general value (I say general here because the value of the coin is constantly fluctuating) of the coin, and thus I want to use my gold coin to purchase this product from her. Is this legal to do? Do I have to first register my coin somewhere, or provide some kind of certificate of authenticity? Or is gold/silver bullion simply not allowed to be used as tender for common things?	It is currently legal to barter goods or services in exchange for gold or silver bullion in the United States. Gold and silver do not have to be registered or certificated, although a prudent person would usually seek evidence confirming their authenticity and it would be common practice to keep gold and silver in a repository such as a bank or Fort Knox, and to conduct the transaction via negotiable certificates evidencing ownership of the gold or silver (basically warehouse receipts whose transfer is governed by the Uniform Commercial Code) rather than to physically transfer the gold or silver, in a large dollar value transaction. There are been periods of time in the United States where this was not allowed, unless done by a state government (which has a constitutional right to do so), or by a local government authorized by a state government to do so. But those laws are not currently in force and haven't been for a long time. Transfers conducted with gold or silver bullion in excess of $10,000 per transferee per year, probably have to be reported to the same officials to whom a cash transaction in that amount is reportable on IRS Form 8300, because it is considered a collectible cash substitute, even though it is legal to do so and no tax is specific to barter transactions in gold or silver. IRS Publication 1544 explains the rule.	In most US states, anyone can buy such lists, covering either the whole state or a specific municipality or election district. Political campaigns routinely buy such lists and use them to organize door-to-door campaigning, as well as postal appeals. Some years ago I was a (losing) candidate for local office in NJ. I bought such a list covering the township I was running in. It showed each voter's name, address, age, party of registration, if any, and which of the last several elections the person had voted in. I think the lists were available from the board of elections, and local lists from municipal clerks. Exact procedures no doubt differ from state to state, as will costs. At that time lists were available in electronic and paper formats. Purchasers had to sign an agreement not to use the information for commercial marketing, as I recall. Updated lists including data from the latest election are not usually available at once, but are available long before the next general election.	If the buyer wanted the watch for purely personal reasons, would they be committing any crime? NO The offences are at s.92 of the Trade Marks Act 1994 and all relate to either selling, or possessing as part of a business, such goods with... a view to gain for himself or another, or with intent to cause loss to another, and without the consent of the proprietor	TLDR: it's illegal to BUY it. It's illegal to USE it. Know your suppliers. That's certainly an interesting question, in light of how the market has changed in recent years, particularly due to Amazon/eBay, but even moreso due to Amazon Fulfillment and competitors. Over on diy.se, this is a constant vexation, because we see people buy crud like this all the time, and they need help installing it. And we find it's illegal to install, not even safe, and needs to be sent back in lieu of listed product. The advanced nations do have a highly effective apparatus for screening and blocking dangerous goods. However, these protections are geared toward bricks-and-mortar retail. Can you count on something bought at Wickes, Redoute or Home Depot? By and large, yes. Is it legal to export it to you? Yes, for all practical purposes. The people selling it are in an unreachable bastion in a foreign country that would not cooperate with their extradition, and would interfere with investigation. The government knows perfectly well that the stuff is complete crud, and doing so aligns with its national policies of raising hard currency and building industrial capacity, while harming the capacity of other nations. Is it legal for the item to be listed on Amazon or eBay? Amazon and eBay say "Yes". Their position is that they are merely a platform which connects buyers and sellers. They surely have excellent lawyers. Amazon is more like eBay than you might realize. Amazon opened their retail site to third party sellers. Third parties can sign up as additional sellers of a particular SKU, or write their own product listings. Since Amazon's behavior has been unchallenged, the answer seems to be "yes". Is it legal for Amazon to bring it into their warehousing systems? Amazon also opened their warehousing system to third party use. That can be for companies that don't sell on Amazon... or it can be for companies that do both Amazon and off-Amazon sales; in the latter case you order elsewhere but Amazon fulfills (ships) the item. When a company both sells the item on Amazon and it ships from an Amazon warehouse, it qualifies for "Prime" shipping where Amazon offers that. Amazon also offers "Commingling" for established SKUs. The idea is that if you have widgets in the Madrid warehouse, and I have widgets in a Warsaw warehouse... and a Madrid customer buys mine - why not ship them yours since they are all the same? I get credit for the sale and Amazon "owes you one". When you get a sale in Madrid, Amazon has one in Barcelona so they ship that one to your customer. Commingling is great, but what happens when I inject a pallet full of those SKUs - and they're counterfeits? Amazon doesn't know the difference, and your Warsaw customer gets my counterfeit. So do Amazon's Berlin and Wroclaw customers. Amazon ships them around the network to balance the warehouses, and now my counterfeit has contaminated the supply. I'm sitting in China. Whatcha gonna do about it? Again, Amazon has top lawyers, who have surely done their diligence. Still, the program is ambitious, and e-commerce giants break the law all the time with their ambitions. In the US, there's the "Express Shipment" rule, which allows small orders ($800 or less) with no duty and an informal entry process. So they ship to Mexican warehouses, and then bring the items over by the truckload. Wait, how can a truckload be less than $800? Because they don't bring it over until there's an end-user customer order, and they argue "these are for individual customers". This qualifies them to breeze through customs, bypassing the quality and safety controls that prevent Home Depot from doing the exact same thing with a truckload that hasn't found customers yet. Is it legal for you (as the end consumer) to import it? No. The rules for Conformité Européenne are that the importer is responsible. When you as an end customer buy mail-order from China, you are the importer. Under EU law, if you bring a CE-marked item into the EU, you are responsible for meeting the CE design standards, and doing in-house lab testing to affirm the performance of the product. By having the CE mark on the thing you imported, you are attesting to having done that. Further, the various nations may require that a certified independent testing lab verify your testing and claims. This was historically done by national testing labs like BSI, TUV, CSA or UL. However by treaty they are largely cross-recognized: US OSHA keeps a canonical list of "Nationally (by USA) Recognized Testing Labs" (NRTLs) that every other agency and many other countries defer to. Big Clive is probably fine, since Clive's purpose is public ridicule, not usage. Is it legal for you to install it in your house? Oh, heck no. Every nation has rules as to what certifications equipment must meet to legally be installed in a building's electrical system. For instance North America's El NEC, widely adopted or copied, has 110.2: 110.2 Approval. The conductors [wires] and equipment required or permitted by this Code shall be acceptable only if approved. "Approved" means by competent testing labs; i.e. OSHA's list of NRTLs. So no, you can't install non-approved equipment in any jurisdiction with a similar rule (and you pretty much need such a rule for inspections to have any teeth).	The Bank of England actually makes this pretty clear with the following line: Legal tender has a very narrow and technical meaning, which relates to settling debts. It means that if you are in debt to someone then you can’t be sued for non-payment if you offer full payment of your debts in legal tender. Essentially, if you are in debt (frequent examples are a taxi ride or a meal at a sit-down restaurant) then you can use legal tender to pay off that debt. But that doesn't necessarily mean they have to accept it. It only means that they cannot sue you if they do refuse to accept it. But the refusal wouldn't itself alleviate the debt either. They could technically return to you at some point and say "ok, fine, we'll take the cash" and you'd still be obligated to provide it to pay off your debt. It's also worth emphasizing that this only applies to situations where the payment is to alleviate a debt, for services that have already been provided before you are billed. It would not apply while buying groceries at the supermarket. Even restaurants where you pay for your food up-front and then receive it afterwards can refuse cash payment. In those situations the services are prepaid and you are not ever alleviating a debt.	Don't get hung up on unauthorized resale. That only prohibits unauthorized resale. Authorized resale is ok. From http://www.justice.gov/usam/criminal-resource-manual-1854-copyright-infringement-first-sale-doctrine: The first sale doctrine, codified at 17 U.S.C. § 109, provides that an individual who knowingly purchases a copy of a copyrighted work from the copyright holder receives the right to sell, display or otherwise dispose of that particular copy, notwithstanding the interests of the copyright owner. The right to distribute ends, however, once the owner has sold that particular copy. See 17 U.S.C. § 109(a) & (c). Since the first sale doctrine never protects a defendant who makes unauthorized reproductions of a copyrighted work, the first sale doctrine cannot be a successful defense in cases that allege infringing reproduction.	Two people exchanging goods or services on a commercial basis and then pretending it was two gifts is tax evasion. It's not a gift. It's a commercial sale that you lie about by 'putting' a different 'label' on it. Sometimes two people will give mutual gifts, e.g. if you come to my wedding: I give you dinner, you give me some kitchenware. Yet there's nothing commercial about it. So that's not income for either party. However, if you're talking about two businesses making sales to each other, that is very much income, regardless of what you badge it.	It's important to be absolutely clear on what is being sold. Using English translations may affect the outcome. Assuming "SoleTraderCompA" is an Einzelunternehmen, the sale would be an asset sale. The company isn't sold, because the company is legally identical to person A! Instead, person A makes an extensive list of all assets he's selling (goods, real estate, intellectual property, etcetera). "SoleTraderCompA" might be a trade mark, in which case the trade mark can be sold. Person B can also be an Einzelunternehmen, and as part of its business operations buys aforementioned assets from person A. But in general, any legal entity can buy the assets of person A, including a GmbH or AG.
Is there a name for this type of warranty? Imagine a software company produces a website for a client and has the following warranty: Month 1: Any major or minor code bugs will be fixed free of charge, including any text or graphical errors Month 2: Only major and minor code bugs will be fixed free of charge Month 3: Only major code bugs will be fixed free of charge The key is that each month the warranty covers less things. Low importance things get dropped as time progresses. Is this a normal thing to do and is there an official word for it?	Not really. The closest you get is a more general term, "limited warranty". These kinds of warranties are common in motor vehicles, but pretty much unheard of in the case of software, because the capacity diagnosis of the cause of the problem takes too much expertise which isn't widespread.	The website owner brings in an expert programmer who testifies that the user cannot have gotten to a certain part of the site (or download, etc.) without having clicked to accept the terms of service, and that this document they're holding is a true and correct copy of the terms of service as of that date. That's evidence in favor of the site, and an adverse party has to have stronger evidence in order to overcome it. If the person didn't save a copy of the terms themselves, they'll have a hard time on this. Then the other party's attorney tries to discredit the programmer by asking questions like "how do you know there are no bugs in the software which could have allowed somebody to reach this without agreeing to the terms of service" etc. Apparently, some sites don't require users to click indicating agreement. If the company has significantly changed the site, terms of service, etc. since the time the user registered, and doesn't keep any copies of old versions around, and admits this, they'll have a hard time enforcing an agreement (as they can't produce a copy of it). If the user kept a copy, the user might be able to present that. It's up to the finder of fact to decide what to believe and how much weight to give the various witnesses' testimony.	Because English loves homophones A lot of words in English have more than one meaning. The current front runner is run with 645 definitions in the OED. Understanding English requires more than knowing the definitions, it requires understanding the context. Warranty in a contract law context means a term the breach of which does not justify terminating the contract. Or a term of a contract rather than a representation about the contract, depending on context. Warranty also has a common meaning that makes it a synonym of guarantee. It can also mean a court order calling for the arrest of someone (an arrest warrant) or to search a premises (a search warrant). It can also mean the authorization from the government to act as a high ranking NCO in a military service - NCOs hold warrants, officers have commissions. Among others ...	Yes A software license is just a contract and parties to a contract are free to agree whatever terms they wish under the doctrine of freedom to contract. Government can restrict what terms can be used in a contract either in general (e.g. for being against public policy) or specifically (e.g. by requiring wages be paid in money). None of the terms you mention fall foul of any restrictions I know of.	There have been cases in the UK where paying someone's legal bills was interpreted as joining their case. So when A with no money libels someone, and B with deep pockets pays A's lawyer, then B risks being held liable for damages if A gets convicted. So B should be very careful. Just giving you money is probably the safest. But attorney-client privilege is between attorney and client. I have been laid off twice with my company asking me to take an employment lawyer and paying for it. (Interestingly each time the bill was exactly the maximum amount the company was willing to pay :-) It would have been absurd if my company could demand information that is under attorney-client privilege just because they paid the bill. Why did two companies pay the lawyers bill? Because that way they ensure that the separation is without problems. The lawyer explained the settlement contract and what it meant exactly. They also checked that the contract didn’t contain anything unacceptable which the company would have fixed. So if I had tried to sue them later I would have no chance to win (but there was no reason to sue). Another reason not to sue was that the company offered I settlement that was very significantly more than was legally required, but if you sued them you would only get what you got in court - most likely less than you would get without suing. So basically they paid to make sure I would have no reason to sue them later.	It does mean that you cannot reuse any parts of the source code, even small simple ones. You would have to rebuild the code from scratch. There is a significant chance that the code would be "substantially similar" to the code that you were hired to build, also that if anybody else were to write a bubble sort or 24-to-am/pm conversion routine, it would look the same, where even variable names (which should describe function) are the same or very similar. In case of an infringement lawsuit, you would have to defend yourself by showing that there are only a few ways to code a given function. Copyright protects only the "expression", not the abstract idea. A linked list is an idea, which can't be protected by copyright; same with recursion, pointers, stacks, object-oriented programming... Anything that involves copy and paste is infringement. If you re-read the copyrighted code and then try to reconstruct it, you probably crossed the infringement line. If you remember the problems and solutions and accidentally write somewhat similar code, that is probably on the safe side. From the perspective of the programmer not wanting to always reinvent the wheel, it would be most useful to make a distinction in the contract between "the essentials of the customer's program" versus "incidental utility work". The difficulty will arise in saying specifically what is essential vs. incidental. For instance, I know that if I were to hire you to develop a speech-recognition system, low-level audio-acquisition and encoding would not be essential to my purpose, whereas DSP parsing routines would be the center of my interest. The programmer would then want to retain recycling rights to all non-essential code.	If a business literally has an "exact change only" policy, that can't be enforced in post-pay situations. But if they have a "you are free to overpay, but we won't give you change back", that's different, especially if it's communicated from the beginning. If they tell you they don't give change, then you're taking their goods/services implicitly agreeing to their terms.	Ultimately, these terms would have to be interpreted by a court in order to get clarity. But the phrasing “source or binary form” should likely be understood as “not just source form, but any form of the software”. The BSD license family does not have different conditions for different forms of the software, so it is not necessary to understand what precisely a binary form is – just whether a software is in “source or binary form”. As far as I can see, minified or bundled software are a “source or binary form”. The BSD licenses' attribution requirements will apply. There are licenses that do make a distinction. For example, the Boost license is BSD-like with respect to the source code, but exempts binary forms from its attribution requirements. But Boost provides a clearer definition: “machine-executable object code generated by a source language processor”. The GPL family also makes a distinction, because it always requires the source code to be made available. The GPLv3 defines the source code as the “preferred form for making modifications”, and object code (binary form) as any non-source form.
What, if any, is the legal meaning of the term "benefit of the doubt?" One instance that I am familiar with is "innocent unless proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt." So if you think that someone is "probably" guilty, but have a "reasonable doubt" covering, say 5%-10% of possible outcomes, my understanding is that you're supposed be give the defendant the "benefit of the doubt" and vote to acquit. In a civil case, where the burden of proof is "preponderance of evidence," the standard of proof is more like 50-50. In this case, you might give someone the benefit of the doubt if you felt that that party was 50% or more in the right. So is "benefit of the doubt" tied to a quantitative measure or probability? That the party receives the benefit of a very small doubt in the criminal case, and "50%" in the civil case?	Normally, the term "benefit of the doubt", if it was used, would mean that ambiguities should be resolved in favor of the person entitled to it. This could be applied to contract interpretation or to statutory interpretation. Here is an example: When dealing with restrictions on campaign spending and speech, a court's construction must “give the benefit of the doubt to speech, not censorship. The First Amendment's command that ‘Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech’ demands at least that. Colorado Educ. Ass'n v. Rutt, 184 P.3d 65, 75–76 (Colo. 2008) (ultimately holding that union activities to organize volunteers to walk precincts with a political candidate did not constitute a "campaign expenditure" of a union within the meaning of a state law restriction campaign contributions by unions).	In U.S. practice, double jeopardy protections attach once the jury is seated and this scenario contemplates the change in position arising at trial. A mistrial could be called, or a continuance obtained, if the defendant suddenly claimed an alibi defense, since that amounts of a defendant waiver of double jeopardy protections. But without proof that the witness was tampered with, obtained at the last moment, it can be difficult or impossible to get proof of tampering or to contradict the story with other evidence to undermine the credibility of the witness. The prosecution would probably request a recess in the trial to regroup and try to admit evidence that the testimony changing witness made a prior inconsistent statement to impeach the testimony of that witness, from whomever that witness told the first time (probably a law enforcement officer). But this is still far less convincing to a jury than an affirmative statement from a witnesses about a key fact. If the prosecution could find evidence of defense side tampering and present it to the judge in the hours or small number of days before the trial ends, it might be able to get a mistrial declared. But it is much harder to get a mistrial for witness tampering when the witness shows up and testifies contrary to prosecution expectations than it is when the witness is, for example, killed or kidnapped and doesn't appear to testify at trial at all. But if evidence of neither type could be obtained before the jury was sent to deliberate and evidence was closed, and the jury then acquitted the defendant, it would be very hard for the prosecution to change this result. Perhaps not completely impossible, but very nearly so. The witness could be (and in this circumstance, despite the extreme rarity of perjury prosecutions, probably would be) prosecuted for perjury, but that wouldn't change the acquittal. If a link to the defendant could be found, the defendant could also be prosecuted for witness tampering or obstruction of justice or something similar. But that is hard to prove (and the witness would probably have to be convicted or provided with use immunity for his testimony) to do so. In English criminal law practice, in contrast, the likelihood of having the verdict of acquittal set aside and getting a new trial would be much greater (and the likelihood of getting a recess mid-trial would be greater in far more common bench trials in lower level criminal cases), but it would still be a serious burden for the prosecution that it might not be able to overcome. Lawyers aren't entitled to expect that witnesses will testify exactly the way that they discussed things with the lawyers before trial, and this can be explained away with a variety of excuses that are usually true ("after thinking it over after meeting with you, I realized that I was confused and getting it wrong"), but are sometimes a cover for a change of story that is not sincere. I've had similar things happen a few times in civil litigation and there is only so much you can do about it.	I will assume that your question pertains to the United States. In other jurisdictions, different rules could apply. Context matters. The usual penalty for spoliation of evidence (the technical term for what you describe) in a civil case is a judicial determination or jury instruction that the evidence destroyed would have established the relevant part of the other side's case had it not been destroyed. In all of these cases, your failure to take affirmative action to preserve the evidence once you knew that there was a bona fide likelihood that you would be sued could be held against you by making an adverse determination that the evidence would have been unfavorable to you and possibly also money sanctions. You could not be held in contempt of court for this if these events happened before a case was commenced. In a criminal case, where you are a defendant, you have an absolute right to not incriminate yourself and do not have to take affirmative action to preserve evidence, although this right is limited to criminal cases and your failure to preserve evidence can still be held against you in a civil case. Certainly, in situation 4 you are a potential criminal defendant, so the 5th Amendment protection would apply. In situations 1 and 2, where the precautions were not put in place to facilitate a crime, the 5th Amendment would protect you if you were a potential criminal defendant, but suppose that you are a bystander like a third party ISP representative. If you were a third party, at a minimum you would have to be put on notice of the police need for the evidence, would probably have had to have had the police ask you for the evidence, and of course, would have to be aware that the destruction was imminent and have the power to prevent that destruction. If all those conditions were present, you might be guilty of obstruction of justice (there are precedents for inaction knowing of the consequences in the fact of a police question amounting to obstruction of justice). In situation 3, this kind of action pretty much amounts to being an accessory to some crime before the fact (unless someone was successfully deceived by a very elaborate story) and would likely make anyone involved part of a conspiracy to commit the crime that the destruction of the papers would facilitate. While the papers themselves might have been evidence of a crime or civil wrong, the destruction of the papers might itself be considered part of the crime, regardless of what could be established regarding the actual content of the papers.	An appeal to ignorance asserts that a proposition is true because it has not yet been proven false. That is not in any way the situation here. The defendant knows if he/she has or has not so the only available answers under oath are "yes" or "no" - the jury knows this too so any other answer will be seen as disingenuous. However, this information (affirmative or negative) is off limits to the jury as it could prejudice their decision, hence the mistrial. A quick judge could instruct the defendant not to answer and instruct the jury to disregard the question but if a conviction results the defence team could use the fact that it was asked as grounds for appeal. A judge must decide if the interests of justice are better served by a retrial or a tainted conviction.	"Double jeopardy" applies to a criminal proceeding, that is one that needs to be proved "beyond a reasonable doubt," and involves criminal sanctions such as jail time. Once OJ was acquitted of criminal charges, he couldn't be tried again as a "criminal." The second trial was a civil trial, with a "lesser" standard of proof (preponderance of evidence), and lesser "damages" (money, not jail time). So even though the facts were the same, OJ was accused of violating a different standard, that is a different "law" so to speak. He could be tried for a "tort" just not a crime. Or put another way, "wrongful death" is not the same as murder. The latter requires intent. Wrongful death suggests "tortious" negligence, but not necessarily intent.	Judges do not decide, jurors do (however, if a judge is the fact-finder, then the judge makes such a determination). The main input that the decision-maker gets is a jury instruction. In order to unify "reasonable doubt", "reasonable price", "reasonable delay" and so on, appeal is often made a mythical being, "the reasonable man", so reasonable force would be the degree of force the reasonable man would use in a given situation. I will draw from California criminal instructions ('cuz I have them) but similar instructions can be found across jurisdictions. For example, one instructions says "A natural and probable consequence is one that a reasonable person would know is likely to happen if nothing unusual intervenes". Or from a negligence instruction "A reasonable person would have known that acting in that way would create such a risk". More detailed appeal to The Reasonable Person is found in the justified homicide instruction: Defendant’s belief must have been reasonable and (he/she) must have acted only because of that belief. The defendant is only entitled to use that amount of force that a reasonable person would believe is necessary in the same situation. If the defendant used more force than was reasonable, the [attempted] killing was not justified. When deciding whether the defendant’s beliefs were reasonable, consider all the circumstances as they were known to and appeared to the defendant and consider what a reasonable person in a similar situation with similar knowledge would have believed. If the defendant’s beliefs were reasonable, the danger does not need to have actually existed. The defendant’s belief that (he/she/ [or] someone else) was threatened may be reasonable even if (he/she) relied on information that was not true. However, the defendant must actually and reasonably have believed that the information was true. There is no explanation of what it means to be "a reasonable person". Since nobody believes that they themselves are unreasonable, a simple and also wrong way of judging the matter is to subjectively judge whether you yourself would do the same thing, if you were in that situation. Very often, instructions do not even bother to say what "reasonable" means, so (re interpreting expert testimony) "You may disregard any opinion that you find unbelievable, unreasonable, or unsupported by the evidence"; (re corpus delicti) "That other evidence may be slight and need only be enough to support a reasonable inference that a crime was committed"; "Also, before you may rely on circumstantial evidence to find the defendant guilty, you must be convinced that the only reasonable conclusion supported by the circumstantial evidence is that the defendant is guilty", "when considering circumstantial evidence, you must accept only reasonable conclusions and reject any that are unreasonable" The closest the law has come to articulating an objective characterization of "reasonableness" is in "reasonable doubt" instructions. One characterization is in People v. Feldman, 71 N.E. 2d 433. It is not a doubt based upon sympathy or a whim or prejudice or bias or a caprice, or a sentimentality, or upon a reluctance of a weak-kneed, timid, jellyfish of a juror who is seeking to avoid the performance of a disagreeable duty, namely, to convict another human being of the commission of a serious crime A somewhat improved characterization is the Calcrim instruction Proof beyond a reasonable doubt is proof that leaves you with an abiding conviction that the charge is true. The evidence need not eliminate all possible doubt because everything in life is open to some possible or imaginary doubt There is room for improvement, but it points in the right direction. On rare occasions, a law is written that actually includes a definition. The Gas Price Spike Act HR 3784 said The term ‘reasonable profit’ means the amount determined by the Reasonable Profits Board to be a reasonable profit on the sale. It is then up to the board to subjectively determine what that profit is. (BTW this did not become law). [Addendum] It's actually very difficult to determine what reasoning judges use in those cases where they are the determiners of fact. They will likely call on their knowledge of law, asking "are these circumstances sufficiently like past circumstance A where the defendant was convicted, or more like B where the defendant was acquitted".	I think it's ultimately a natural extension of the basic concept from Roman Law: ignorantia legis non excusat, i.e "ignorance of the law excuses not" and that in order for that to be workable laws can only truly obtain proper binding force when they are promulgated. In simple terms someone can't claim innocence through ignorance because the knowledge of what the law is has been made easily available to them. Thus the law can operate on the presumption that the people it applies to are aware of them. Indeed there have been occasional instances in history where someone could not have been reasonably expected to know that what they did was against the law and this has been taken into account.	You are quoting standards that are applicable during an appeal. So in this case, the defendant was brought to trial, was found guilty by a jury, and is now appealing that conviction. During that initial trial, the evidence was supposed to have been weighed neutrally. In an appeal, the appellate court is not attempting to re-litigate the entirety of the case. That would be costly and slow in addition to burdensome on witnesses that might have to be called again to testify. Instead, it defers to the trial court for things like the determination of facts. The standards you quote show that an appellate court is only going to overturn a lower court's verdict as insufficient if the lower court's ruling is manifestly unjust. The prosecution and the defense presented evidence on a particular element of the crime at trial. The jury determined that the prosecution met its burden, and proved the element beyond a reasonable doubt. The appeals court is not going to substitute its judgement for that of the jury particularly when the jury had the opportunity to assess the credibility of different witnesses that may not be possible from a simple text-based transcript. If the trial court convicted and the appeals court determines that the conviction was reasonable if the evidence was viewed from the standpoint most favorable to the prosecution, then the sufficiency standard would be met and the appeal would be denied. The appeals court would only overturn the verdict as insufficient if no reasonable juror could possibly have concluded that the state met its burden of proof given the evidence presented.
Recusal When Judge is Affected by Law Let us say that a religious group (I will call them the Presleytarian Church of Elvis) somehow becomes so strongly disliked that Congress passes a law which outlaws the sect. The leaders of the PCoE challenge the new law in court, and it turns out that one of the judges selected to hear an appeal of the case is himself a Presleytarian. Is the judge required to recuse himself? Edit: I fully understand that such a law is an obvious violation of the First Amendment and that while there may be judges in the US who detest religion, none of them would allow such a law to stand. I only envisioned such a law as an example of a situation where a judge would be expected to recuse himself/herself from a case based on being affected by the law itself, and not because of any relationship with the parties to the case. Also, I have nothing against Elvis. Or his fans.	The judge would be required to recuse himself in that case, subject to the exception that applies when all judges with jurisdiction over the case would otherwise be disqualified. Generally a judge must recuse in cases in which the judge as a personal interest in the case (roughly speaking the same kind of interest that would give the judge standing to participate as a party in the case), or when the judge has personal ties to the parties or their counsel that would create an appearance of impropriety. The controlling provision of Colorado's Code of Judicial Conduct, Rule 2.11, which is typical, and its official commentary, states: RULE 2.11. Disqualification (A) A judge shall disqualify himself or herself in any proceeding in which the judge's impartiality might reasonably be questioned, including but not limited to the following circumstances: (1) The judge has a personal bias or prejudice concerning a party or a party's lawyer, or personal knowledge of facts that are in dispute in the proceeding. (2) The judge knows that the judge, the judge's spouse or domestic partner, or a person within the third degree of relationship to either of them, or the spouse or domestic partner of such a person is: (a) a party to the proceeding, or an officer, director, general partner, managing member, or trustee of a party; (b) acting as a lawyer in the proceeding; (c) a person who has more than a de minimis interest that could be substantially affected by the proceeding; or (d) likely to be a material witness in the proceeding. (3) The judge knows that he or she, individually or as a fiduciary, or the judge's spouse, domestic partner, parent, child, or other member of the judge's family residing in the judge's household, has an economic interest in the subject matter in controversy or in a party to the proceeding. (4) The judge, while a judge or a judicial candidate, has made a public statement, other than in a court proceeding, judicial decision, or opinion, that commits or appears to commit the judge to reach a particular result or rule in a particular way in the proceeding or controversy. (5) The judge: (a) served as a lawyer in the matter in controversy, or was associated with a lawyer who participated substantially as a lawyer in the matter during such association; (b) served in governmental employment, and in such capacity participated personally and substantially as a lawyer or public official concerning the proceeding, or has publicly expressed in such capacity an opinion concerning the merits of the particular matter in controversy; (c) was a material witness concerning the matter; or (d) previously presided as a judge over the matter in another court. (B) A judge shall keep informed about the judge's personal and fiduciary economic interests, and make a reasonable effort to keep informed about the personal economic interests of the judge's spouse or domestic partner and minor children residing in the judge's household. (C) A judge subject to disqualification under this Rule, other than for bias or prejudice under paragraph (A)(1), may disclose on the record the basis of the judge's disqualification and may ask the parties and their lawyers to consider, outside the presence of the judge and court personnel, whether to waive disqualification. If, following the disclosure, the parties and lawyers agree, without participation by the judge or court personnel, that the judge should not be disqualified, the judge may participate in the proceeding. The agreement shall be incorporated into the record of the proceeding. (D) In limited circumstances, the rule of necessity applies and allows judges to hear a case in which all other judges also would have a disqualifying interest or the case could not otherwise be heard. OFFICIAL COMMENT [1] Under this Rule, a judge is disqualified whenever the judge's impartiality might reasonably be questioned, regardless of whether any of the specific provisions of paragraphs (A)(1) through (5) apply. The term “recusal” is sometimes used interchangeably with the term “disqualification.” [2] A judge's obligation not to hear or decide matters in which disqualification is required applies regardless of whether a motion to disqualify is filed. [3] The rule of necessity may override the rule of disqualification. The rule of necessity is an exception to the principle that every litigant is entitled to be heard by a judge who is not subject to disqualifications which might reasonably cause the judge's impartiality to be questioned. The rule of necessity has been invoked for trial court and court of appeals judges where disqualifications exist as to all members of the court and there is no other judge available. It has been invoked as to the supreme court when all or a majority of its members have a conflict of interest; the importance of having the court render a decision overrides the existence of the conflict, which might otherwise leave litigating parties in limbo. Under the rule of necessity, a judge might be required to participate in judicial review of a judicial salary statute, or might be the only judge available in a matter requiring immediate judicial action, such as a hearing on probable cause or a temporary restraining order. In matters that require immediate action, the judge must disclose on the record the basis for possible disqualification and make reasonable efforts to transfer the matter to another judge as soon as practicable. Rather than deny a party access to court, judicial disqualification yields to the demands of necessity. [4] The fact that a lawyer in a proceeding is affiliated with a law firm with which a relative of the judge is affiliated does not itself disqualify the judge. If, however, the judge's impartiality might reasonably be questioned under paragraph (A), or the relative is known by the judge to have an interest in the law firm that could be substantially affected by the proceeding under paragraph (A)(2)(c), the judge's disqualification is required. [5] A judge should disclose on the record information that the judge believes the parties or their lawyers might reasonably consider relevant to a possible motion for disqualification, even if the judge believes there is no basis for disqualification. [6] “Economic interest,” as set forth in the Terminology section, means ownership of more than a one percent legal or equitable interest in a party, or a legal or equitable interest in a party of a fair market value exceeding $5,000, or a relationship as a director, advisor, or other active participant in the affairs of a party, except that: (1) Ownership in a mutual or common investment fund that holds securities, or of securities held in a managed fund, is not an “economic interest” in such securities unless the judge participates in the management of the fund; (2) securities held by an educational, religious, charitable, fraternal, or civic organization in which the judge or the judge's spouse, domestic partner, parent, or child serves as a director, officer, advisor, or other participant is not an “economic interest” in securities held by the organization; (3) the proprietary interest of a policy holder in a mutual insurance company, of a depositer in a financial institution or deposits or proprietary interests the judge may maintain as a member of a mutual savings association or credit union, or a similar proprietary interest is an “economic interest” in the organization only if the outcome of the proceeding could substantially affect the value of the interest; and (4) ownership of government securities is an “economic interest” in the issuer only if the outcome of the proceeding could substantially affect the value of the securities. The general rule of 2.11(A) and also 2.11(A)(2)(c) would apply in this case.	Yes, a judge may use the bible when making a decision. However, the usage nearly always takes the form of citation (in the form of scholarly texts) rather than precedent. That said, the lines get blurry sometimes. In Banks v. Maxwell, 171 S.E. 70 (N.C. 1933), the N.C. Supreme Court was tasked with resolving a dispute where the plaintiff had been gored by a bull. As a means of anchoring precedent and establishing a strict liability rule when a bull has previously gored, it stated "[t]he familiar rule of liability for injuries inflicted by cattle has remained approximately constant for more than 3,000 years. This rule of liability was expressed by Moses in the following words..." The court goes on to cite Exodus 21:28-30.	There is no such law mandating this layout, nor is there any law permitting the defendant to demand a change to it. The arrangement seems most likely to have been driven by security concerns when courts began removing "the dock" and letting the defendant past the bar to sit with his attorneys. One court has also concluded that it was meant to assist the government "because it bears the burden of proof." It's of course impossible to prove a negative like this, but I'll note that Kenneth Lay's attorneys raised the issue in the Enron case, and they were unable to cite a single case saying that the defendant has the option to sit closer to the jury. If they couldn't find it, it probably doesn't exist. Meanwhile, the government was able to find several cases saying that the defendant does not have the right to demand a change, though it did not have any cases saying that the layout is mandatory. Instead, it described itself as "traditionally" having a right to the table. In that case, the judge ended up splitting the baby. Saying that there was "no law" to inform his decision, he sat the government next to the jury during its case, and it sat the defense next to the jury during its case. That was quite a bit more generous than the Seventh Circuit, which has rejected the jury-proximity argument as frivolous. So there are some cases addressing the issue, but I don't know of any case where a court has actually looked at the issue and given any real consideration to the due-process implications of the substantial empirical evidence suggesting that the party closest to the jury enjoys an advantage.	The US developed from an earlier kingdom, and the First Amendment enshrines the main issue that led to our departure from that kingdom. The underlying political premise has been that disagreement is to be dealt with rationally and not through force, such as where opinions contrary to those articulated by the government are squashed (in order to eliminate divisions). There have been numerous laws passed in the US to outlaw "contrary" speech including "disrespectful" speech, and they are constantly being overturned by the Supreme Court. Texas v. Johnson, 491 U.S. 397 and U.S. v. Eichman, 496 U.S. 310 are two recent reaffirmations that such laws are unconstitutional. The only way such a law can work is if the Constitution is amended to in some way re-write the First Amendment, like this. Outlawing indirect insults towards political figures ("not my Speaker of the House", "not my FBI director") would require an even more extensive suspension of the First Amendment. It is possible that at some time, a bill was introduced to outlaw saying disparaging things about POTUS, but I would be surprised if it got out of committee, because it would fail challenge in court. The most-likely retrenchment on our freedom of expression is likely to be a flag-burning law, which has relatively wide support in the US. There are a number of interpretive problems associated with the key concept "physical desecration". Even more interpretive problems would arise if Congress were given the power (via an anti-disparagement amendment) to outlaw "disparagement of public officials". Can one simultaneously "respect the Office of the President" and "disrespect the holder of the office"? As for specifically restricting the military, that's a challenging issue. It is a court-martial offense for a commissioned military officer to use contemptuous words against the President and Congress (10 USC 888), and by directive from the Department of Defense this also applies to enlisted personnel. SCOTUS in Parker v. Levy, 417 U.S. 733 articulated the Military Necessity doctrine, that "The fundamental necessity for obedience, and the consequent necessity for imposition of discipline, may render permissible within the military that which would be constitutionally impermissible outside it". So "not my President" probably is illegal for soldiers. This article reviews various First Amendment issues as they pertain to the military.	As many parties as have standing. The First Amendment protects the right to petition for redress of grievances, so any limitation on that right would be highly disfavored. When there's a rush of cases like this, though, there are a few option for dealing with them. For instance, a plaintiff may seek class certification, permitting him to stand in for similarly situated parties so they don't need to litigate themselves, or a court may consolidate the cases if they are sufficiently similar.	Reynolds v. United States 98 U.S. 145 held that "A party's religious belief cannot be accepted as a justification for his committing an overt act, made criminal by the law of the land". Employment v. Smith 494 US 872 applies this to criminal acts, holding that "The Free Exercise Clause permits the State to prohibit sacramental peyote use" and "the [Free Exercise] Clause does not relieve an individual of the obligation to comply with a law that incidentally forbids (or requires) the performance of an act that his religious belief requires (or forbids) if the law is not specifically directed to religious practice and is otherwise constitutional as applied to those who engage in the specified act for nonreligious reasons". Likewise Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye v. City of Hialeah 508 US 520 "a law that burdens religious practice need not be justified by a compelling governmental interest if it is neutral and of general applicability" (the ordinances were not narrowly taylored, unlike murder statutes). Thus laws against murder do not become unconstitutional when one proclaims a religious basis for violating the law, since they are religiously neutral and are there for good reason.	I found a mention of this issue here, where the case Rhonda Eddy v. Ingenesis was cited. Eddy worked from home in West Virginia, but had signed her contract with a company headquartered in Texas. The link is the decision of The State of West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals, which upheld the decision of the Circuit Court of Jefferson County, namely, that the Circuit Court did not have the authority to hear Eddy's petition against her employer because she was out of the Circuit Court's jurisdiction. The circuit court found that it did not have personal jurisdiction over respondent under West Virginia’s personal jurisdiction statutes, and that respondent did not have sufficient minimum contacts with West Virginia to satisfy federal due process considerations. The circuit court also found that it did not have subject matter jurisdiction over petitioner’s WPCA claim because petitioner’s employment contract contained a valid choice of law clause that mandated Texas law would govern any dispute between the parties. Emphasis mine. It all depends on stipulations made in the employment contract. This (in the United Kingdom) states 4. Place of Work Allows the employer to specify the location where the employee will work. However, it also allows for the employer to specify any other location in the future. This gives the employer much greater flexibility. That would seem to indicate that (at least in the U.K.) the place is specified in the contract.	It is like an affidavit of sort, sworn out without the jurat and not before a notary. The swearing out of a complaint or rebutting evidence in all Federal civil matters (some states allow for the same) must contain an affidavit or an "unsworn declaration" that swears out the facts to be true and accurate, even though not notarized, and is based on fact and not supposition. It is subject to the same penalties of perjury if one lies as if you swear on a bible and testify in court or on a "sworn" affidavit. Affidavits need not be sworn before God, or on a bible. You have a right to just "affirm" that you will tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth....and not "so help me God". Many courts don't use a bible at all anymore. 28 U.S.C. 1746 relates to these "Unsworn Declarations Under Penalty Of Perjury" It is not b/c you don't believe in God that you'd use this...you always have the option of swearing out even a declared affidavit or testifying without swearing on a bible if you're an atheist. They just leave out the "before God" part. Affidavits are the norm, however, in Federal Courts that have an expedited docket this is typically used when it could take a while to get a notary and the evidence is due. (In some states lawyers are automatically notaries but in others they aren't). The ability to swear out a complaint or contest a deposition without having to wait on a notary can be the difference between making your deadline or not. It's commonly used when records custodians are called to certify the authenticity of documents produced pursuant to subpoena or other formal request. Under F.R.Civ.P 56 declarations usually are not within the type of evidentiary categories that can be used at the summary judgment phase. If it's a small misstatement you would probably be faced with a fine. If it's a total lie, outright, you'd be looking at jail time (say a records custodian removed evidence and swore out it was the complete business record in a fraud case). 18 U.S. Code § 1621 discusses perjury generally (in federal actions).
Are provisions requiring employees to provide certain amount of notice before quitting, enforceable? To my understanding giving 2 weeks notice when quitting is customary, though not legally required. Can an employment contract stipulate that the 2 weeks are mandatory? I'm curious how it would be enforced in practice. What's stopping someone from calling in sick for 2 weeks? Or claiming their new job requires them to work certain hours and the old one must cater to a different schedule? Is it that if the company suffers damages because a person quit without enough notice the company could sue? Would this really be needed to be explicitly written into the contract? Would the company have to prove that they suffered damages that they otherwise wouldn't have if the employee continued his job for 2 weeks? EDIT: this is assuming the job doesn't have a high level of responsibility, for example it's working in a retail store and not taking care of young children who require it.	While there is no statutory law in British Columbia that requires that employees give notice of resignation, employees can be contractually obligated to give notice and even absent a contractual requirement there is a common law obligation in Canada that employees give notice. There's no fixed two week notice requirement, the amount of notice required depends on the circumstances. It would be necessary for an employer to prove damages that resulted from an employee quitting without giving notice or sufficient notice. An example of this would be Consbec v Peter Walker where the defendant was determined to have failed to give reasonable notice of his resignation: [212] Peter was obliged to provide Consbec with notice of his resignation. He did not give notice. The Law [213] The purpose of notice is to provide time for the employer to make arrangements to have the work that the departing employee looked after by others, or to find another employee. However on appeal (2016 BCCA 114) the BC Court of Appeal determined that Consbec hadn't proven any damages had occurred as a result, so no damages were awarded: [82] Although Consbec validly incurred costs and expenses of $5,875 as a result of Peter’s failure to give one month’s notice, it also saved $6,083 by not having to pay Peter’s salary during that period (i.e., $73,000/12). Accordingly, it suffered no damages as a result of Peter’s failure to give notice. In many ways having a notice period specified in a contract is a much better option than ultimately leaving it up to a court decide. There seems to be very little precedent for this, especially for non-fiduciary employees. In Consbec the trial judge opted not to make a determination of what notice period was required in the case, something the appeal court determined was an error. The appeal court determined that a one month notice period was reasonable, but didn't explain how it came to this determination. On the other hand, lawsuits like these a very rare for low ranking employees with little or no authority. As in the Consbec case, it would be hard for an employer prove damages. If Consbec hadn't been seeking large damages on other claims it's unlikely it would've brought a lawsuit. Someone who tried to falsely claim to be sick in order to avoid having to work their remaining notice period would likely at minimum owe their employer the same damages as if they had failed to give notice. If the sick time is paid and/or includes benefits they'd have to pay back or compensate the the employer for these wages and benefits. In addition, because they're still employed, they still owe a duty of loyalty to their employers that former employees do not, and so could face additional damages for doing things like working for a competitor. Someone who started work at another job couldn't use this as an excuse to avoid working during the required notice period. The person would have meet their obligations to both employers and both employers would be entitled to damages for the employee failing to do so. Again, the employee could face additional damages than those caused by their failure to work.	Does a contract become null and void if some or most of its terms were not followed by one (or both) of the parties? No. Parties' temporary or systematic waiver of their contractual rights does not alter the validity or terms of that contract. Parties entitled to resume enforcement of their rights anytime. A party's noncompliance with his obligations gives the counterparty a viable claim of breach of contract, although the proper approach would be to first try to solve the dispute outside the court. In the employment scenario you describe, the employee is entitled to --at least-- back pay as per the second contract (the difference between $75 and $50) subject to the statute of limitations, which under NJ is six years for contract disputes. See Hagans v. Nickerson, Superior Court of NJ (Oct. 2022), (citing NJSA A:14-1(a)). This precludes the recovery of some of the back pay if "the employee wishes to enforce during his 7th or 8th year of employment". A "retroactive" enforcement of other rights might be available, depending on the nature of those rights and other details. But nothing prevents the employee to henceforth enforce all of his rights pursuant to the current contract. Can the employer argue that the employee "waived his right" to the second contract by not enforcing it and acting as if it never existed? As explained above, no. Nor does it make sense for the employer to argue in terms of "a right to the second contract". A contract establishes a set of rights [and obligations], whence "a right to a set of rights" would reflect the employer's poor understanding of the ramifications of the contract he signed.	Yes If you look at the law pertaining to the work week and opting out of the maximum, which is also in The Working Time Regulations 1998 (with my emphasis in bold): 4.—(1) Subject to regulation 5, a worker’s working time, including overtime, in any reference period which is applicable in his case shall not exceed an average of 48 hours for each seven days. ... (3) Subject to paragraphs (4) and (5) and any agreement under regulation 23(b), the reference periods which apply in the case of a worker are ... So if we go to 23(b): A collective agreement or a workforce agreement may— (a)modify or exclude the application of regulations 6(1) to (3) and (7), 10(1), 11(1) and (2) and 12(1), and (b)for objective or technical reasons or reasons concerning the organization of work, modify the application of regulation 4(3) and (4) by the substitution, for each reference to 17 weeks, of a different period, being a period not exceeding 52 weeks, in relation to particular workers or groups of workers.	This is an increasingly common practice in the UK for dismissals, especially for reasons of redundancy. What is going on here is that they are attempting to enter into what until recently was known as a compromise agreement, and is now termed settlement agreement. Normally, when you are made redundant, you are entitled to statutory redundancy pay (amount depends on age and length of service; see https://www.gov.uk/redundant-your-rights/redundancy-pay). You can take this and do not need to sign anything. However, sometimes companies make slightly more generous offers in exchange for you agreeing not to take them to tribunal/court or discuss/disclose certain matters. This would often involve more money and an agreed reference. These agreements only have legal standing if you have taken legal advice from a person qualified to give it. The UK's national conciliation and arbitration service ACAS has information on settlement agreements at http://www.acas.org.uk/index.aspx?articleid=4395 Therefore the employer is offering to pay legal fees because they need you to get advice before you sign a document which protects them. They are suggesting solicitors because they know of solicitors willing to do this work for the price they are willing to pay. Some companies will do this for every dismissal and have a have a standard package for enhanced redundancy. Other companies decide for each case. Before you proceed to arrange a solicitor, you should check: That you are free to choose another solicitor who will do the same for £500. That this will be paid whether or not you agree to the terms. What your length of service is, what your statutory entitlement is and what the difference is between that and what you are being offered. You should also think carefully about whether you have any potential claims against the employer - for instance, if you think you are not being made redundant because the employer is doing less of a particular type of work but because you have raised issues of discrimination. You are probably being asked to give up your right to pursue this. In terms of choice of solicitor, a solicitor which gets work from employer recommendations probably won't be too forthright in encouraging you to challenge unfavourable terms (even if they do not work for employers). If you are a member of a trade union, they will be able to suggest lawyers who do settlement agreements for employees on a regular basis. If not (and I assume not as otherwise they would be helping you through this), I would suggest finding a firm that specialises in representing employees - some solicitors' firms like Thompsons and Morrish are pretty open about their focus.	The answer to your question is that your manager cannot ask you to undertake training without payment. All employees are entitled to be paid for the work they have done. They are also entitled to be paid if they are ready and willing to work but their employer has not provided them with any work to do, unless your employment contract says otherwise. https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/work/rights-at-work/rights-to-pay/ Zero hours contracts can be very complicated legal issues, but you are entitled to be paid for the time you spend there doing what your employer has asked you to do. However, if your employment were to be terminated due to a disagreement then you may not be able to make any claim before an Employment Tribunal as you do not yet have a sufficient length of employment. There are many legal complications, and each case is different and individual. Giving general legal advice is beset with all kinds of problems. You may wish to direct your employer to the Citizens' Advice page. If they do not agree to either pay you for your time there or allow you to leave when they do not wish to pay you then your best option might be to seek employment elsewhere.	If you have no contract to provide the service then you have no obligation under contract law to do so. However, if you are aware that withdrawing the service could or would cause damage to their business then doing so may leave you open to a suit on the basis of negligence; particularly if you do so precipitously and without warning. You should write to them in the following terms: Despite our agreement that the contract would not be renewed you have not made any arrangements to stop using my service. Consequently I consider that by your actions, you have continued to treat the contract as ongoing. I am happy for this arrangement to continue on a month-by-month basis and will be invoicing accordingly. If this is acceptable, please respond by 4pm on x/y/z; if you do not do so I will switch the service off at 4pm on x/y+2/z	It is not uncommon for an employer to ask a former employee to assist with something as a courtesy, and sometimes the former employee will choose to do so. If it requires more than a small amount of time, this may be done under a short-term consulting contract for pay. But unless there was a contract of employment requiring such post-employment advice, there is no legal obligation for the former employee to provide such assistance. The most the former employer could do is give a poor reference if asked by potential future employers, and most large corporate employers now only give job title, salary range, and dates of employment to avoid claims of incorrect or defamatory statements in such references.	There is no legislation in Germany that explicitly states how long you have to wait in such a situation. First let's look what happened: According to your work contract, you are obligated to be available for work and follow the directions of your employer. Let's not go into nuances of the latter duty, because they depend on what type of work you are doing. Your employer is obligated to pay you if you fulfill your duties. What happened is called Annahmeverzug (default of acceptance) in German civil law (§ 615 BGB): Kommt der Dienstberechtigte mit der Annahme der Dienste in Verzug, so kann der Verpflichtete für die infolge des Verzugs nicht geleisteten Dienste die vereinbarte Vergütung verlangen, ohne zur Nachleistung verpflichtet zu sein. Er muss sich jedoch den Wert desjenigen anrechnen lassen, was er infolge des Unterbleibens der Dienstleistung erspart oder durch anderweitige Verwendung seiner Dienste erwirbt oder zu erwerben böswillig unterlässt. … English translation: If the person entitled to services is in default in accepting the services, then the party owing the services may demand the agreed remuneration for the services not rendered as the result of the default without being obliged to provide cure. However, he must allow to be credited against him what he saves as a result of not performing the services or acquires or wilfully fails to acquire through use of his employment elsewhere. … If your employer doesn't enable you to work, they have to pay you for your time. You don't have to make up that time. If you save money by not working or had the opportunity to earn money by other means1 during that time, this can be deducted from your pay. Now, the question is how you fulfill your duty of being available for work. This depends on the specifics and really can only be answered by a lawyer or court (and IANAL). You do not need to endure hardships but have to accept reasonable inconveniences. Thus, you can leave if waiting becomes more than an inconvenience (usually that will be caused by weather or by bodily functions). If you leave, you should still be available for work unless that becomes unreasonable, e.g., because you could use that time to earn money by other means. 1 Usually, it can be safely assumed that you don't have that opportunity. However, a daytaler might easily have that opportunity.
Is it legal in the US to bundle renting a car parking space and buying insurance for the content of the car? Is it legal in the US for a company that rents out car parking spaces, to bundle the renting of a parking space to buying insurance for the content of the parked car? I.e. the company refuses to let a customer rent a parking space, unless he/she also purchases insurance for the content of the car, even if the car is empty, or is full with junk. (In general, it is not mandatory in the US for car owners to insure the content of their car.)	Is it legal in the US for a company that rents out car parking spaces, to bundle the renting of a parking space to buying insurance for the content of the parked car? Yes. Honestly, I'm a little surprised that I've never see this practice in real life. All things not prohibited are allowed, and there is nothing, per se illegal about bundling services and requiring them to be purchased as a package deal (there may be some licensing issues for insurance sales involved, but those would probably be easily overcome). Sometimes bundling gives rise to an anti-trust violation, but neither the parking lot operation business nor the car insurance business are so consolidated that this would fairly be viewed as some kind of anti-competitive practice.	You are responsible It is unlikely that the arrangement you had with the sitter amounts to a contract. Even though there was consideration on both sides, at first blush it seems unlikely that both of you intended to create legal relations. See What is a contract and what is required for them to be valid? Notwithstanding, if there is a contract it is silent on who is responsible to for injury to the pet so it would fall back on the law of negligence anyway. For the sitter to be responsible, she must have been negligent. She wasn't. See Is there liability for pure accidents? Looking at the elements: a duty to the plaintiff, such a aduty probably exists. breached that duty by failing to conform to the required standard of conduct (generally the standard of a reasonable person), she didn't (see below). the plaintiff must have suffered actual harm, no question that you have. the negligent conduct was, in law, the cause of that harm, and that harm was foreseeable, probably it wasn't (see below). Here are the facts: She took the dog on public transport - not unreasonable, many people do. The fact that you wouldn't is irrelevant since you did not communicate this prohibition to the sitter. She took it to an off-leash park - not unreasonable, that's what they are for. She rode an escalator - it is unclear if she carried the dog or expected the dog to ride the escalator itself. The first is clearly reasonable, the second may or may not be depending on the size of the dog etc. She noted the injury and had it treated - eminentely reasonable. So, in general, she has acted as a reasonable person would. It is also far from clear to me how any of the decisions made would result in foreseeable harm to the dog. Remembering that the standard is would a reasonable person foresee that there was a risk of harm barring extraordinary circumstances. By the way, the legal reasoning is exactly the same if you had entrusted her with your child or your car.	You have the right to notify the owner of the car of their vehicular trespass and the consequences of that. You do not have the right to damage the car in giving said notice. You have the right to offer to clean the gum off whatever part of the car you stuck the notice to. If you succeed in cleaning it,the other party will not have a legal cause of action, in all likelihood, since there is no damage (though with a bit of imagination they might come up with some 'missed business opportunity' loss). The court would probably find your choice of sticker to be negligent (put the notice under the wipers? use painter's tape -get some if you don't have any). The rationale 'we had no other choice' holds no water: there are alternatives. 'Criminal Damages' is a concept in UK law, but it relates to willful damage such as vandalism, not accidents. It would be an issue if you had planned to cause damage, but that seems not to be the case here.	I'm based in England, but I'm sure the principle is similar in Canada. The night club or concert venue is private property. When someone owns or rents private property one of the main things they are buying is the right to control who is present on that property, and generally they can use reasonable force to remove people who are not authorised. Security guards generally act as agents for a property owner, tenant or similar.	By default, the tenant is liable for all rent until the end of the lease. E.g. if neither the tenant nor the landlord can find a suitable and credit-worthy replacement tenant (e.g. if the market has crashed), then the whole lease must still be accounted for by the original tenant, and the lost "rent" becomes "damages". However, there is also a concept of damage mitigation, and California Civil Code 1951.2 explicitly defines that it's the landlord's duty to mitigate damages. This means that the landlord cannot simply sit still and collect the rent on an empty apartment. Because of this, some smaller landlords in California outright have a policy that you can cleanly break the lease by paying for 2 months of rent as a penalty. (It appears that a good summary of various examples about landlord/tenant damage mitigation is available at UniformLaws.org.) However, when it comes down specifically to the SF Bay Area with the ever increasing rents and the lowest residential vacancy rates in the nation, and also especially with the corporate landlords that already have sufficient resources in place to readily advertise and promote an abandoned unit, it can probably be argued that, in practicality, requesting more than one month of rent (in damages) as a penalty for breaking the lease is simply unreasonable.	There don't appear to be any Santa Clara-specific laws on the matter, so California law (including this) would govern this situation. A landlord generally has an obligation to maintain the premise in habitable condition (can't stick you with the bill for repairing the water main), and has to fulfill the obligations of the lease (if the lease says that a working washing machine is part of the premise, the landlord has to fix it if it breaks). An AC is not part of what makes a unit "habitable" in the legal sense. You should have to scrutinize exactly what the lease says about the AC, but saying that it is provided "as is" indicates that the landlord is disclaiming any obligation to fix it if it breaks. You are allowed to use it, but if it breaks, he won't fix it. The fact that he has no obligation to fix it does not relieve you of your duty to care for his property (irrespective of the fact that it was abandoned by a prior tenant – there's a notification procedure regarding abandoned real property, which I assume the landlord followed so it is his AC). Your obligation to compensate the landlord for damaging his property is not triggered by his legal obligation to maintain the property, it is triggered by the fact that it is his property. So you are legally on the hook: under §1929, "The hirer of a thing must repair all deteriorations or injuries thereto occasioned by his want of ordinary care". However, the size of the hook is not clear: the cost of replacement or repair could be vastly higher than the actual value of the unit. There is a legal concept of "unjust enrichment" that could be applicable, if the landlord plans to bill you $500 for a new AC which he got for free, but you'd probably need to hire a lawyer to make a solid legal argument in court.	What you are describing may be the crime of insurance fraud: to avoid that, you would have to admit to the insurance company that you put a "Please steal me" sign in an unlocked car with the keys in the ignition, in a high-crime area. If we remove some of the elements of the scenario and reduce this to "leaving the keys in the ignition", this would probably be be considered contributory negligence, meaning that you failed to act prudently to protect your property. This can reduce the amount that the insurance company has to pay you. At this point, it depends on what state you're in, since sometimes a little bit of negligence (in Alabama, Maryland, North Carolina, and Virginia) means that you may get nothing. However, negligence hinges on an assessment of the actions and intentions of a party, and what you describe isn't "neglect", there is the direct intent that the car be stolen. Insurance policies exclude coverage for intentional loss. So the bottom line would be that the person would be out a car, and could be in prison for fraud if they did not reveal what they actually did. One should assume that the thieves took a lulz video of the sign before they stole the car, and posted it on FaceTube where it entered the viral hall of fame and was used against you in a court of law, so fraud is the worst choice. An alternative if you have a car is to donate it to charity, and take a tax write-off.	Probably not, although it is impossible to say without reading the lease. Usually leases are monthly. That means you pay for the entire month or lease term regardless of how much or how little you use the property. It seems weird that the lease ends on the 21st, but if that is the case, then you are legally obligated to pay for that time interval. That said, if you want to drive a hard bargain, you could threaten to reoccupy the apartment and stay in it until the 21st which are legally entitled to do, unless he refunds you some money. You would have to be a pretty serious hard-ass to pull this off, or be prepared to go to court. One possible course of action is that you demand return of the key and say you changed your mind and will be staying in the apartment until the 21st. Make sure the conversation is recorded and that he knows the conversation is recorded, or have a witness. He will refuse. You can then sue him for denying you the use of your property.
Right to personal data on youtube : what if account is banned Since GDPR at least we have the right to access and get the data we generated on websites like Facebook or Google (our history, likes, almost everything). My question is : what happens if Facebook or Google decides to suspend or ban your account ? Does it abolish your right to access your personal data ? Is it legal for them to suspend your right Thanks in advance,	No, a company cannot suspend your GDPR rights – contracts can't override the law. Your rights as a data subject apply as long as your personal data is being processed. However, there is no requirement in the GDPR that they fulfill your data subject rights through a self-service mechanism like a “download my data” button. They can require you to use another support channel. (But Google offers infamously bad support.) In some cases, the service may legitimately decide that they cannot give you access to the data, for example if they believe that you are not the actual data subject (e.g. if they think that you hacked the account). The right to access must not adversely affect other people (Art 15(4)). If they have doubts about your identity, they can require further information to verify you (Art 12(6)). If your requests are excessive or unfounded (if you are spamming them), they can also turn down the requests (Art 12(5)).	These documents constitute personal data and - in principle - you, as the subject, have the right to get a copy of them by issuing a "subject access request". The controller shall provide a copy of the personal data undergoing processing. For any further copies requested by the data subject, the controller may charge a reasonable fee based on administrative costs. Where the data subject makes the request by electronic means, and unless otherwise requested by the data subject, the information shall be provided in a commonly used electronic form. (Art. 15 (3) GDPR) GDPR applies to controllers of any kind, including government organisations. The subject access request can usually be a simple email. The ICO has a template for this: https://ico.org.uk/your-data-matters/your-right-of-access/ (but keep it simple, you can literally just ask for "all personal data" they have on you; no need to speculate on what kind of data they may have). The subject access request is sent to the actual controller, but if you don't get a response to your request after 30 days, you can file a complaint with the supervisory authority (see here for Germany; note that federal institutions are supervised by the BFDI, not the data protection authorities of the Länder). Also note that you may have to go through some trouble to be properly authenticated by the controller. They do need to be certain that you are the data subject. There are also reasons why a controller can refuse to provide some or all of the information (e.g. if your request is clearly excessive or unfounded, if it's impossible to comply without violating another data subject's rights), but I would be surprised if any of those applied in your case. Your rights can also be restricted depending on the legal basis for processing. This includes rights that are illogical as well as some that provide special protection for processors: You can't object to processing based on consent (but you can revoke your consent), fulfilment of contract (but you can cancel your contract), a legal obligation on the part of the processor, or a vital interest (but you still have the right to erasure) Your right to portability and right to erasure does not apply if processing is based on a legal obligation or a public task (justice, parliamentary or government functions, statutory functions etc.) your right to portability also doesn't apply if processing is based on vital interest (e.g to protect someone's life) or legitimate interest of the processor. It is possible that processing all or some of your data was based on the performance of a public task, in which case they will refuse your request.	On the face of it, transcripts are derivative work covered by copyright (even if automagically generated). You are allowed to use them if the use is fair use or if you comply with YouTube's terms of service.	Probably not Now, some US constitutional rights do get interpreted very broadly, and it's possible this might be the case here too. But fundamentally, this situation is not equivalent to the security contractors example you mentioned. The crux is that Facebook already has every right to delete your posts for whatever reason they want. A security contractor does not have any intrinsic right to conduct searches (warrantless or otherwise) on your person, residence or effects. Facebook can choose, at their sole discretion, to delete all your posts, delete none of your posts, or delete some of your posts according to whatever metric they came up with. In this case, the metric is 'did the government flag this as misinformation'. The government isn't censoring you - Facebook is, and Facebook is allowed to do that (they happen in this case to be following the government's advice on what specifically needs censoring, but where they choose to get their advice is also purely their business). A security contractor, by contrast, can't do much of anything to you, except when they have been specifically deputized by the government to do so by some legal process. If this happens, then they are said to be acting 'under color of law', and suddenly First (and Eighth, etc) Amendment restrictions do begin to constrain their actions. Facebook is not getting any kind of state power delegated to them, and thus they aren't considered to be acting 'under color of law'. They aren't doing anything they were not already allowed to do.	Quoting content may or may not constitute copyright infringement, depending on the various factors that go into the fair use defense. Short quotes which are made for the purpose of discussion, research and commentary and not for copy would be squarely in the domain of "fair use" under US law. That means that the copyright owner would not succeed in suing you for quoting them: under the statutory mechanism for recognizing his right to his intellectual product, there is a limit on how much control he can exert over your behavior (since the two of you have not worked out some kind of agreement -- copyright law creates rights even when there is no contract). As for Facebook, you have a contract with them, embodied in the terms of service. You have been given permission to access material that they host (permission is required, under copyright law), and their permission is conditional. It says "you may access stuff on our platform only as long as you do X": if that includes a clause "don't be nasty", then that limits your right to speak freely and be as nasty as you'd like. If it says "don't quote even a little", that means you cannot quote even a little, even when you would have the statutory right to quote a little (or, to be nasty). Fair use would mean that you can't be sued for copyright infringement of the stuff that you quoted a little of. You can, however, be expelled from Facebook. You probably cannot be sued for "accessing Facebook without permission". There is a federal law against unauthorized access of computer networks, and there was a failed attempt to construe violation of a TOS as "unauthorized access" – it isn't. But accessing Facebook necessarily involves copying (that's how computers work), and there is no "fair use" defense whereby everybody has a fair use right to access Facebook. Theoretically you could be sued for copyright infringement, for accessing Facebook's intellectual property without permission. Also, Facebook can rescind your permission to access their content (see this case), and once you have been banned, it is a crime to further access their network. This assumes that there is no overriding limit on contracts that would nullify a no-quoting condition. There is no such limit on contracts in the US, so such a contract would be enforceable. There is also nothing illegal (unenforceable) about a TOS which prohibits automated methods of access.	GDPR seems quite clear that if you are recording calls, video and/or audio, you must get consent. Wrong. The GDPR requires that your have a legal basis for processing personal data. Consent is a legal basis but there are others. With respect to note taking, the GDPR only applies to “personal data wholly or partly by automated means and to the processing other than by automated means of personal data which form part of a filing system or are intended to form part of a filing system.” So, if they notes are not about an individual (and many B2B phone calls will not be) or are neither automated nor filed, the GDPR does not apply. If they are captured by the GDPR, you need to have a legal basis for the notes. Again, consent is one but it is not the only one.	You are right that a visitor of a website does not expect to be tracked upon opening the website. But when using Google Analytics configured in the way explained in my other post, the visitor is not tracked. At least not in a way which violates the GDPR. You worry about the cookies. I also found this article which also does and suggests to either: change the _ga cookie to a session cookie, so it will be removed when the browser is closed. To do this, set the Cookie Expiration variable in your Google Analytics Settings to 0. completely disable cookies. (GA does not require cookies). To do this, set the storage field to none: ga('create', 'UA-XXXXX-Y', { 'storage': 'none' }); If you do not disable cookies, cookies can be used for tracking, which is more general defined in the GDPR as profiling. Profiling is defined in Art. 4 GDPR as: ‘profiling’ means any form of automated processing of personal data consisting of the use of personal data to evaluate certain personal aspects relating to a natural person, in particular to analyse or predict aspects concerning that natural person’s performance at work, economic situation, health, personal preferences, interests, reliability, behaviour, location or movements; Art. 22(1) GDPR disallows profiling. Therefore in the settings menu from Google Analytics you have to disable data sharing and data collection. So data will only be used for the analytics function. But because you have configured to Anonymize your visitors IP Address, the part of the IP address used for this, is no longer considered personal data. This is because approx. 250 other users share the same part of the ip address which is stored, so data is not distinguishable between those 250 users. The anonymisation used by google is currently considered good enough. At least by the Dutch DPA. This might change if someone proves it is not good enough anonymized. Note that I am not a lawyer either, but I have read from multiple experts that analytics can be a "legitimate interest", the same way marketing can be a legitimate interest. This way configured the privacy impact is considered very low. It is also very important to note that a DPA consideres GA Google Analytics compliant. Even if a court would not agree in the future, you are acting in good faith if you follow those instructions, so you will probably not be fined. The DPA does currently not suggest to change the _ga cookie to a session cookie, or disable cookies completely. Note that the GDPR does not require doing anything to make it technical impossible to track someone. If a website has access to the data to track someone, but "promises" not to do that, that is fine. And rules regarding the usage of cookies in general, is not part of the GDPR, but (currently) part of the ePrivacy Directive. Only the way to ask for consent for storing cookies is defined in the GDPR.	Alice's business sells database management software. Organisations buy or licence the software, deploy it on hardware they control and use the software to help store and, process and analyse 'personal data' within the meaning of GDPR. Alice's business has no access whatsoever to the personal data being stored and processed by those organisations. In respect of that personal data, GDPR is not engaged by Alice's business. The business is neither a 'controller' nor 'processor' of that personal data. Who does the data protection law apply to? - European Commission Who does the UK GDPR apply to? - Information Commissioner's Office
What happens to debts when someone dies? How are debts and loans recovered by the lenders after a borrower passes away? A debt can be as small as 100 bucks for the credit card bill. It can be as big as millions of bucks for mortgage (or other fat) loans. Are the relatives or heirs of the deceased person legally bound to repay all or part of those debts, irrespective of whether they were actively involved in those debts? What legal channels can the lenders go through to recover their money? I am assuming such laws may not differ vastly across the countries. But still it will help a great deal if you mention the country whose laws you are explaining in the answer.	In Civil law jurisdictions, the heir of a deceased person will generally inherit all the possessions, rights and obligations - this may include debts. So if a borrower passes away, the lender will typicall find out who is the heir, and ask them to pay. The heir will be required to pay, and the creditor can use the usual channels (reminders, collection agencies, court judgements) to make them pay. However, if the inheritance is "under water" (has more debts than assets), there are ways to avoid having to pay the debts: In Civil law jurisdictions, acceptance of an inheritance usually means being liable for all the debts, too. Details vary between jurisdictions - in Germany, for example, acceptance of an inheritance is automatic, and a heir must file a document to refuse it (this is called disclaiming the inheritance). In France, in contrast, the default is to disclaim the heritage, but certain interested parties (such as creditors) can require a heir to formally make a choice, then the default is acceptance (https://www.service-public.fr/particuliers/vosdroits/F1199). In contrast, in the United States (which generally uses Common law), creditors are paid first, and the heirs only inherit what is left, in a process called probate. In that case, a heir need not explicitly disclaim an inheritance that is "under water" - they will simply not inherit anything. Note that the heir may choose to inherit certain debts in exchange for keeping certain assets - for example, if a home with a mortage is part of the inheritance, the heir may either choose to sell the home and pay the mortage, or keep the home and accept the mortage as debt. Notes: Even if inheritance is not automatic, the system usually allows a heir to disclaim it. There are other reasons for disclaiming an inheritance apart from debts, for example tax advantages, or the desire to grant the inheritance to a different relative. If a heir disclaims the inheritance, no matter the reason, the inheritance automatically passes to the next heir in line. If all potential heirs disclaim in turn (as would typically happen if the inheritance has more debt than assets), the inheritance will usually fall to the state. Then, the assets will be divided up among the creditors (similar to insolvency proceedings). As an exception to the rule above, the state does not have to pay outstanding debts - so that money would be lost for the creditors.	Regarding to your instructions concerning the funds in the account, it's hard to prove a negative. As far as I know there is no legislation that requires a credit balance to be retained. However, there may be some regulations or internal policies regarding the closure of home loans, which may preclude closure without some documentation or other process. But just because you can't cite legislation that requires you to do things, doesn't mean it doesn't exist. You don't ask the new bank to support their claims which contradict the old banks, because it works in your favour. With regard to the last instruction regarding your funds, the bank can and will provide you with a list of fees and charges applied to your account - it's called a statement. With regard to your explicit other option - is what the bank's doing essentially theft? - you can call it theft, but it's not. At worst it's conversion, the remedy for which is the recovery of the converted property, or damages equal to the value of the property. If you have attempted to resolve your complaint through the bank's internal dispute resolution processes (usually some kind of complaint process), you can also contact the Financial Services Ombudsman, who may assist with these situations. Finally, as for your further instructions, they are all void and unenforceable. 1. You cannot impose terms on the conduct of another party without their agreement. This is called a counteroffer or variance to their established terms which you will have agreed to at the time that you established the original loan. 3. You can never be compensated just for your time.	You can offset the amount but you must go to court to do it. The court can then grant you an offset. This document from a law office describes the details. The risk you run if you do not pay and do not do this properly is that she, with a valid judgement in her hand, can take enforcement action including garnishee of bank accounts and seizure of property (of course, you can do the same to her).	Yes, you can sell an interest in a debt; this is an alternative to paying a debt collection agency on recovery. The contract that you have with the debtor may have limitations of the transfer of rights and obligations under the contract that may prevent this. The value of the debt to the agency depends on the status of the debt and the credit worthiness of the debtor. If you have a judgement debt from a court, they don't come any more rock solid than that - the only limitation is the debtor's ability to pay. If the debtor has assets or a solid income stream an agency may pay 70-80% of the face value of the debt.	Tell your parents Given the circumstances it is a near certainty that the least he will do if you do not pay for the damage is make contact with them. It will be far, far better for you if they learn it from you rather than him. What could he do? He (or his insurance company) can contact your parents - he will almost certainly do this. He (or his insurance company) can sue you for negligence. Children are responsible for their own torts providing they have the capacity to recognize and avoid risk and harm - based on your question I have (and a court would have) no doubt that that you are. If you lose the case, and don't pay, he can have the government seize whatever you own in order to sell it to pay the debt you owe. If this happened in British Columbia or Manitoba he can sue your parents. He could report you to the police - they may or may not choose to prosecute if what you did was criminal: it probably wasn't but the police may investigate to determine this. If he is insured he may be required to notify the police.	If the parents own the house (as shown on the official deed) it will go as they leave it in their wills, or as the local law for intestate inheritance (no will) directs. Who paid all or part of the down payment will not matter. If the intent was for that to matter, then the child who provided the down payment should have been listed as partial owner, or some written agreement should have been made specifying the rights involved. Otherwise the down payment would be considered as a gift. If the child owns the house (as shown on the deed) it would not be part of the parents' estate, and their will(s) would not affect it. It would remain the property of the child. If the down payment was a loan rather than a gift, as shown by a written agreement of some sort, then that debt would be an obligation of the estate, to be paid before any legacies were distributed.	That really sucks. I've had similar experiences when handling the probate proceedings of lawyers who were not good about returning original wills to clients. I am providing an answer under general principles without researching Oregon specific accounting, record retention and probate laws, to at least give you a start although I recognize that a better answer would research these questions. The accounts/clients from her business were sold to another woman. Is it legal for us to transfer everything to her possession? Probably yes. There should be a government agency in Oregon that regulates accountants that has rules regarding that question. The linked rule seems to govern this situation. It says in Rule 801-030-0015(d) that: (d) Custody and disposition of working papers. (A) A licensee may not sell, transfer or bequeath working papers described in this rule to anyone other than one or more surviving partners or stockholders, or new partners or stockholders of the licensee, or any combined or merged organization or successor in interest to the licensee, without the prior written consent of the client or the client’s personal representative or assignee. (B) A licensee is not prohibited from making a temporary transfer of working papers or other material necessary to the conduct of peer reviews or for the disclosure of information as provided by section (1)(b) of this rule. (C) A licensee shall implement reasonable procedures for the safe custody of working papers and shall retain working papers for a period sufficient to meet the needs of the licensee’s practice and to satisfy applicable professional standards and pertinent legal requirements for record retention. (D) A licensee shall retain working papers during the pendency of any Board investigation, disciplinary action, or other legal action involving the licensee. Licensees shall not dispose of such working papers until notified in writing by the Board of the closure of the investigation or until final disposition of the legal action or proceeding if no Board investigation is pending. So, a transfer to a successor firm appears to be permitted. What if she refuses to take the documents? Her probate estate could retain them and stay open, they could be returned to clients, or there could be a rule established by the Oregon body that regulates accountants that authorizes a central depository of such records. In Colorado, for example, in the case of law practices with no successors, original wills and estate planning documents can be deposited in the records of the court with probate jurisdiction that has jurisdiction over the territory where the decedent's practice was located. But, I could not locate any provision of this kind in Oregon law. Is it legal for us to destroy/shred/etc. the documents? In many cases, yes. Some states, by statute or regulation, and others by custom, allow business records to be destroyed as a matter of course, normally one year after the longest statute of limitations that could apply to a dispute where the records would be relevant (often seven years since the longest normally applicable tax statute of limitations is six years). Destroying tax returns is usually not a big concern because a transcript of the old tax returns can be ordered from the tax collection agency where they were filed. But, business records related to purchases of property and capital improvements and depreciation, and related to divorces, can be relevant for decades after they were created, so the more honorable course of action would be to make at least a cursory effort (such as a postcard sent to a last known address of each client with a deadline for requesting a return of their file) to return the files of clients that include original business records as opposed to mere copies of tax returns. Oregon has a seven year retention rule for most purposes pursuant to Rule 801-030-0015(e) which is linked above: (e) Retention of attest and audit working papers. (A) Licensees must maintain, for a period of at least seven years, the working papers for any attest or compilation services performed by the licensee together with any other supporting information, in sufficient detail to support the conclusions reached in such services. (B) The seven-year retention period described in paragraph (A) of this subsection is extended if a longer period is required for purposes of a Board investigation as provided in paragraph (d)(D) of this rule and OAR 801-010-0115(3). The referenced rule in that rule states: (3) Requirements upon resignation. Upon resignation, a former licensee is required to: (a) Surrender the CPA certificate or PA license to the Board; (b) Take all reasonable steps to avoid foreseeable harm to any client, including but not limited to providing written notice of resignation under this section to all clients and inform all clients of where client records and work papers will be stored and of the clients’ right to secure copies of all such records and work papers at no cost to the client; (c) Maintain client records for a period of at least six years, or return such records to the client; and (d) Continue to comply with the requirements of OAR Chapter 801 Division 030 pertaining to confidential information and client records. (e) For the purpose of subsection (b) above and unless otherwise required by the Board, a resigning licensee of a registered firm is required to give written notice to only those firm clients for which the resigning licensee was the sole or primary CPA on an engagement, an engagement leader, or the client relationship manager. In practice, the consequences of destroying a record that shouldn't have been destroyed are likely to be minimal, because any recovery would be limited to the assets of the estate and there is a time limit for making claims against estates which is quite strict, and your grandma has no license to revoke. But, again, the honorable thing to do in order to honor her legacy and do right by her former clients would be to either transfer the records to a successor firm or to attempt to return them, as she would be required to do if she had surrendered a license during life.	According to the US Courts website, not all debts need to be paid in full in Chapter 13 proceedings: The plan need not pay unsecured claims in full as long it provides that the debtor will pay all projected "disposable income" over an "applicable commitment period," and as long as unsecured creditors receive at least as much under the plan as they would receive if the debtor's assets were liquidated under chapter 7. 11 U.S.C. § 1325. If they can't pay even this reduced amount, then they probably don't belong in Chapter 13. If the court declines to confirm the plan, the debtor may file a modified plan. 11 U.S.C. § 1323. The debtor may also convert the case to a liquidation case under chapter 7.
Is it legal to use fake credit card to sign up? I know that there are many scam sites in the Internet so I want to use a fake credit card generated by Luhn's algorithm. Is it legal to use it to sing up for an online pay service? I don't want to use real card number.	Yup, it's illegal. You want something, they have something you want. They let you have the thing provided that you do certain things, otherwise they won't give it to you. So providing a credit card is material to the contract. You know that the credit card number is false, you are representing that it is true, the card is a material fact, you intend to get them to allow you in using this false representation, they don't know it is false and they rightfully rely on your truthfulness. They have been harmed by your false representation (maybe: it would cost you a lot in attorney fees to try to challenge on this point). This is fraud.	What would be the most reasonable thing to do? Live with it. Oh, and stop breaking the law with your automated emails. Illegality on their part does not justify illegality on your part. Also, it’s likely that this activity has caused your email address to be blocked automatically which may explain why they aren’t contacting you. From a legal point of view, that’s the only reasonable option. You do have valid grounds for a lawsuit for the value of the watermelon but the cost of filing will be a couple of orders of magnitude greater than the value of the melon so doing so isn’t “reasonable”. If you want to vent, the internet offers a wide variety of social media platforms for which that seems to be their primary focus. But that’s got nothing to do with the law.	Possibly The game company has almost certainly excluded liability under the contract you entered. There may be some consumer protection that you have that they cannot exclude - I don’t know enough about German law to meaningfully comment. Notwithstanding, if you were to initiate legal action against the, as yet, unknown wrongdoer, you could subpoena the relevant records from the game company with a court order. No matter what privacy or other protections the other person has, the game company must obey the order or be in contempt. Without such an order the game company is right that they can’t disclose details of other users. As a practical matter, it will cost several hundred € to initiate legal action and several thousand to pursue it to the end. And you might lose. A better response is to treat the lost €80 as a relatively cheap life lesson - many people lose a lot more learning to recognise scams.	A TOS is not intrinsically illegal, but an interpretation of a TOS may or may not be supported by a court, that remains to be seen. It probably does not constitute a "deceptive practice" under FTC standards. The TOS is your permission to use the software, and there can be no question that they have the right to impose conditions on customer use of the software. E.g. Amazon cannot freely use software that is only licensed for free educational use. They speak of "ownership" of IP so created and explicitly disclaim any claims about Current Law in Your Jurisdiction. At the crucial point in the agreement, they switch to talking about the license (BY-NC) that they grant when you are not a paid member. The exact details of this ownership are not part of the free tier TOS, but they do seem to add certain protections to "owned" content created under the Pro plan – they are under no legal obligation to make all content universally visible and usable.	Is it legal? Yes. You can make just about any payment arrangements you like. You wouldn't be able to verify compliance, though, without some connection to the student's employer. The IRS won't tell you how much money a third party earned, or how much tax they paid, in a given year. Pretty sure they can't provide that info, which is why companies wanting to verify your income ask for copies of your tax returns rather than permission to get those returns.	No, in germany there is no universal requirement as to form (Formfreiheit). This includes associating a signature with a name in block letters. In principle you can enforce a contract in court even if the written contract does not identify the contracting parties by spelled out name, but by signature only. It stands to reason there is no benefit in omitting the full names. The legislature implemented elevated form requirements for certain legal transactions by mandating the use of a notary. Here, again, there is no requirement as to put a plain text name next to your signature. The link between signature and person is established via the notary’s documentation. You could put an alias “Donald Duck” next to your signature, the notarial deed will indicate that in fact Kalle Richter signed the document. As far as I am aware all european-union legal transactions will need to go through their official channels. It is simply not possible, for example, to establish a European Economic Interest Grouping on a scrap of paper. Thus there is no issue and in turn no regulation. One thing is for sure, the european-union does not impose a “minimum framework” on its member states. I recollect there are some directives regarding electronic signatures, but that is a different story now.	This would be wire fraud, which is any type of fraud committed using electronic communications (the term originally comes from the use of telegrams to commit fraud... just like how "wiring" money devised from paying the bill at one telegram station and having the bill collector take an equal amount of money from a different station.). Wire Fraud is basically a fraud crime over electronic communications, so it doesn't matter how you defraud someone, the fact that you did it in this manner is guilty... using a bank system to fraudulently create more money in your digit account would qualify. The bank would be the victim since it does have a set amount of money in assets that it owes to its customers (account holders) and Federal Insurance (which prevents the Bank Run scene in "It's a Wonderful Life" from happening) requires the bank to carefully keep books. Additionally, Wire Fraud comes with a $100,000 fine against the perpetrator for committing the crime where a financial institution is a victim, so it's in the Bank's interest to report a sudden income surge of fake dollars to the authorities lest they have to pay the fine out of their own pocket, risk their federal insurance, or lose their consumer confidence with account holders (who will pull their money and go to a more honest bank).	"Fraud" is roughly lying to get something that isn't yours - for example, my money. It turns from attempted fraud to fraud at the point where I would be defrauded if we both take no further action. That would often be the point where I hand over the money, for example if you offer goods for sale that don't exist and that you don't intend to deliver. If you fill out a form and forge my signature to get money, and send it off to someone who will give you the money, it would be fraud at the point where I lose my money if we both take no further action. That might be the second where you drop the letter in the mailbox.
Is witchcraft legally punishable? Suppose a witchcraft is proved to cause consequences, would it be legally punishable? I was telling to everybody that I am a sectarian and a religious fanatic. For this reason I would most likely die of hunger (but then I would not ask this question) as nobody wanted to communicate with me. And at the same time I discovered a new math formula, accordingly to my opinion worth $trillion for mankind. I decided to destroy Moscow, the center of illegal anti-sectarian propaganda, by nuclear weapon, to keep myself alive and save my formulas. To do this I prayed and made wishes for a thermonuclear war. Once I was beaten by two american missionaries. I was offended and said "Destroy two skyscrapers by planes!" This was my first big move to destabilize the world enough to start the thermonuclear war. Later I decided to punish mankind for punishing me with nearly death (by hunger and by supporting the side of a woman that several times attempted to kill me) for holding and proclaiming the opinion that they polluted Old Testament with vowels (as it was originally written without vowels). I said many curses among which "Let it be coronavirus." If (for the sake of the question) a court proved both that I said these curses and that the 11 Sep and corona were their consequences, what would be the legal consequences? Would my position that application to God is an application to a higher court save me from a punishment? I cursed them in Russia. Now I am in Israel.	Any legal question that begins with the word "suppose" becomes an academic exercise. Acceptance of religious principle can be incorporated in law, but it can also be reversed by later legislatures. In the case of witchcraft, I would recommend reading the results of a search on "Matthew Hopkins", "Pendle" and "Salem". In the US, Russia and Israel at time of writing, witchcraft is not considered to have a direct effect on criminal outcomes, though there may be aspects of the performance of religious activities and ceremonies that could be covered by incitement or conspiracy laws. Taking the position that "application to God is application to a higher court" is unlikely to lead to acquittal unless considered indicative of insanity, but may mitigate sentencing as part of a diminished responsibility defence.	You don't specify a jurisdiction but taking the US as an example, yes you could be charged with 2nd Degree Murder - you intended to harm them but not specifically to kill them: A second situation that constitutes second-degree murder is where the perpetrator intends only to cause serious bodily harm but knows that death could result from the act. For example, in the situation above, instead of shooting Bill, Adam grabs a shovel and whacks Bill in the head with all his strength. While Adam didn't specifically intend to kill Bill when he hit him, he did intend to strike him with the shovel knowing that such a blow to the head carried with it a distinct possibility of death. Adam killing Bill in this way would be classified as murder in the second degree. In English law you'd be facing charges for Voluntary Manslaughter	Would any offence be committed for: Having this on your person? Buying or selling this? Leaving it around for people to plug in to a computer? In the abstract, I don't think that this conduct would violate either Section 36 of the U.K. law or U.S. law, although, obviously, purposefully destroying a computer itself (i.e. actually using the device without the consent of the owner of the computer) would violate many U.K. laws and would also violate many U.S. laws at both the state and federal level. I also don't think that possession or buying or selling this product would be a crime absent some intent that it be used illegally, in which case there might be an "attempt" to commit a crime offense, or an offense that would make one part of a conspiracy to commit a crime. In the "leaving it around" example, there is arguably an intent to use it to harm another improperly, although the phrasing is ambivalent. While many statutes in the U.S. criminalize possession of burglary tools, or drug paraphernalia, sometimes with an associated intent element (although even these crimes often have an express or judicially implied intent to use element), I'm not aware of any statute that criminalize possession of tools for malicious destruction of property. So, if the tools aren't possessed or used in a manner intended as a step in the facilitation of a crime, I don't think that any law is violated. So far as I know, the U.S. does not have a counterpart to Section 37 of the British statute cited above (it isn't a terribly easy thing to search for to definitively rule out the existence of such a law because federal law has many uncodified crimes in unexpected statutes and there are many sets of state criminal statutes, not all of which are codified either). The example giving in the comments by @gnasher729 of possession of a hammer which could be used to do the same things that this object could be used to do is instructive. Arguably, this USB-like tool is more specifically targeted at malicious conduct. But, for example, when I used to work as a radio news reporter, we had a machine that was basically a high powered magnet that was specifically designed to destroy all information on magnetic media. This was, in part, so that it could be reused, but it was also so that confidential interviews wouldn't fall into the wrong hands once they were no longer needed, in much the way that one might shred paper documents. It isn't so implausible to think that a device like this one might be necessary for individuals or firms with national defense secrets embedded in their hardware and software to have on hand in order to destroy a sensitive computer in order to prevent a security breach, if necessary. In a case like that, leaving one of these devices around the office unlabeled might be negligent, but wouldn't have the intent necessary to be an intended crime. And, it is hard to imagine that the device itself, which seems pretty simple, would itself involve any technology that is a national security secret, so it probably wouldn't violate export control laws. Of course, possession, purchase or sale of such a specialized device, or leaving it around unlabeled would certainly be powerful evidence of an intent to use the device in a wrongful manner, and hence, of an attempt to commit a crime. Indeed, possession of such a device or purchase of one might very well be sufficient to establish probable cause to seize the device and arrest the person holding it on charges of an attempt to destroy a computer. But, this device would be merely powerful evidence of an intent to commit a crime, rather than something that is a crime to commit in and of itself. There are no international laws that govern this kind of thing. The only international laws applicable to individuals pertain to war crimes and nuclear and chemical weapons. Even then, most international laws direct member nations to adopt domestic laws on the subject rather than being self-executing.	If I were a federal prosecutor (which I'm emphatically not), I might try to charge you under 18 USC § 32 (a) (5): a) Whoever willfully— [...] (5) interferes with or disables, with intent to endanger the safety of any person or with a reckless disregard for the safety of human life, anyone engaged in the authorized operation of such aircraft or any air navigation facility aiding in the navigation of any such aircraft; [...] shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years or both. Since you clearly know, or believe, that this has the potential to interfere with piloting, which would obviously be a serious danger to people on board the aircraft, I'd argue you would be acting with "reckless disregard for the safety of human life." If your conduct results in anybody's death, then life imprisonment and/or the death penalty are also on the table, under 18 USC § 34.	No. The law would be void for vagueness. Connally v. General Construction Co., 269 U.S. 385, 391 (1926): [T]he terms of a penal statute [...] must be sufficiently explicit to inform those who are subject to it what conduct on their part will render them liable to its penalties… and a statute which either forbids or requires the doing of an act in terms so vague that men of common intelligence must necessarily guess at its meaning and differ as to its application violates the first essential of due process of law. The example of the "well known but hidden stop sign" appears to allow for arbitrary prosecution and should also be void.	It is not the case that treason must be tried by a military tribunal. See for example US v. Kawakita, which was an ordinary civilian jury trial. I cannot even imagine why one would think that there is any such requirement. Here is the federal law against treason, and nothing says "offenses must be tried in a military court". Perhaps that misconception was based on the use of military tribunals during the American Revolution, which preceded the creation of a US legal system.	A reasonable hypothetical example of where your clause "C" would be applied: A defendant is written a citation for "spitting on the sidewalk," in violation of a hypothetical Portland city ordinance. In presenting extenuating details, the defendant indicates that the expectoration occurred because she had taken a bite of vended food that was belatedly discovered to have been infested with maggots. The notion of encountering rotted food would clearly not have been contemplated by the definition of the "spitting on the sidewalk" ordinance, where the notion of having a cheekful of chewing tobacco definitely would be.	Generally not. A judge in sentencing has a number of options subject to the statute or common law. A fine may be one option, imprisonment another. Others include community service, a suspended sentence or death. What they choose is (subject to appeal or commutation) what you do. You can't substitute one for the other.
English Football Club ownership I have been wondering if club fans have the power to sanction the compulsory sale of the club by an owner whom they perceive as frustrating their club's future. In any case, the money comes from these people (fans) through club products, match tickets etc For example a substantial number of Arsenal fans perceive Kroenke's ownership as sabotaging the supposed glory of the club in that he does not invest in the club to make it competitive. Same for Manchester United fans with the Glazer family.	Do fans legally have any ownership rights? Generally, no. It can be done if an agreement of the team is put into place when the team is founded or if the current owner agrees to it (which can then be binding on whomever the team is sold/transferred to). There are some leagues, such as the Bundesliga (Thank you Nij, for the correction; Sports in general are not my thing) where the clubs must be owned by fans, at least 51%. So it can be done, but cannot be forced on an owner against their will, unless such a covenant is agreed to before they take possession of the club. It can be required for a given club to join/participate in a given league. Legally, supporting a club via buying club merch and match tickets give an ownership interest in the items bought, not in the club/team itself.	It sounds like you may be conflating ownership and control. It's very common for an affiliate to have a contract with the parent company. These terms can be very detailed - it may give the parent company the right to sell the affiliates widgets, but not sprockets (as those are sold by another parent company). As such, you can't really measure "control" as a simple percentage. So, when the parent is selling widgets, it can reasonably claim control over its affiliate. The buyer does not need to know the exact terms governing the relation between parent and affiliate.	For a contract (including ToS) to be valid, one of the things it must have is "legality of objects". That is, if the contract purports to require anything that is unlawful in the jurisdiction then (barring a severance clause) it is not a contract. In common law countries, the starting point is that people are free to contract for and about anything they like - a contract is simply a mechanism for exchanging value between the parties on whatever terms they wish. However, judges and legislatures have decided that there are some things you cannot trade and some terms that are unconscionable or against the public interest and these vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction*. For example, a contract is not legal in any jurisdiction if its terms seek to exclude the intervention of the courts - this is against public policy. So for example, a binding arbitration clause requiring the parties to accept a private arbitrator's decision as final excludes the courts, yes? Well, in Australia, yes, such clauses if used in a contract between parties with different bargaining power (like a Telco and its customers) are invalid because they prevent the weaker party pursuing a class action. However, they are perfectly legal in the United States because the SCOTUS has determined that the customer can persue litigation after arbitration is finished so this doesn't impede the courts. These are essentially the same laws interpreted by the courts so that they have totally opposite effects. So this might lead you to think that you'll put one in - it'll be OK in the US and Australians will represent such a tiny share of your market that you don't care if I can't enforce my ToS there. Except, if your website is visible by Australians, you have just exposed yourself to a government fine of up to AUD 5,000,000 (say USD 3,000,000) per day for breach of Australian Consumer Law. As a general guide (which is very stereotypical), US jurisdictions are the most permissive in the rights they will allow their citizens to give up: the US attitude is that everyone is free to make the best deal they can. European jurisdictions are the least permissive in this regard: most European countries follow a more social welfare state model and the citizen needs protecting from themselves. Commonwealth countries tend to be more in the middle.	I find that Petri Mäntysaari: The Law of Corporate Finance: General Principles and EU Law: Volume II, p. 115-140 can pretty much explain the reasoning for this. It is in chapter 5.3 on Terms non-binding as intended. The contract might not contain all legal requirements for some reason, or a clause might become invalid due to law changes. Sometimes the contract becomes unenforceable for some reason or another in part or full. The salvatorian clause is there to fix the defective clause to become the closest estimate to the written form that is legal and not deficient instead of being just dropped from the contract. This can save a contract from becoming unenforceable or making it void in whole. Especially look at Page 140: If a contract term is invalid because of a mandatory provision of law, it will be replaced by legal background rules(§306(2) BGB). One of the standard ways to address the situation is to use a so-called salvatorian clause. [...] This [reinterpretation/fixing of deficiencies] would not happen without a specific contract term. (See §139 BGB. On the other hand see also §140 BGB. Compare DCFR II.-7:302 and II.-7:303) A caveat though: if the alteration to the clause needed is too big and substantial, the contract as a whole can become void and null, no matter what the salvatorian clause said. It cannot overcome some burdens and there are regularly courts (I know this for Germany) voiding contracts due to such serious deficiencies. Notes BGB is the German "Bürgerliche Gesetzbuch", an english translation exists §139 says "If a part of a legal transaction is void, then the entire legal transaction is void, unless it is to be assumed that it would have been undertaken even without the void part." Example: a sale lacking any payment is not a sale (which starts a legally required warranty) $140 says "If a void legal transaction fulfils the requirements of another legal transaction, then the latter is deemed to have been entered into, if it may be assumed that its validity would be intended if there were knowledge of the invalidity." Example: a sale lacking any payment can be interpreted as a gift if the intent was to do so (and does not grant warranty) DCFR is the EU Draft Common Frame of Reference, so the above rules are to be found in the document as follows II.–7:302: Contracts infringing mandatory rules - p. 565. Paraphrased: "if a clause in a contract violates a law, substitute the law for it, courts shall decide if that alters or voids the contract. They may fix contracts to cure them." II.–7:303: Effects of nullity or avoidance - p. 574. Paraphrased: "void contract (parts) can constitute unjustified enrichment, transfer of items might not have happened, courts may fix contracts to cure." From the DCFR document one can read what happens in absence of a Salvatorian clause, especially for UK law. II.–7:302: I. Contracts contrary to law 1 All European systems deal with contracts which contravene some rule of law, as opposed to contracts which are contrary to fundamental principles of morality or public policy. 5 In ENGLISH, IRISH and SCOTTISH law the standard texts all include chapter headings such as “Illegality”, or “Statutory Invalidity”. See further Enonchong, McBryde, Law of Contract in Scotland1 , paras. 19.28-19.36, and, for the confused development of Scottish law, Macgregor in Reid & Zimmermann vol. II, chap. 5. II. Effects of infringement 8 The general starting point in most European legal systems is that contracts violating legal rules are void. There is often, however, considerable flexibility in the law. 14 In ENGLISH and SCOTTISH law, while an illegal contract may be void, it is more often presented as “unenforceable”, in that neither specific performance nor damages are available to the parties. Thus a party may withdraw from an illegal contract with impunity. Courts will take notice of illegality of their own motion and dismiss actions accordingly (Chitty on Contracts I27, no. 16-199; MacQueen and Thomson, Contract Law in Scotland, § 7.15; McBryde, Law of Contract in Scotland1 , paras. 13.31-13.34, 19.17-19.27).). Again, however, there is flexibility in the law on contracts infringing statutory provisions. There are several cases in which the courts have considered whether giving effect to the statute requires the nullity of the contract as a supporting sanction (see e.g. St John Shipping Corp. v. Joseph Rank Ltd. [1957] 1 QB 267; Archbolds (Freightage) Ltd. v. S Spangletts Ltd. [1961] 2 QB 374, CA). English law is currently under review by the Law Commission: see its Consultation Paper on Illegal Transactions. The Commission’s provisional proposals were to the effect that courts should have the discretion to decide whether or not illegality should act as a defence to a claim for contractual enforcement. But the discretion should be structured by requiring the court to take account of specific factors: (1) the seriousness of the illegality involved; (2) the knowledge and intention of the party seeking enforcement; (3) whether denying relief will act as a deterrent; (4) whether denial of relief will further the purpose of the rule rendering the contract illegal; and (5) whether denying relief is proportionate to the illegality involved. II.–7:303: Notes 5 In ENGLISH law the general rule is against restitution but it is possible in exceptional cases where the claimant is not in pari delicto with the recipient, or the transaction has not been completely executed, or if the claim can be formulated without reference to the prohibited contract (Treitel, The Law of Contract9 , 490-504). IRISH law is similar (Clark 314-19), and so is SCOTTISH law (Stair Memorial Encyclopaedia vol. 15, paras. 764-765), although in one Scottish case where, by statute, contracts using old Scottish measures were void, restitutionary recovery was allowed in respect of a sale of potatoes by the Scottish acre, on the ground that there was no moral turpitude in such a transaction (Cuthbertson v. Lowes (1870) 8 M 1073; see further Macgregor, (2000) 4 ELR 19-45; McBryde, Law of Contract in Scotland1 , paras. 13.31-13.34, 19.22-19.26). The English Law Commission in its Consultation Paper on Illegal Transactions suggested that a court should have discretion to decide whether or not illegality should be recognised as a defence to a claim for restitution, various factors being taken into account. In addition the court should have a discretion to allow a party to withdraw from an illegal contract and to have restitution where this will reduce the likelihood of the completion of an illegal act or purpose, although it must be satisfied that the contract could not be enforced against the claimant, that there is genuine repentance of the illegality, and that it is not too serious.	united-states There is no general rule against one company or person buying both broadcasting rights and merchandising rights to a particular piece of content in the US. There are anti-monopoly/anti-trust laws, but those generally only apply if a particular entity holds a monopoly or a commanding market position in a whole market sector. If one firm held the rights to 80% of all online games, for example, an anti-trust action might well be warranted. But a single game or property is not generally considered to be a market sector for anti-trust purposes. Exactly what the proper market sector is in such cases is often a complex, technical, and highly disputed issue. The "original owner of the IP" can decide who s/he wishes to sell that IP to -- nothing requires, or forbids, that different sets of rights be sold to the same buyer. The original owner will attempt to get the best deal available. Sometimes that is a very lucrative deal, and sometimes it is far from that. As long as unlawful methods are not used to induce a sale, whatever bargain the parties make is generally acceptable to the law. I do not know who did, or did not, buy any of the rights to Squid Game, and that info might not be publicly available. But there is no law that I know of against the same party having both broadcast and marketing rights to it, and perhaps other rights as well.	No Governments have sovereign power. Subject to constitutional and legislative constraints, governments can change laws as they wish. That includes legislative changes and administrative policies. Most governments tend not to use this power arbitrarily because it tends to make investors wary - economists call this sovereign risk. Like any other risk, the higher it is, the greater return an investor expects - countries with high sovereign risk get less foreign investment and pay more for it. Further, most governments don’t make laws that are retrospective but unless there is a constitutional prohibition (like there is in the United States, for example), they can. So Ireland could not only change the rules going forward, they could change the rules that applied in the past (assuming the Irish constitution doesn’t prohibit this, which I don’t know enough about). If Ireland were to change this law, it’s likely there would be plenty of forward notice. The arrangement you spell out between mother and son is not enforceable unless it’s a contract and the presumption is that such familial agreements are not contracts. Such a presumption can be overcome by an explicit declaration by the mother and the son that they intend for it to be legally binding, preferably in writing. Now, governments can and do enter contracts which are enforceable by the courts but that is a one-on-one relationship between a government and a contractor; not a decree that must be followed by everyone. Unless, of course, they are the sort of government that doesn’t follow their own laws - I’m sure you can think of some - but they are huge sovereign risk.	It is cl;early not legal to charge for an optional warranty without ever having gotten approval for it. The customer could simply ask for a refund on teh ground that this was an error, and take it to small claims if that was refused. I am sure it is legal to offer such an optional warranty and point out its (alleged) benefits. I do not know if consumer law forbids making this pitch multiple times in the same selling encounter.	england-and-wales From your first link: "A leading Premier League footballer arrested on suspicion of rape has been further arrested on suspicion of two incidents of rape against a different woman." As he was arrested that means there are now 'active' 'criminal proceedings' against him within the meaning of the Contempt of Court Act 1981 (as amended). Therefore reporting is now subject to the 'strict liability rule': "it is a contempt of court to publish anything to the public which creates a substantial risk that the course of justice in the proceedings in question will be seriously impeded or prejudiced, even if there is no intent to cause such prejudice." Reporting Restrictions in the Criminal Courts April 2015 (Revised May 2016), Judicial College Per the Contempt of Court Act there are four defences: s3(1) "A person is not guilty of contempt of court under the strict liability rule as the publisher of any matter to which that rule applies if at the time of publication (having taken all reasonable care) he does not know and has no reason to suspect that relevant proceedings are active. s3(2) "A person is not guilty of contempt of court under the strict liability rule as the distributor of a publication containing any such matter if at the time of distribution (having taken all reasonable care) he does not know that it contains such matter and has no reason to suspect that it is likely to do so. s4(1) "a fair and accurate report of legal proceedings held in public, published contemporaneously and in good faith" s5 "A publication made as or as part of a discussion in good faith of public affairs or other matters of general public interest is not to be treated as a contempt of court under the strict liability rule if the risk of impediment or prejudice to particular legal proceedings is merely incidental to the discussion." Really the publication is mitigating its legal risk at the present time and it will no doubt report the name of the footballer if he is tried or does not proceed to trial.
Brand new computer crashed during job interview - compensation? My brand new computer cost me a job. The device crashed, not just once, but twice during a job interview over Skype. I took it back to the origin of purchase where it was diagnosed as a having software issues, it was subsequently wiped and the operating system was reinstalled fresh. The laptop was purchased two or three months ago. I'm curious as to whether there is any sort of compensation available for situations like this? Of course, winning any sort of lawsuit against a large corporation is unlikely and nobody want's to set precedents taking responsibility for inability to procure work. The exact cause of the crashes can be found here: -20 shutdown, what to do?	Almost certainly not You note that "it was diagnosed as a having software issues," so you'd have to figure out exactly what software issue happened, and whose fault that was (assuming that it wasn't your fault). This would be pretty difficult, especially given that they wiped the system. Even assuming you have a backup copy and could figure out the exact problem, you probably also agreed to waive any such claims against the software authors that may have caused the problem when you received the software, because software companies don't want to pay for the consequences of every computer crash. Microsoft, for instance, requires you to agree that: Except for any repair, replacement, or refund that Microsoft, or the device manufacturer or installer, may provide, you may not under this limited warranty, under any other part of this agreement, or under any theory, recover any damages or other remedy, including lost profits or direct, consequential, special, indirect, or incidental damages. The damage exclusions and remedy limitations in this agreement apply even if repair, replacement, or a refund does not fully compensate you for any losses, if Microsoft, or the device manufacturer or installer, knew or should have known about the possibility of the damages, or if the remedy fails of its essential purpose. Most software has similar disclaimers. Stack Overflow has one, too, for instance. So even if you did somehow track down exactly which piece of software caused the crash, you probably already agreed that they aren't responsible for paying your damages.	Yes, this would be an ADA violation The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requires that "reasonable accommodations" be provided to people with disabilities in both the job application process and in the workplace. Specifically, this would be a failure to provide "modifications or adjustments to a job application process that enable a qualified applicant with a disability to be considered for the position such qualified applicant desires" as described in the EEOC enforcement guidelines. Software engineers generally are not required to stand up and move around much to do their jobs, so the employer wouldn't have an argument that requiring an applicant to do so in the interview process is somehow related to job requirements. I'm a software engineer myself, and I spend almost my entire day sitting down (and very little time drawing on whiteboards, especially now that I'm not allowed to be in the building where the whiteboards are). Possible reasonable accommodations would include getting a portable whiteboard that's lower to the ground or allowing the candidate to draw on paper instead.	So-called AI software does not enjoy a special legal status (at present: one never knows what new law might be added). The question of whether any software can be distributed "safely" or "responsibly" is also not a legal issue. Nor is "true sentience" a relevant consideration, and nothing is guaranteed. When you distribute software of any kind, there is an implied warranty that the product is "fit", and if software kills you, you may be able to sue the creator for negligence. A software creator may then want to disclaim liability, by saying "WARNING: THIS PROGRAM MAY KILL YOU. OCP IS NOT LIABLE FOR ANY INJURIES ARISING FROM USE OF THIS PRODUCT". This may or may not actually remove liability. In the UK "liability for negligence occasioning death or personal injury cannot be excluded", so such a disclaimer will not prevent a suit against the manufacturer. In the US, the issue is determined at the level of the state – here is a summary of the law in the states. Probably the primary question would be whether such a disclaimer is an unconscionable term, and the second question is whether the act constituted gross negligence (not simply "negligence"). Mississippi exceptionally does not allow disclaimers, but even then, it does allow disclaiming liability when it comes to computer hardware and software. A software disclaimer is not inherently unconscionable, though perhaps some specific disclaimer would be found to be. Courts typically disfavor disclaimers in the case of gross negligence, and again determining what constitutes "gross negligence" is determined on a state by state basis. If the act shows "reckless indifference to the rights of others" and "failure to use even slight care or conduct that is so careless as to show complete disregard for the rights and safety of others", then the act might be grossly negligent.	Let me simplify the question for you, because there is TMI in your question. Can I sue the repair shop for fraud, because they told me that the framistan need replacing to fix the noise, and they did that, but actually as proven by 3 other experts, the framistan was perfectly fine, the noise came from a broken veblitzer The crucial legal question is whether they lied to you in making the claim about the framistan. If they had a good-faith belief that the framistan was the problem, it was technically bad advice but not fraud. Incompetence is not the same as actually lying. A shop might (imaginably) offer a warranty to the effect that they guarantee that framistan-replacement will eliminate the noise, so that is a different potential cause of action for a lawsuit (breach of contract). Once you monkey around with the work they did, or hire someone else to do some monkeying around, you provide them with an avenue to avoid legal responsibility – it wasn't us who caused the problem, it was the other guy. Actually suing over this would be expensive, hard to win, and not likely to yield substantial financial benefit. It is a sad customer service tale, but not reasonably addressed through legal channels.	To answer this based on contract law, one would have to know where the company is located, where you are located, and what the terms of use specify regarding jurisdiction and possible mandatory arbitration. Next, you write that you have "all the proof" that your account was "broken into." Proof in a legal sense? I think you would be writing things differently if you had as court judgement in this regard. And how did it happen? In my experience, there are several scenarios: You were tricked into revealing your credentials, or your own computer was compromised to gain your credentials, or you re-used the same credentials on different systems and one of those was compromised. The most likely scenario by far. There was a security breach on the site of the game company, either revealing your credentials or allowing direct access. There was an accidental software bug on the site of the game company which affected your inventory. There was a deliberate software change on the site of the game company which affected your inventory, e.g. to improve play balance. The latter three options are all possible, but the first option happens much more frequently. And from the viewpoint of the company, this is indistinguishable from you acting foolishly and losing it. The thief would have been acting with your credentials, after all. And that is where the term you quote comes in. The company is in a contractual relationship with their customers, so they cannot disclaim all responsibility for everything that happens through their terms of service. In some jurisdictions, sneaking an illegal clause into the boilerplate terms of service weakens the legal force of the whole document, so they make this sort of disclaimer. But if lost things could be restored too easily, the thrill would go out of ownership.	There is also the part that says "except as expressly permitted by law". In the USA, you are allowed to run the software. This means the operating system making the copy that transfers the software from your hard drive to the RAM of the computer, and all necessary changes there. And this includes modifications to relocate the software, or to protect it against certain attacks by hackers, and I'm confident that Apple checked that it includes translating x86 machine code to ARM machine code and store the translated copy together with the original. Similar things have been done already around 2000 or so, and no software manufacturer has ever complained.	This would be unauthorized access to a computer. The offence is found in Section 1 of the Computer Misuse Act 1990. Note that this is a criminal offence, approaching the police about it might be the best way of handling the situation (if you want to go that route, and also, I'm not a lawyer).	could they make a realistic claim that I had voluntarily terminated my contract before the year was over? The employer's act would forfeit its entitlement to reimbursement of bonus. The clause clearly indicates that the triggering event is termination, not the anticipatory notification thereof. Furthermore, the employer's act would be a breach of the [contract law] covenant of good faith and fair dealing. That would be in stark contrast with your compliance with, and/or kindness in, giving a two-week notice. The employer's termination of your employment seems improper in equity insofar as it was aware of your notice and thus took advantage thereof.
Can an American sue their own state directly in the federal Supreme Court? According to Article III, Section 2 of the constitution, The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority;—to all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls;—to all Cases of admiralty and maritime Jurisdiction;—to Controversies to which the United States shall be a Party;—to Controversies between two or more States;—between a State and Citizens of another State;—between Citizens of different States;—between Citizens of the same State claiming Lands under Grants of different States, and between a State, or the Citizens thereof, and foreign States, Citizens or Subjects. This defines the jurisdiction of the federal judiciary. For example, the federal judiciary has jurisdiction to hear cases where a citizen alleges that their own state is violating one of their rights granted by the federal constitution and seeks injunctive relief, since that falls under "arising under this Constitution". Furthermore, In all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party, the supreme Court shall have original Jurisdiction. My understanding of "original jurisdiction" is that it basically means "you can file this kind of case in this court". And since this is in the constitution, Congress can't take it away. However, as far as I can tell, it's not actually allowed for an American to sue their own state directly in the Supreme Court. They have to file in a federal district court and then appeal the decision if they don't like it. Legally speaking, why is that?	The Eleventh Amendment has generally been construed to bar suits against a state by citizens of that state in federal court. There are all sorts of caveats, though, and it's possible that the doctrine is still evolving. The text of the Amendment reads: The judicial power of the United States shall not be construed to extend to any suit in law or equity, commenced or prosecuted against one of the United States by citizens of another state, or by citizens or subjects of any foreign state. It doesn't contain explicit language prohibiting the citizens of a state from suing it in federal court. That extension surfaced throughout the 1880s and was formalized in Hans v. Louisiana, 134 U.S. 1 (1890). Seminole Tribe v. Florida, 517 U.S. 44 (1996), lends support to Hans, albeit as a 5-4 decision. Cornell has a nice article on the current and historical view of sovereign immunity. It notes that the Supreme Court has left a number of important questions unanswered—including the nature of the states' immunity. It likewise tries to wrestle with the Article III question.	(The original title of your question suggested you might think that federal circuit precedent binds state courts: it generally does not, even on matters of federal law.) But regardless, Congress would not be able to legislatively lower the constitutional floor. If a certain police act is prohibited by the Constitution, Congress cannot legislatively allow that act, whether in a single state or uniformly across all states. That means that if the Fifth Circuit has decided that the use of some new investigatory tool is a search under the Fourth Amendment, no law that Congress passes could affect that holding. When congress creates laws that result in different effects for different people (e.g. people in Texas vs. people in Florida, as in your hypothetical), the distinction must be rationally related to a legitimate government purpose. Many of the enumerated powers allow for local distinction, some prohibit it. Some examples where Congress has distinguished between states include: localized agricultural programs, time zones, voting rights protections, and various others listed in ohwilleke's review. Some distinctions between states could also intrude on principles of federalism and state sovereignty (e.g. the Supreme Court has said that the Voting Right Act does this). Maybe I am unimaginative, but I cannot think of a legitimate federal government purpose that would call for the powers that police have against the people to vary from state to state. Any such variation would have to come from the states themselves: from their state constitutions, or legislative choices to provide heightened protections. Discord between circuits is problematic (see a list of examples of existing splits), and this is why the Supreme Court of the United States will often hear an appeal where there is a circuit split on a question of constitutional rights.	where does the prosecution occur? Prosecutions generally occur where a crime is committed. The area where a crime or other wrongdoing is committed is considered the proper "forum" for adjudicating the case. With respect to the law you cited, you should take note of the statutory limitations imposed upon the Attorney General in pursuing such a case (called a § 1119 prosecution). When considering the limitations, it is unlikely a trial of an American who killed an American in Canada would be tried in the United States. Those limitations begin with a prosecutor seeking written permission by the AG. This permission cannot be granted if the other country has already prosecuted the individual for the same conduct. Also, the AG can only give that permission if, after consulting the Secretary of State, he or she determines that the killing occurred in a jurisdiction where the suspect is "no longer present" and that the country is unable to "lawfully secure the person's return." and I'm wondering what that process actually looks like. This would be a consultation between Justice Department attorneys and the Assistant Secretary(ies) of State whose portfolio contains the foreign country in question. From the DOJ in particular, the Assistant AG for the Criminal Division is in charge of considering the above criteria and granting approvals. The Human Rights and Special Prosecutions Section handles these issues within the Criminal Division. Does the Attorney General have to petition the other government for permission to prosecute them in the home country? No. The statutory limitations listed above necessitate that the suspect has already left that country and part of the AG's determination must be that it is unlikely that country will be able to secure the person's return. That said, might that country petition the United States that it wants the suspect to be returned to stand trial there? Potentially. Does it make a difference if the key witnesses are also all Americans, therefore arguing that chances of conviction are more likely if tried within the U.S. where all participants reside and are available to testify? This is, of course, a general consideration when determining which jurisdiction should handle a matter. It isn't clear to what degree it comes into consideration in this type of prosecution. does anyone know any famous/well known examples of this happening? Famous/well-known? I can't be sure, but see, e.g., United States v White, 51 F. Supp. 2d 1008 (E.D. Cal. 1997), United States v. Nipper, 198 F. Supp. 2d 818 (W.D. La. 2002), United States v. Wharton, 320 F.3d 526 (5th Cir. 2003), and United States v. Brimager, 123 F.Supp.3d 1246 (S.D. Cal 2015). Interestingly, the statute gets substantial discussion and review in this Department of Justice White Paper entitled, Legality of a Lethal Operation by the Central Intelligene Agency Against a U.S. Citizen, in the context of whether the CIA could kill an American citizen in Yemen who has been reasonably determined to be a senior leader of al-Qaida.	Probably.* Congress has wide latitude to dictate the procedures of "inferior courts" -- the district courts and circuit courts of appeal. Those courts only exist because Congress created them, so Congress can generally set the terms on which they continue to exist. That power is limited in several important ways by the Constitution, including the terms and compensation of the judges, and standing to address cases, and then further limited by separation-of-powers principles. But the Rules of Civil Procedure and the Rules of Criminal Procedure are a good example of how Congress has already -- and largely unobjectionably -- imposed these types of demands on the judiciary. The rules are generally drafted by the judicial branch, but Congress approves them and gives them the force of law. In both sets of rules, you can already see some requirements on how decisions are worded: Criminal Rule 23 requires the court to "state its specific findings of fact" after a bench trial; Criminal Rule 32 requires the court to "set forth the plea, the jury verdict or the court's findings, the adjudication, and the sentence" in judgments of conviction; Civil Rule 52 requires the court to "find the facts specially and state its conclusions of law separately"; Civil Rule 58 requires that "every judgment and amended judgment ... be set out in a separate document"; Civil Rule 59 requires the court to "specify the reasons [for granting or denying a motion for a new trial] in its order"; and Civil Rule 72 requires magistrates to enter "a recommended disposition, including, if appropriate, proposed findings of fact." The rule you're proposing seems to go well beyond these requirements, but I don't see how it would run afoul of constitutional constraints. I could imagine an argument that this somehow encroaches on the courts' inherent authority, but I'm not really convinced that that authority protects against this. For more information, you can read the Congressional Research Service report on "Congressional Authority Over the Federal Courts." *This answer only applies to Article III courts, but even then does not apply to the Supreme Court, which is co-equal and generally has the authority to set its own rules. When it comes to Article I courts, though, Congress would probably have virtually unlimited discretion to impose the kinds of requirements that you're talking about, and even to say that the court has no jurisdiction to consider constitutionality at all. Congress might even get away with imposing these kinds of requirements on state courts through the Spending Clause	Are there any restrictions on the taxes or duties a U.S. state can levy? Yes. For starters, states may not use taxes or other means to impede the federal government in its constitutional exercises of power. This precedent stems from a case called McCulloch v. Maryland from 1819. In 1816, Congress established the Second Bank of the United States. Many states were not fans of this action. One of them, Maryland, established a tax on all notes of banks not chartered in Maryland. When the head of the Baltimore branch of the bank refused to pay the tax, litigation commenced and it was eventually appealed to the Supreme Court. SCOTUS held that the Constitution grants implied powers to Congress that allow Congress to implement a national government using its express powers and state action may not interfere with such exercise of power. Taxation, of course, is just one way a state may attempt to interfere with federal power. Can states impose duties on goods that merely transit their territory? Generally no. The Commerce Clause bars states from implementing taxes that discriminate against interstate commerce or that put burdens on it by subjecting commercial activities to numerous or unfair taxation. The Due Process Clause complements this concept by requiring there be a definitive link between a state and the person, property, or transaction which it seeks to tax. This goes back to the SCOTUS decision in Southern Pacific Co. v. Arizona where the state enacted a law barring trains from operating in the state with more than 14 or 70 passenger or freight cars, respectively. The Court held that this was a substantial burden on interstate commerce because trains would need to be broken up before they passed through AZ. Also, you couldn't just stop on the tracks and "break up" the trains, so that had to be done at a stop before getting to AZ. The court determined that with this law, AZ effectively controlled the length of trains as far from its borders as El Paso and Los Angeles. The alternative was to operate all trains at the lowest level allowable by any state, which would lead to AZ dictating train lengths around the country. In determining the validity of the law or regulation, a court uses a balancing test to compare the burden on interstate commerce with the importance of the state interest (the AZ law was purportedly for safety reasons).	Generally speaking, a decision from the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia is binding only in the District of Columbia. Courts of other jurisdictions are not required to adhere to its decisions. If the issue came up again in Virginia or Maryland, courts there would have no obligation to follow it. Virginia tort law is different from D.C. tort law, so Virginia courts would need to determine whether their law is different on this particular point.	This would require a constitutional amendment (overriding the First Amendment), which can be done in two ways. Congress can write an amendment and submit it to the states; or the states can call for a convention. None of these methods can be implemented by any number of courts.	No A state may not do that. The US Constitution Art. I section 8 says: The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States. ... To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes; Art I section 10: No State shall, without the Consent of the Congress, lay any Imposts or Duties on Imports or Exports, except what may be absolutely necessary for executing it's inspection Laws: and the net Produce of all Duties and Imposts, laid by any State on Imports or Exports, shall be for the Use of the Treasury of the United States; and all such Laws shall be subject to the Revision and Controul of the Congress. The power to regulate interstate commerce and foreign commerce is exclusive to Congress, no state may exercise it. The power to tax imports and exports is only given in vary limited degree to states, and only by specific permission of Congress. The Interstate Commerce Clause has been interpreted to mean that a state may not favor its own citizens over citizens of other states in taxation or in commercial privileges, although it may restrict state services to state residents, or charge non-residents higher fees, as for tuition at public colleges. Even with the consent of Congress, or if passed by Congress, such a law might well be precluded by the Equal Protection clause. Congress may prohibit specific items from being moved in interstate commerce, or it may limit, license, or tax them. But all such regulations must be uniform across the United states, and may not apply only to a specific state. Regulation of interstate commerce can include regulation of purely intra-state transactions, if they are held to "affect" interstate commerce. This power is very wide-ranging.
Can a company instruct employees to not call police? As a manager, I received this email from my store manager that came from the district manager. Team, you cannot call the police without my approval, if I am not available it would fall to (Blank) or (Blank). This is not optional. I need every store manager to review this with their team today. All Managers need to know this. Your night crew leaders need to know this policy, as well. Is this instruction legally valid? Can I legally ignore it?	Employers in CO and at least 43 US states cannot lawfully fire an employee for reporting a crime to the police, or calling 911. It falls under the public policy exception to at-will employment. Some examples or this are covered here. https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2001/01/art1full.pdf Two examples of statutory text, but most will fall under case law. California Labor Code section 1102.5(b), an employer is prohibited from retaliating against an employee who discloses information to a law enforcement agency where the employee has a reasonable cause to believe the information discloses a violation of federal or state law. Montana Code 39-2-904. Elements of wrongful discharge -- presumptive probationary period. (1) A discharge is wrongful only if: (a) it was in retaliation for the employee's refusal to violate public policy or for reporting a violation of public policy; Collier v. Superior Court (MCA, Inc.) (1991) In this case we conclude that an employee who is terminated in retaliation for reporting to his or her employer reasonably suspected [228 Cal. App. 3d 1120] illegal conduct by other employees that harms the public as well as the employer, has a cause of action for wrongful discharge Palmateer v.International Harvester Company In this case, Ray Palmateer alleged that he was fired from his job with International Harvester after he provided information to local law enforcement authorities about potential criminal acts by a coworker and indicated that he would assist in any criminal investigation and subsequent trial. In this case, nothing in the Illinois Constitution or statutes required or permitted an employee to report potential criminal activity by a coworker. However, the court found that public policy favored citizen crime fighters and the exposure of criminal activity. Thus, Palmateer brought an actionable claim for retaliatory discharge	Garrity Rule There is a "Garrity Rule". It is derived from Garrity v. New Jersey, 385 U.S. 493 (1967). In that case the US Supreme Court held that military and law-enforcement officers and other public employees are not required to sacrifice their right against self-incrimination in order to avoid dismissal. Several police officers were accused of "ticket fixing" . They were interviewed, and although they were told they had a right not to incriminate themselves, were threatened with dismissal if they did not "cooperate". The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the employees’ statements, made under threat of termination, were compelled by the state in violation of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. The decision asserted that: ... the option to lose their means of livelihood or pay the penalty of self-incrimination is the antithesis of free choice to speak or to remain silent. The statements were held not to be admissible. The US Supreme Court opinion can be found here. Effect of the Rule I find several sources (some listed below) indicating that public employees, including military personnel, may not be compelled, under threat of dismissal or serious discipline, to waive or refrain from invoking, their rights against self-incrimination. If such employees are subject to such threats, any statements are considered compelled, and are not admissible against the makers of the statements, much as if a Miranda warning had not been given to a person questioned while under arrest. This does not make the statements inadmissible against a different defendant. The procedures in courts-martial now require "Garrity Warnings", and do not attempt to force officers or enlisted persons to testify to self-recriminating facts. I did not find any source suggesting that merely because testimony had been given in a court-martial, it is inadmissible. Nor did I find any source stating that merely being aware of inadmissible testimony renders a prosecutor or judge unable to continue. Judges hear inadmissible testimony every time there is a suppression hearing in which the evidence is in fact suppressed, and that is very frequent. It is only juries who must not hear such testimony. Io invoke the rule, there would need to be evidence that a witness had been ordered not to invoke the 5th, or threatened with dismissal or other serious consequence if s/he did so, and would have invoked it in the absence of such orders or threats. In the original Garrity case, the defendants objected at the trial and at other appropriate times. It was those objections which triggered the ruling. Conclusion In short it seems to me that the writers of the show significantly overstated the breadth and effect of the rule, perhaps for dramatic purposes. Sources In the October 2018 issue of "The Adcisor" a publication of the US Navy's Judge Advocate General's office, it is stated thst the following warning must be given to any civilian employees who are being interviewed as part of a military investigation of a crime: Garrity Warnings You are being asked to provide information as part of an internal and/or administrative investigation. This is a voluntary interview and you do not have to answer questions if your answers would tend to implicate you in a crime. No disciplinary action will be taken against you solely for refusing to answer questions. However, the evidentiary value of your silence may be considered in administrative proceedings as part of the facts surrounding your case. Any statement you do choose to provide may be used as evidence in criminal and/or administrative proceedings. in Garrity Rights for Law-Enforcement Officers by By Aaron Nisenson it is stated that: The basic premise of the Garrity protection is straightforward: First, an Officer cannot be compelled, by the threat of serious discipline, to make statements that may be used in a subsequent criminal proceeding; second, an Officer cannot be terminated for refusing to waive his Fifth Amendment right to remain silent. Gardner v. Broderick, 392 U.S. 273 (1968). Therefore, if an Officer gives a coerced statement, the statement is "protected,” and cannot be used in a subsequent criminal prosecution. However, the practical application of Garrity has been complicated and uncertain. The Courts have been all over the map in their application of Garrity: with some Courts applying Garrity to protect Officers’ Constitutional rights, and other Courts seeming to try to evade Garrity. Thus, in the Garrity area, Officers are best served by following the old adage: prepare for the worst, and hope for the best. The initial issue in the application of Garrity is the Department’s actions in extracting a statement from an Officer. In order for Garrity protection to apply, the government must have “coerced” a statement from an Officer. Generally, this coercion consists of an order, under threat of termination, to give a statement on a work related matter The US Rules for Courts-Martal states in Rule 405. Preliminary hearing section (f) (2) (D) (on page 36) that an accused has the right to: Be informed of the right against self-incrimination under Article 31.	The CEO, with his lawyer have tried to convince me that this only apply to current client and any past clients that I have work on. Is this true? No. It will be true only if they make that clarification in the clause or a properly added amendment. The clause currently has no indication that it is limited to "current client and any past clients that [you] have work[ed] on". The CEO's & lawyer's refusal to amend the clause so as to make it consistent with their attempts [to persuade you] would be a red flag. Their inconsistent representations to you suggest that they are not planning to honor the covenant of good faith on which all contracts are premised. Should I expect the CEO to offer a fair contract or is this something you read and negotiate? You should require a contract that seems fair to you. And by "to you" I mean that it has to be in line with your expectations regardless of the average conditions in the labor market. Negotiations are not binding. They are merely a preamble to a contract, and that contract is binding. This is why you should reject a contract that falls short of your requirements. Some clauses are unlawful and/or void and unenforceable as unconscionable or for contravening legislation (unlawful clauses can and do arise even if drafted by attorneys). Thus, although you might not have to worry about those clauses in particular, the company's mere attempt to include them in a contract should alert you of the high risk of ending up with other abusive terms & conditions which are binding and enforceable nonetheless.	I'm not going to comment on what your manager is doing specifically, since I don't know all the facts. But in general: As a general rule, businesses have freedom of contract. This means they can choose to do business with, or not do business with, anyone they want. There are specific laws that create exceptions to this freedom of contract. The most important are federal and state civil rights laws, which prohibit many businesses from discriminating on the basis of certain protected classes, such as race, sex, religion, etc. In general, "locals vs. out-of-towners" is not a protected class, and therefore no law explicitly prohibits this type of discrimination. However, it's possible a court could find that "locals" is a proxy for some actual protected class--for example, if the hotel is in a city and the "locals" are predominantly Black.	I don't think so. When it comes to wages, there may be a Tarifvertrag (union-negotiated wage schedule), which may apply even if the employee in question is no union member. It is enough if the employer is member of the employer's association negotiating the schedule, or in certain other cases. (Clever, really, by extending union benefits to non-members they weaken the unions ...) The Tarifvertrag stipulates minimum wages for certain positions, and it may define those positions implement that. An employer could not underpay a skilled machinist by calling her a 'gadget specialist' or similar non-scheduled position. But the deputy department head is likely paid above the highest bracket of the wage schedule, called außertariflich (AT, beyond the schedule). At this level, it comes down to individual negotiations between the employee and employer.	What is the correct way to handle this situation? Strictly speaking, each driver exceeding the speed limit is in violation of the traffic sign even if everybody else also infringes it. Thus it is completely valid for the police to pull & fine anyone from among those drivers. Statutes like the one you mention are intended for scenarios where a driver departs significantly --and for no apparent [lawful] reason-- from the speed limit, such as driving at 20 mph in a 55 mph zone. Typically a driver would not get pulled over in the scenario you mention (driving at 62 mph where everybody else drives at 65 mph). The exception would be some police department(s) requiring its cops to meet a quota of fines per week, but that would be quite a questionable practice having nothing to do with the legislative intent. Speed limits are supposed to represent normal and reasonable movement of traffic. If informed consensus is that a particular speed limit is inconsistent with that principle (for instance, where limit is artificially low and raising it would not compromise safety), then a request could be submitted to the Oregon Department of Transportation.	If you were in the office, and ready to take instructions what to do from your manager, then you were legally working and need to be paid. There's plenty of things you can do in an office without electricity unless it's too dark. If the manager didn't ask you to do anything, it's the company's problem, not yours. If you took the opportunity to leave for 90 minutes to do your weekly shopping, then you shouldn't get paid.	The role of the 101 call handlers is to assist with enquiries and to progress reports of non-emergency incidents - not deceive. They are not (usually) police officers do not (routinely) have access to PNC. Even if they did, they are under no obligation to divulge potentially operationally-sensitive and/or personal information over the phone; especially as the caller's identity cannot be verified. In response to comments and the OP edit on 09/03/2022... The police will not confirm if you are wanted on warrant over the phone. You must attend your local police station and bring some form of identification with you such as a passport, driving licence or birth certificate. Source1 You can find your local police force here 1A random example taken from one of the 43 territorial police forces in england-and-wales
Would a website that catalogs every possible sequence of letters violate copyright? Suppose I created a website that cataloged every possible sequence of letters in order. You would start with the letter "a", could swipe right to read "b", and further to find "aa", or "ab" (appearing in dictionary order, as you would observe on the rows of an excel sheet). My website has a feature where you can instantly read any text given a numerical ID. The IDs could, for example, be ordered as follows: Where individual texts in the catalog are separated by red bars, and the blue numbers are their respective IDs. This website happens to be a harbor for internet piracy. One user, for instance, discovered the numerical ID referring to the entire text of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, and has distributed the ID to their friends so that they may read the novel at their leisure. It's unclear to me where the copyright infringement occurs. Is it the website for "storing" every possible non-public domain text? Is it the user for finding and sharing a number that has apparent meaning to this website?	It's not clear to me that your website is, per se, illegal. (Though good luck finding a webhost with a hard drive large enough to store it. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone is roughly 38,000 characters. If I've done my calculations correctly, storing all of the strings of this length or shorter would require something like 1053760 GB of storage. Give or take.) The main problem is in distributing the "index" of the string containing the text of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. This index is just the integer obtained by taking the entire text as a string and treating it as a number in base 26 (A = 1, B = 2, etc.) In other words, all of the information contained in the book is also contained in the index number, and in a relatively simple way. Distributing this number is therefore entirely equivalent to distributing the text; you don't need the website at all. It's entirely analogous to e-mailing the text to someone else; in that process, the text is transformed into a number (in binary, under a different encoding scheme) along the way. But you couldn't seriously argue in a court of law that you were not distributing the text, you were just telling a friend about a very large number. Just to back this up with some actual law citation: US copyright law gives the copyright owner the exclusive right to make and distribute copies of the work. And a "copy" is defined as follows: “Copies” are material objects, other than phonorecords, in which a work is fixed by any method now known or later developed, and from which the work can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or device. In other words, J.K. Rowling (and/or her publishers) have the exclusive rights to distribute that integer, since the work is "fixed" in it by its very nature, and since the work can be reproduced from it.	Yes So far so good. This is a copyright violation but it is probably fair use - certainly there is case law permitting a copy of a backup digital asset to be made so I don’t see why a similar argument wouldn’t work with backing up a physical book. Clear copyright violation. Alice can rent out the original under the first sale doctrine but the ‘backup’ is not so protected. It’s not fair use because it’s use is commercial, the work is a type of work the author expects to profit from, the entire work has been copied and the use is deleterious to the market i.e. the renters are less likely to buy an original - it falls foul of all four factors of the fair use test.	What are exactly the legal consequences of "All rights reserved"? Almost none. You have to explicitly grant copyright rights. You don't even need the Copyright notice for them to apply. My "almost" is because the notice makes it harder for somebody to argue "they didn't realize". Do I still need an additional SW License Agreement or is the Copyright notice above + a Disclaimer of liability sufficient? If this is free software (I know you said it isn't), do yourself (and everyone else) a favour by picking a license you like. Preferably either GPL or MIT (depending on your taste). There are far too many free licenses already. Please don't add another. (It also makes it much easier for any user of your software: "Oh yeah, GPL v2. We understand that. We can use it." as opposed to "What are the implications of using this one??" As this is not free software, I think you need a paid-for lawyer (who understands IPR in your juridiction.) Edit: In principle, I believe you don't need anything. The code is copyright, so the customer can't do anything with it (without explicit permissions that you haven't granted). However if the customer doesn't realize that or thinks you won't mind, you then have to go to court to enforce your rights (and probably end up with a disgruntled customer). A short, clear, license will make it clear to the customer what they are allowed to do, and save all that aggravation.	Whoever "derived" the illegal derivative work most likely has copyright in his derivations, unless they are not worth copyright protections. Say I take the Harry Potter books and add a few chapters and try to sell it - that's copyright infringement of course, but I have the copyright on these additional chapters. However, I don't have the right to allow you to copy the derived work. And even if you have the right to copy the original work, you don't have the right to copy the derived work because it is a different work. I could extract my changes, and allow you to take them and do with them what you like. You could then create an illegally derived work yourself. I couldn't sue you, but the original copyright holder could. To the comments: One, a work and a derivative of the work are not the same, so even if you have the right to make a copy of a work, that doesn’t give you any right whatsoever to copy a derivative work - they are not the same work. Two, the copyright holder has the exclusive right to control copying and the creation of derivative works. If the copyright holder doesn’t want derivatives to exist, then creating them, copying them etc. is always copyright infringement.	This is relatively uncharted legal territory, so until multiple cases establish some sort of precedent, we can only guess. I know of no legal requirement that a Browser or User has to submit cookies or referrer data or other meta-information accurately. In that regard, a user is unlikely to be prosecuted just for submitting HTTP headers. It is likely closely related to Free Speech issues. The DMCA spells out that it is illegal to circumvent copyright protection measures. While this law is typically used to make it illegal to copy DVDs, video-games or streaming movies, it is possible that the "3-free articles" policy could be interpreted as a copyright protection mechanism, and defeating it by changing HTTP headers is a circumvention. A good summary is here. A specific site's TOS (Terms of Service) probably contains language that spells out it is a violation to use the site in a manner other than as it is intended. This is a typical anti-hacking, anti-screen-scraping provision. Altering a browser session to circumvent their services is probably a violation of the license to access the site, and may open a user to a civil lawsuit for damages or even criminal hacking charges (the details of which are different state-to-state)	It depends on how much you "copy" (including translate). If you were to have a list of 250 or even 1000 challenging words that appear in the movie, and even list the words in the order that they first appear in the movie, then there is no question of infringing on their copyright. If you create a transcription or translation of any part of the movie, then you are potentially infringing (a transcription being where you write down the spoken English dialogue). There are circumstances, pertaining to "fair use", whereby you could defend yourself in a lawsuit, but you would really need to engage a copyright attorney to advise you where the limit is. The purpose of the "fair use" defense is to make it possible for someone writing a review of a movie to actually quote short bits of dialogue. From the perspective of what would be useful for language learning (i.e. the amount of text that you would need to copy), providing a translation would almost certainly constitute infringement. In listing words which occur in a movie, you would not need to limit yourself to just single words, because there are idiomatic expressions like "down with that" or "kick the bucket", which involve a number of words but function as single units. When it comes to text, the copyright holder does not own the specific words, but he owns the "expression". The closer your product is to replicating that text, the more likely it is that the product will be found to infringe (this is why my example involved just listing the words once: and it should not be the 25,000 most difficult words, since that would amount to near-literal copying for a substantial initial part of the movie). If the movie is also released with e.g. Arabic subtitles (which would involve a licensing agreement), then greater caution would be advised in providing a word-list of difficult words that appear in the movie, because of the "effect on market" consideration.	You can't, in general, know whether a distributor of a work has permission to distribute, or is a pirate site. I verified that they have posted an illegal copy of a work that I created, and I know that I did not grant permission to them (or anyone) to infringe my copyright. Both hosting and downloading works without permission is a violation of copyright law, so both parties are liable. Downloaders may erroneously rely on the "I didn't know!" defense, which in the US carries no legal weight. Even so, if you download my book, it will probably cost me vastly more to sue you for infringement than the damages that I might be awarded over your infringement. Usually, copyright holders go after the pirate sites, and only rarely go after particularly egregious serial downloaders.	Does GDPR prohibit reading unsolicited emails from people who have not explicitly opted in to a mailing list? tl;dr: No. I have never heard of this, and I don't see how this could follow from the GDPR. You should follow up with the Secretary to find out how she came to her conclusion. Detailed reasoning: The GDPR restricts the processing of personal data, so it does in principle cover reading email, since reading counts as "processing", and an email may contain personal data. However, Article 2 (emphasis mine) says that: This Regulation applies to the processing of personal data wholly or partly by automated means and to the processing other than by automated means of personal data which form part of a filing system or are intended to form part of a filing system. I would read this to mean that a human reading emails is only covered by GDPR if the emails are part of a "filing system" or intended to be. So reading the emails is ok, it's only problematic if you intend to systematically store them. Even filing them, while covered by GDPR, would presumably be allowed, because to actually act on the email, you would have to keep it, and Article 6 allows processing of personal data to "take steps at the request of the data subject prior to entering into a contract" and when "processing is necessary for the purposes of the legitimate interests pursued by the controller". One caveat: If the email contains data that falls under special categories of personal data (Article 9) you may need explicit consent for storage. That covers things like racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious beliefs and health information. So if someone discloses a health problem or their religious belief in their mail, you may need to ask them for permission to keep it. In summary: At most, GDPR would require you to promptly delete the email once you no longer need it (which could be immediately if the email is irrelevant to you). If the email contains data you legitimately need (e.g. a complaint you need to follow up on), you are allowed to keep it as required (based on Article 6 (f)). Note that in both cases no explicit consent is required from the email sender, unless the email contains particularly sensitive data, such as political/religious beliefs or health data.
Police trusts witnesses but not the video tapes A man called the police, claiming that he was put down to the ground by the company's staff inside a company's building. No one is directly witnessing the action but one surveillance camera, which belongs to the company. The senior manager comes out and make sure that everyone on the floor, including a few other clients, tells the police that no one put down anyone. The policemen come and asked several witnesses. Some company's members reported that the man fell down by himself. Other clients say that they were far away from the man and did not see anything. The police quickly concluded that no violence has occurred and the man fell down by himself. The man claims otherwise, asking several times that the police need to check the camera. The police refused, saying the the man cannot see the video recording. The man asked the policemen to check the camera themselves, but the policemen did not directly response to that request. The content of the recording was not on the final report. My question: is trusting the witnesses instead of camera recording legal in North America?	There's no legal requirement in Canada or US that the police do anything to investigate a crime, so there's no requirement that they do anything specific to investigate a crime. If the police officers are satisfied by the witness accounts, or have some reason to think viewing surveillance recording wouldn't be useful they don't have to, either by law or policy. Note that ordinarily, police won't consider a physical altercation between two grown men a serious enough crime to warrant charges. If there was no serious injury and there wasn't a large discrepancy between the strength of the two men, police will often decline to lay charges even when they believe the evidence would sustain them. In this case the police may have decided it wasn't worth investigating further because it wasn't worth wasting the time of an already overloaded court system. The victim here still has legal options despite the lack action by the police. He can subpoena the video evidence if he wants to bring lawsuit for damages. In Canada, it's possible even to lay your own criminal charges in a private prosecution, although this much more expensive than a civil lawsuit.	In New South Wales it is entirely legal to film police (or anyone else). However, as discussed (What is considered "public" in the context of taking videos or audio recordings?) audio recording is more restricted: you must either have the permission of all the participants in a conversation or be a party to the conversation. I do not imagine the law is any different in Victoria.	Almost none of this is written down anywhere in official court rules but there are some widely adopted standards for this practice. Most courts require that only one lawyer be in charge of speaking at any given stage of the trial. But, it wouldn't be unusual, for example, for one lawyer to question most of the witnesses and for a different lawyer who is more familiar with the specialized subject matter in question (e.g. electrical specifications), usually a junior lawyer, to question the expert witnesses in a case. Also, if the usually designated lawyer is absent for some reason (stuck in traffic, sick, etc.), the "second chair" lawyer can (and is often required to) take over the case for the client until the "first chair" lawyer is available again. Mostly, second chair lawyers (I've spent plenty of time over the years in this role) do the following (a non-exclusive list): take notes, pay attention to how the judge and jury are reacting to testimony, provide input into jury selection decisions, reminds the primary lawyer of points that still need to be covered in the examination of a witness, reminds the primary lawyer of exhibits that still need to be formally offered into evidence, scrambles to find rebuttal or impeachment evidence for unanticipated testimony, prompts the primary lawyer to make objections if the primary lawyer was paying attention to something else, identifies and has at the ready exhibits needs to present (or to follow the other side's examination), looks up points of law that are relevant or will need to be referenced that come up during trial, handles logistics for witnesses who are not on the stand (keeping them in the hallway if the witness is sequestered, trying to obtain the appearance of no show witnesses or reshuffling their order, saying thank you to witnesses who are no longer on the stand, etc.), carries some of the litigation team's stuff into and out of the court room, provides informed commentary and suggestions during breaks and working lunches, etc. Also, in addition to the usual "first chair" and "second chair" roles, often supplemented by a paralegal or legal assistant, there is a different kind of arrangement in which different lawyers for the same person can fully participate. This far less common arrangement happens when the person showing up in court is wearing "more than one hat" and has a different lawyer in different capacities. For example, suppose that someone is the President of a corporation and both the corporation and the President individually are both sued. There might be one primary lawyer for the corporation and one for the President personally, and both lawyers might participate fully.	Police are not required to “look into” any report What the police choose to investigate is solely at their discretion irrespective of the number or quality of reports on the matter. You do not have to give your name You can report anonymously if you like. It does make investigation more difficult because the police cannot follow up for further information and may influence their decision on whether to investigate.	That the cop claims to be your friend is not more illegal than a salesman claiming that he has "the best offer" for you because he likes you (in fact didn't you see any film about the good cop/bad cop routine?) The term you are looking for is Entrapment. The (very simplified) basic idea is that police officers can promote the comission of a crime to catch criminals but cannot "trap" innocent people into it; the difference being that their persuassion should not turn otherwise innocent people into criminals. An extreme example would be if the cop threatens the target into commiting a crime. For the more usual situation when a cop promotes a crime to catch the criminal, I saw it explained (just for illustration purposes, it is not that you are safe when the cop insists a third time) as it follows: Legal: Cop) Oh boy! The place where I work is full of cash and they don't even have alarms or store it in a safe box. If someone helps me, we could go this night and take all of it. Are you interested? Target) I don't know. Cop) Trust me, it will be easy, nobody is there at night and it will be just a couple of hours. Target) Ok, count me in. Illegal Cop) Oh boy! The place where I work is full of cash and they don't even have alarms or store it in a safe box. If someone helps me, we could go this night and take all of it. Are you interested? Target) I am not a thief. Cop) Come on, it will be easy, the place is insured and nobody will be hurt. Target) Not interested. Cop) We can get 5000 US$ each one, just for a night of work. Didn't you told me that you had troubles with your bank? You could solve those overnight! Target) Maybe you are right, but I have no experience with these things... Cop) Do not worry, I will tell you what you need to do. Target) Ok, count me in. Note that it is not only "the cop insisted a lot". For the drug dealer example, if the cop insisted a lot but, when agreed, the boy produced the drug from his pocket, already packaged for sale, it would not be entrapment. OTOH, if the guy had told "I do not know where to buy drugs" and the cop had told him "go talk with X so he sells you the drug", then it could be considered entrampment. In any case, this is generic information only, entrapment is difficult to prove and will depend on the views of the judge/jury so, no matter how enticing that criminal offer is, just don't do it.	united-states "I know is it illegal for authorities to question a suspect when their lawyer isn’t present" This is not really true, at least in the US. The suspect must explicitly ask for a lawyer. Even saying "Maybe I should talk to a lawyer" (ie Davis v. U.S. (512 U.S. 453 (1994)) isn't enough, they have to say "I want a lawyer". Until they invoke the right, an officer can question all they want (provided they were informed of these rights, except for certain situations which are relatively complicated. See Miranda Rights). So no, an officer questioning you without a lawyer is neither a crime nor illegal. Once you invoke your Miranda right though, they have to respect that. With or without your lawyer, this is called interrogation. You can filter your responses through a lawyer, or waive your right to a lawyer and answer directly.	can you hire a witness as your lawyer to exclude their testimony? That is pure fiction and misleading. Unfortunately scenes like that contribute to keep people ignorant about the law, which then makes it easier for courts to dissimulate their recurrent miscarriage of justice. But Purdue University v. Wartell, 5 N.E.3d 797 (2014) is an example where the Indiana courts did the right thing, and is pertinent to your question. There, Purdue University first assigned an investigator in regard to plaintiff's grievance, and thereafter the University tried to withhold information under pretext that the investigator was also its lawyer and thus that the information was protected by the privilege. Because that person hitherto had been portrayed only as an independent investigator, the Indiana courts concluded that Purdue University was estopped from invoking the attorney-client privilege (as well as the work-product doctrine). Thus, the guy in the film or series who said to be "screwed on Kardashian" reflects pure cluelessness about how the law supposedly operates. I have not seen the plot of that film or series, but the information that the friend-lawyer obtained prior to becoming O.J.'s attorney would not be protected by the privilege because it was not obtained in preparation for O.J.'s defense. If there were one star witness on the opposing side and they happened to be a lawyer, could you simply pay them off by hiring them as your lawyer? This question is somewhat unclear to me, but I will mention that lawyers have a duty to disclose to their potential or actual client any conflict of interests. The rules of so-called "professional conduct" discourage lawyers to ignore conflict of interests in that this conflict may impair their "services". And, as I explained previously, any information that a lawyer obtains as witness rather than as attorney in the matter is not protected by the privilege. Thus, as for If you committed a crime at a law-firm and everyone who witnessed it was a lawyer, is there any rule preventing you from just hiring all of them? the answer is: Nothing prevents the criminal from hiring all of them, but that information is not protected.	There are two questions here: Is it really the police, or someone pretending to be the police in order to stage a home invasion? If it is the police they will be wearing uniforms and showing you their badges. I don't know how common it is for criminals to impersonate police officers. Do they have a valid search warrant? Once you have established that they really are police your best course is to stand back and let them in. Arguing about search warrants and "fruit of the poisoned tree" is a job for a lawyer later on. One option might be to quickly dial 911, put the phone down but still listening, and then open the door while saying "are you police, can I see your badge?". If they are police then no problem. If they turn out to be imposters then the 911 dispatcher should be able to figure it out and send the real police around.
If an allegation is approved, does it mean that the statistics cited in the allegation is correct? For an example excerpt, see the Schwake v. Arizona case, page 15: The University contends that the allegations of genderbased decisionmaking are conclusory because they lack the detail of the allegations in Doe v. Miami University, 882 F.3d 579 (6th Cir. 2018). The plaintiff’s allegations there included: (1) “every male student accused of sexual misconduct in the Fall 2013 and Spring 2014 semesters was found responsible for the alleged violation,” (2) “nearly ninety percent of students found responsible for sexual misconduct between 2011 and 2014 have male first-names,” (3) an affidavit from an attorney who represented “many students in Miami University’s disciplinary proceedings” who “describe[d] a pattern of the University pursuing investigations concerning male students, but not female students,” and (4) the plaintiff’s allegation that the university investigated him rather than the complainant. Id. at 593–94. Also on page 15, Schwake alleged that "male repondents in the student disciplinary proceedings involving alleged sexual harassment and misconduct cases at Arizona Univ are invariably found guilty regardless of the evidence or lack thereof." I am not a law student so I am assuming that, as the allegation is "plausible" (see the last page of the document), the statistics cited in those allegations must be objectively correct or well-supported?	Not in this case First, we are having an appeals court case that is filed against the dismissal of the real case - there had been no trial. It's a research into if there was a clear error of the court, not who would have won. The Appeals court decided to send it back to the district court with pretty much a direct order to have a trial and solve the issiue, as the very last paragraph of the file shows: We conclude that Schwake stated a Title IX claim against the University because he plausibly alleged gender bias. Accordingly, we reverse and vacate the district court’s order and judgment dismissing the claim with prejudice, and remand for further proceedings. Now, back to your quote. As this is an appeal case, the standard is different than in the district court. In this case, it tries to see if there might have been a case, which was dismissed erroneously. Page 15 and 16, where you cite, states (emphasis mine): Schwake’s allegations of a pattern of gender-based decisionmaking against male respondents in sexual misconduct disciplinary proceedings make that inference plausible. He alleged that “[m]ale respondents in student disciplinary proceedings involving alleged sexual harassment and misconduct cases at [the University]” “are invariably found guilty, regardless of the evidence or lack thereof.” Schwake further alleged that he was “aware of recent [University] disciplinary cases against male respondents in alleged sexual misconduct cases who were all found guilty regardless of the evidence or lack thereof.” The district court was not free to ignore this non-conclusory and relevant factual allegation. [your quote] The absence of this level of detail from Schwake’s complaint does not render Schwake’s allegation conclusory or insufficient. There is no heightened pleading standard for Title IX claims. See Austin, 925 F.3d at 1137 n.4. That point is particularly apt here. It may be difficult for a plaintiff to know the full extent of alleged discrimination in decisionmaking before discovery allows a plaintiff to unearth information controlled by the defendant. This sheds much more light upon the situation of the case: Schwacke sued and alleged something. The University alleges the contrary in their reply brief and asks the court to dismiss the claim. The court dismissed in March 2018. This was before any discovery has taken place: nobody was subpoenaed, nobody had to testify in court, nobody had to turn over any documents. We have only statements from either side. As the next step, Schwacke appealed the dismissal, and the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed and remanded, as it found clear error in the handling in dismissal, as one can see in the last paragraphs from each claim's section: Here, we are satisfied that Schwake’s allegations of contemporaneous pressure and gender-based decisionmaking establish background indicia of sex discrimination relevant to his Title IX claim. Considering the combination of Schwake’s allegations of background indicia of sex discrimination along with the allegations concerning his particular disciplinary case, we conclude that sex discrimination is a plausible explanation for the University’s handling of the sexual misconduct disciplinary case against Schwake. This is sufficient for Schwake’s Title IX claim to proceed beyond the motion to dismiss stage. Now it is up to Schwacke to get into discovery, subpoena the information from the university and go into the courtroom trial... Unless the parties settles. Sidenote By the way, the quote of the university refers to a different case from the 6th Circuit (where Ohio is), which they try to pull up as a model standard. This case is not binding for the 9th Circuit (where Arizona is) but could have been used as a model. Doe v. Miami University, 882 F.3d 579 (6th Cir. 2018) is somewhat similar to Schwacke, as it had been previously dismissed. However, the Title IX was restored by the Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit and it was sent back to the lower court to have a trial. Here too, the standard was reasonable expectation or plausibility: Plaintiff “allege[d] facts showing a potential pattern of gender-based decision-making that ‘raise a reasonable expectation that discovery will reveal’ circumstantial evidence of gender discrimination.”	The general rule is that force may be legally used in defense of self. I will draw on RCW 9A.16.020, other jurisdictions say essentially the same thing. The relevant parts are: (3) Whenever used by a party about to be injured, or by another lawfully aiding him or her, in preventing or attempting to prevent an offense against his or her person, or a malicious trespass, or other malicious interference with real or personal property lawfully in his or her possession, in case the force is not more than is necessary Curated internet videos don't tell the whole story, but for the sake of argument I will assume that Mr X chucked a bottle at Tyson, and Tyson proceeded to punish him with his fists. Both parties thus committed a crime. The new report indicates that there will be no prosecutions "based on 'the circumstances surrounding the confrontation'", which I take to include all of the available evidence. Prosecution for a crime is discretionary. There is no requirement at a prosecutor file charges in every instance where (in the prosecutor's professional opinion) a conviction can be secured. The abstract law is clear: both parties committed a crime. The abstract law is also clear that a prosecutor has discretion to decide whether to prosecute.	There are all manner of reasons that evidence can be excluded at a trial, most of which are set forth in rules of evidence. If the evidence was not admitted on the grounds of relevance and the charge was speeding, I presume that the reason that it was found not be to relevant was that it was not possible from a video to determine how fast someone was driving and there was no dispute in the case over who was driving. If the defendant could have articulated some reason that the video was relevant to those points, perhaps it could have been admitted. But, as if often the case, pro se defendants are usually not articulate enough to set forth a legally relevant reason that evidence should be admitted. Unless the defendant could show that the video showed something allowing a jury to determine whether or not the law was violated, it probably wouldn't be relevant and I can't easily imagine how it would be relevant, but perhaps there was some special facts or circumstances that might show, for example, that the speed gun was actually picking up another vehicle.	Two lawyers in a (administrative) hearing suggested that I would have to "lay a foundation" in order to introduce an email as evidence. Is this a general rule of evidence? “Laying the foundation” is a term of art used to explain the process of meeting the requirements for having particular types of evidence admitted. Most courts, administrative bodies, and other tribunals require that all evidence they admit be relevant and authentic. This applies to all types of evidence including oral testimony and to physical pieces of evidence that a party is trying to admit (such as printed e-mails). The rules of evidence that most states have adopted are modeled after the Federal Rules of Evidence. These rules are a codification of evidence law principles designed to only have relevant and authentic evidence admitted in hearings. So, as general rule, you must ask a witness questions to show how his testimony is relevant and authentic. For example, to meet the relevance requirements, a prosecutor in a DUI case would ask a police officer questions that showed he was the one who pulled over the person accused of drunk driving. His testimony about why he pulled over the suspected drunk driver is relevant because “it has [a] tendency to make a fact more or less probable than it would be without the evidence; and the fact [he is testifying about] is of consequence in determining the [case].” Fed. R. Evid. 401 (the test for relevant evidence). This evidence would meet the authenticity requirements in evidence law by having the witness: 1. Be competent to testify. Fed. R. Evid. 601. 2. Take an oath to testify truthfully. Fed. R. Evid. 603. AND 3. Testify about what they personally observed and not speculate. Fed. R. Evid. 602. There are more specific foundational rules for: hearsay evidence (see Fed. R. Evid. 801 through 807) and physical pieces of evidence such as voice recordings, documents, and e-mails (see Fed. R. Evid. 901 through 1008). If so, could someone explain when it applies, and what in particular is necessary to satisfy the rule? As you explained in the comments to your question, this hearing is a special education impartial hearing in New York State. According to New York State Regulations of the Commissioner of Education § 200.5(j)(3)(xii)(c), the rules of evidence do not apply. This regulation explains that a more relaxed standard applies: The impartial hearing officer may receive any oral, documentary or tangible evidence except that the impartial hearing officer shall exclude evidence that he or she determines to be irrelevant, immaterial, unreliable or unduly repetitious. The impartial hearing officer may receive testimony by telephone, provided that such testimony shall be made under oath and shall be subject to cross examination. (Emphasis added.) Therefore, to admit your e-mails under this standard, you only need to show the administrative law judge that the evidence is relevant, material, reliable, and not unduly repetitious. A much easier standard task than having those e-mails admitted under the Rules of Evdience. The best thing to do would be have the person who received or sent the e-mails present at your hearing and able to testify as a witness. Then, do the following: Before the hearing, have your witness print a paper copy of the e-mails. Provide a copy of the e-mails to the opposing side at least 5 business days before the hearing. See § 200.5(3)(xii) (“Each party shall have the right to prohibit the introduction of any evidence the substance of which has not been disclosed to such party at least five business days before the hearing.”). Mark the e-mails with an exhibit number or letter (usually the plaintiff uses numbers and the defense uses letters). At the hearing, call your witness and have him/her sworn in. Ask to the judge/hearing officer to approach the witness, and give a copy to the e-mails to him. Also give a copy to the judge/hearing officer and opposing counsel. Show the e-mails to the witness. Ask the witness if he recognizes the exhibit you handed him. Have the witness explain how he recognizes it. His testimony should explained the following: That these are e-mails he printed. When and how he printed them. Who they were sent to and sent from. Who the e-mail addresses belong to (many times this is indicated in a person's e-mail signature). What the e-mails are about and why they are important at the hearing--to show that they are relevant.	Yes, a statement made to only a single other person can be defamation, at least in the US (you don't mention the jurisdiction that you or the accused person are in, and it may matter). Only the accused person can normally sue, and that person would need to establish that the statement was made, and that it was false. In most cases actual damage to reputation also needs to be established. However, a few limited categories are considered defamatory per se. these include an accusation that a person is guilty of a serious crime. (The exact line for defamation per se will depend on the jurisdiction.) If a statemant is defamatory per se actual damage need not be proved. Strictly speaking saying that someone "is a pedophile" only says that that person is sexually attracted to children, but it is usually taken to mean that the person has in fact sexually abused children, which is a crime, and would I am sure be considered defamatory per se. Even so, proof of actual damage to the reputation of the person defamed might be important to the measure of damages to be awarded. often the number of people to whom an accusation is made is relevant to the degree of damage to the reputation, and thus to the damages to be awarded, but the relation is not always 1-to-1. Particularly with a very serious accusation, the damage to reputation could be significant, even if only one or a few people heard the false statement. By the way, the word is spelled "pedophile" (or paedophile in UK English), it is from two Greek words meaning literally "lover of the young". A now obsolete related term is "pederast", with much the same meaning.	Yes to everything. Justified use of force is assault / battery / homicide (as appropriate). "Assault" means that a person has placed someone in fear of their life or person. "Battery" means that a person has physically struck someone in some way. "Homicide" means that a person has killed another human. None of these definitions speak to the legality of the action. You are right about the example being assault. Justified use of force is de facto legal. Assault, battery, and homicide are normally crimes, but the justifications for using force carve out exceptions. If the circumstances fit within the justification, the person using the justified force has not committed a crime. (Generally speaking, the person targeted by said force has.) If the situation you describe fits within the laws of justification within the state (and to be fair, it probably does), then your co-worker is right about the actions being perfectly legal. Police are picky about what they investigate, and prosecutors are picky about what they charge. If it's 100% clear from the evidence that you were justified in your use of force, prosecutors will (typically) not press charges, and so police will not bother with an arrest or further investigation. It's really not worth the time and effort for a case that has 0% chance of producing a conviction. However, if the police and prosecutors have some doubts (e.g., they think your force was excessive and therefor not justified), they can still press charges. Being charged with a crime does not mean you have committed a crime. And vice-versa. Justification is an affirmative defense against charges of assault / battery / homicide. An affirmative defense does not mean "I confess to the crime but have a really good excuse." It means that you admit to certain facts that would normally be beneficial to the prosecution, but claim additional facts that either mitigate or make you innocent of the given charges. In the case of justified force, you are admitting to the action of assault, but claiming innocence. When making your defense, your theory of defense must be internally consistent. You cannot admit to a fact when convenient and deny it when it is inconvenient. "I was in Santa Fe at the time, and anyway, Sam did it," is an example of a self-consistent theory that gives multiple reasons to acquit. That's good, because the jury only needs one reason that gives them pause, and now you've got two chances at that. "I was in Santa Fe at the time, and anyway, he was threatening my life," is not internally consistent. If you argue justification, you explicitly declaim any alibi. This situation is more dangerous, because your defense rests entirely on the credibility of the justification. But if you argue an alibi, you implicitly declaim any justification. So building your defense on things the prosecution can disprove is much worse than taking an affirmative defense of justification.	In law there are two different concepts: admissibility of evidence and the weight of that evidence. Your question concerns both. I will begin by discussing a little bit about what both these two terms mean. Admissibility means that this evidence may go before the trier of fact. Typically the trier of fact is the jury, however, if both parties have waived their rights to jury trials (particularly the defendant) the judge is the trier of fact as well as the law. When documents or testimony by witnesses is admissible, the trier of fact can consider it in reaching a decision. Weight of evidence is a different concept. The weight of evidence is what someone believes. For example if two witnesses who were bystanders testify that the light was red, but the defendant testifies that the light was green, most people would believe the bystanders. However, in this case the evidence by the defendant that the light was green is admissible, but the trier of fact may not afford it much weight. Now let's consider these logs. In the United States all statements made out of court, whether verbal or written, are considered hearsay (with some exceptions, a couple will be discussed later). Hearsay is generally inadmissible; however, there are many hearsay exceptions. One exception is a record of a regularly conducted activity. The requirements are (summarized, you may refer to the federal rules of evidence 803-6.) for the full text): (A) the record was made at the time of the event by someone who knew about what happened (B) the record was kept in the course of this regularly conducted activity (C) making the record was a regular practice of that activity (D) all these conditions are shown by the testimony of the custodian or another qualified witness (E) neither the opponent does not show that the source of information nor or the method or circumstances of preparation indicate a lack of trustworthiness. Now if these logs fit these requirements you can most likely use them in court. If they don't you probably will not be able to use to in court, unless one of the following applies: 1.) you are being sued by someone (or you are suing them) who made the logs and you are offering the logs against them (this is referred to in legal settings as party-opponent statements) OR 2.) the other party has offered evidence that you are lying and you are offering this logs to show you are telling the truth. Most likely the only admissible evidence would be the testimony of the employee and the employer. This leads to a he said she said scenario and the legal results will be highly ambiguous. The credibility of both witnesses will be likely assessed by the trier of fact and the trier will consider who has a higher incentive to lie. If there are more witnesses saying one thing versus another, it is likely they will be believed unless there is a reason all of them are lying. Although this is not legal advice, my suggestion for an employee in such a situation is to gather evidence that an employer asked you to commit a crime as part of your job. Print out emails, get written requests from the employer, and have witnesses present at the time of the request. Then the employee should refuse to perform the act. If as a result the employee is fired, one can sue. All these statements of the employer can be admitted as party-opponent statements. Additionally I suggest that you advocate for your company to adopt policies which require record keeping, which will satisfy the hearsay exception given above.	It seems like callous behavior which leads to a foreseeable death deserves a bigger punishment than just firing of the administrator. The starting point of the analysis is that no one is legally responsible, civilly or criminally, for a suicide unless that person intended that the person who committed suicide do so, which is almost certainly not true in this case. As a matter of law, a suicide caused by merely callous behavior not intended to cause someone to commit suicide is not foreseeable. And if the only actions brought are civil, then the University would be the defendant and the actual individuals who were involved would not themselves even face any trial. This is not accurate. It would be routine to bring suit against anyone personal involved (probably both the administrator and the gay student who allegedly colluded), as well as the University, and indeed, the likelihood of a recovery against one or both of the individuals would be greater than the chance of recovery against the University. To recover against the University it would be necessary to show that the Title IX violation occurred pursuant to an officially approved policy or practice of the University, but this case seems to have at its heart, a failure to an administrator to follow a policy of the University. It might be possible to sue the University or someone involved in the process for a violation of his civil rights, but generally speaking, his death would not constitute recoverable damages in a such a suit. Also, generally speaking, a Title IX claim requires that any party held liable to have had an intent to violate someone's civil rights, rather than that the person was merely mere inept or negligent in implementation or non-implementation of a bureaucratic policy or dispute resolution procedure. This is alleged by the Plaintiff, probably in part because it has to be to prevent the case from being dismissed on the pleadings, but is quite implausible that this really happened that way, and this is difficult to prove unless there is some really hard evidence backing up the alleged collusion. Generally speaking, the fact that a hearing board comes up with a wrong conclusion after allegedly not following proper procedure, is not actionable for damages and certainly wouldn't constitute fraud. UPDATED RESPONSE TO EDIT 2: there maybe other victims, in similar situations, who are not protected by the criminal justice system if nothing of what is alleged to have transpired is deemed illegal It is a common fallacy that if something is not a crime, that it is not illegal or that there are no remedies. A civil lawsuit is a common and often appropriate remedy for all manner of wrongs, and the compensatory and injunctive remedies for civil wrongs such as a breach of contract and torts such as the intentional infliction of emotional distress are often significant. This said, as a government entity, the University of Texas and its employees are probably immune to many tort causes of action that would be available against a private party engaged in the same conduct. In this case, probably the only viable causes of action against the University of Texas itself, as opposed to the responsible individuals in a particular case, would be for breach of contract for not actually carrying out its policies as impliedly promised, and for injunctive relief under Title IX insisting on new policies that would prevent misconduct in disciplinary proceedings. Generally speaking, a criminal law remedy is less victim oriented than a civil remedy and is outside the control of the victim, which can be traumatic for a victim who would prefer not to be involuntarily dragged into the criminal justice process. The notion that settlement is not possible in the criminal justice system is likewise mostly incorrect. There is a reason why we don't handle rapes (for example) in civil courts. Criminal justice system exists to make sure that, at least in theory, those who commit heinous acts cannot buy their way out of consequences of those actions. In fact, one can bring a cause of action for a rape in a civil court. I've done it. And, the lower threshold of proof, the lack of a right to remain silent without legal consequences under the 5th Amendment, the greater focus on compensation for the victim, and the greater level of control of the victim are all good reasons to pursue this route. Many cases of rape by people able to afford to pay compensation are also cases of actionable sexual harassment. In general, criminal law is the solution that is usually resorted to not so much because the acts committed are heinous, but because the typical person who violates a law that is criminally prosecuted is judgment proof and unable to pay compensation that is even remotely proportionate to the harm done, so a civil remedy does not discourage that behavior. Your typical rapist who is prosecuted in the criminal justice system isn't capable of paying meaningful compensation to a victim, although there are always exceptions. Preventing people from buying their way out of their wrongdoing is almost never advanced by criminal justice scholars as a reason for a criminal justice remedy. And, when I have clients who have been harmed, for example, by fraud, most would far prefer to receive compensation from the wrongdoer, than to see the perpetrator punished without receiving any meaningful compensation for their own injuries, which is the usual result in the criminal justice process. Most people think of the criminal justice system as more of a last resort when all other options fail than as a good first choice which it rarely is even when it is the least bad option. So back to the main question, what, if any, criminal charges can be leveled against the administrator and the false accuser if the alleged facts of the case can be confirmed to be true? In the fact pattern presented, where a public official at the University of Texas conspires with a student with whom the official has a pre-existing personal relationship to produce an intentionally inaccurate result in a University disciplinary hearing harming a defendant in that process, there are several university statutes that might form a basis for criminal action against either the public administrator or the conspiring student on the offense identified or conspiracy to commit the offense identified. In no case are any criminal charges against the University of Texas a plausible option in this fact pattern. Each of the offenses is a misdemeanor under Texas law. The best fit is "improper influence". Texas Penal Code § 36.04. This involves reaching an outcome in an adjudication for a reason other than one legally allowed due to someone's application of influence other than a bribe or kickback. The section states: (a) A person commits an offense if he privately addresses a representation, entreaty, argument, or other communication to any public servant who exercises or will exercise official discretion in an adjudicatory proceeding with an intent to influence the outcome of the proceeding on the basis of considerations other than those authorized by law. (b) For purposes of this section, “adjudicatory proceeding” means any proceeding before a court or any other agency of government in which the legal rights, powers, duties, or privileges of specified parties are determined. (c) An offense under this section is a Class A misdemeanor. Two other possibilities are "abuse of official capacity", Texas Penal Code §39.02, or "official oppression" Texas Penal Code § 39.03. These sections and a related one, read as follows in the pertinent or potentially pertinent parts: Sec. 39.01. DEFINITIONS. In this chapter: (1) "Law relating to a public servant's office or employment" means a law that specifically applies to a person acting in the capacity of a public servant and that directly or indirectly: (A) imposes a duty on the public servant; or (B) governs the conduct of the public servant. . . . Sec. 39.02. ABUSE OF OFFICIAL CAPACITY. (a) A public servant commits an offense if, with intent to obtain a benefit or with intent to harm or defraud another, he intentionally or knowingly: (1) violates a law relating to the public servant's office or employment . . . (b) An offense under Subsection (a)(1) is a Class A misdemeanor. . . . 39.03. OFFICIAL OPPRESSION. (a) A public servant acting under color of his office or employment commits an offense if he: . . . (2) intentionally denies or impedes another in the exercise or enjoyment of any right, privilege, power, or immunity, knowing his conduct is unlawful; or (3) intentionally subjects another to sexual harassment. (b) For purposes of this section, a public servant acts under color of his office or employment if he acts or purports to act in an official capacity or takes advantage of such actual or purported capacity. (c) In this section, "sexual harassment" means unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, or other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature, submission to which is made a term or condition of a person's exercise or enjoyment of any right, privilege, power, or immunity, either explicitly or implicitly. (d) An offense under this section is a Class A misdemeanor . . . Also, in all three of these cases, the fact that someone committed suicide afterwards is basically irrelevant legally.
Is any sort of "Public Domain Mark" required when using public domain content? Say I wanted to use a painting from the public domain for a book cover. Is it necessary to apply any sort of "public domain mark"? If so, does it need to appear in a particular place (e.g., the cover itself vs. a copyright page)? The reason I'm attempting to do so is because commons.wikimedia.org has stated that one 'must also include a United States public domain tag to indicate why this work is in the public domain in the United States.'	If a work is in the public domain, then there are no particular requirements on its use; in particular, it can be used on a book cover without a copyright notice, a public domain notice, or any other kind of notice or mark. Wikimedia Commons' public domain template says, "You must also include a United States public domain tag to indicate why this work is in the public domain in the United States." This is a notice to users of Wikimedia Commons, informing them that if they upload a public domain image to Wikimedia Commons, they must include a public domain tag. That's a policy of Wikimedia Commons. It doesn't apply to people using the image outside of Wikimedia.	It depends on where you are For example, in USA copyright exists in a literary or artistic work stored in permanent form like a book, a movie, an audio recording, a building etc. In contrast, in Australia there is no requirement for the work to be stored - that means copyright can exist in a spoken lecture. The owner of the copyright (usually, but not necessarily the creator) has the right to choose if and how their work is copied and if and how any derivative works may be made from it. For your example, the book is an original work in which copyright vests with the author(s), your notes are a derivative work in which copyright vests in you. However, you presumably did not have permission to make your derivative work so that makes it prima facie a copyright infringement. Fortunately, in the USA there exists a Fair Use defence and in Commonwealth countries the slightly less permissive Fair Dealing defence (if you are somewhere else you will need to do your own research). Search this site or read the copyright article on Wikipedia to learn about these defences. Long answer short (too late!), taking notes to aid your own study is almost certainly Fair Use/Dealing. So is sharing it with your friends. Publishing it may or may not be depending on all sorts of factors; for example, if you were to write a study guide for say a Harry Potter book for use by English literature students this is probably OK even if it is a for profit activity, because criticism is Fair Use/Dealing. Citing work is not necessary to comply with copyright law. Failing to cite may be academic misconduct but that is not a legal matter; its a matter for your academic institution.	Yes That is very simple - copyright is an exclusive right that starts automatically with the creation of a copyrightable work. The default situation is that the author has an exclusive rights to make copies of the work and derivative works. If the code is published somewhere by the author but the author has not said anything about its licence or copyrights, then the default situation applies - you need permission and you don't have it, so it's not legal for you to distribute their copyrighted works. They have the right to just publish it somewhere, others don't. If you try to contact the author and they don't say anything and ignore you, then the default situation applies - you need permission and you don't have it, so it's not legal for you to distribute their copyrighted works. If it's impossible to find the author (e.g. I have certain cases with literary works where it's not clear who inherited the rights after the author died), then the default situation applies - you need permission and you don't have it, so it's not legal for you to distribute their copyrighted works. That being said, certain forms of reuse (recreating ideas, learning from them, etc) would not be a copyright violation. But in general the situation with the author not saying anything is almost the same as the author explicitly stating "all rights reserved, you're not allowed to do anything, violators will be shot" - some specific uses are allowed even against author's wishes (e.g. 'fair use' clauses) but everything that needs their permission really does need their explicit permission.	Stack Exchange questions are not public domain, they are protected by copyright. Authors have granted a license under Subscriber Content, specifically content is perpetually and irrevocably licensed to Stack Overflow on a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive basis pursuant to Creative Commons licensing terms (CC BY-SA 4.0) As long as you comply with the terms of the CC BY-SA 4.0 license, you may copy user content.	Everything except the summary and the cover art are all facts; facts are not subject to copyright. The summary and cover art would be subject to copyright. You may have a fair use defence given that all you are doing is cataloguing the books.	There aren't bright line rules in the area of fair use (which is the core issue - you are clearly copying a work that has copyright protected portions, at least - the question is whether fair use provides a defense and whether some portions are not copyright protected). This inquiry is fact specific and driven by general standards. Context such as whether the use would be free or commercial matter as well. For your own notes, anything goes pretty much. This generally wouldn't constitute "publication" of the work and would be for personal educational used by someone who paid for the book anyway. For shared notes - it depends. Also not all kinds of copying is created equal. Some parts of textbooks are themselves in the public domain or not protectable by copyright. For example, even a lengthy quote from a scientific journal article would probably be allowed with attribution. It would also be easier to evaluate based upon the type of textbook. A history textbook can have protection similar to trade non-fiction and can have very original exposition. An algebra textbook, less so. Your question also points to an end run. If the professor is the author of the textbook (many of mine were in something of a racket), you could get permission from the author.	The situation is complicated. The easy cases: In the United States, it's in the public domain for lack of a copyright notice. In countries that are parties to neither the Berne Convention nor the TRIPS Agreement, it's in the public domain because those countries don't recognize anyone else's copyrights. In countries that have adopted the rule of the shorter term, it is in the public domain because the image was never copyrighted in the country of origin. In the remaining countries, it is likely but not certain that the photo is in the public domain. Article 18 of the Berne Convention provides that: (1) This Convention shall apply to all works which, at the moment of its coming into force, have not yet fallen into the public domain in the country of origin through the expiry of the term of protection. (4) The preceding provisions shall also apply in the case of new accessions to the Union... So in theory, since it was in the public domain in the United States as of March 1, 1989 (the date the United States ratified the Berne Convention), it's in the public domain in all Berne countries. However, not all countries may have implemented Article 18 exactly as written.	It is reasonable to interpret the statement in their Github repository README.md as a "public domain" license for anything contained there. However, their "usage guidelines" backpedals a bit ("generally are not copyrighted", the misleading implication that content used commercially is subject to restrictions that educational and personal uses are not subject to). Although it is true that works "created by the US government" are not protected by copyright, not everything associated with a government agency is created by the US government. An agency might have a policy that they will not post material that is not copyright-free, there is no practical means of knowing if an item is an actual government work, versus a government-supported or government-hosted work (where copyright is held by someone else). If you trust their implication that all of those items in the repository are indeed government works, then they are free of copyright. I don't know any reason to not believe them, although sometimes the government is wrong and they end up liable big-time for infringement. However... NASA Open Source Agreement Version 1.3 (another copy on a NASA web page) on first glance seems to contradict the "government work" theory. Here, they claim to grant certain rights to users and also impose impose restrictions (including obligatory registration). This does not make any sense for a work that is in the public domain. The license is legally defective in that it fails to fill in relevant blanks (agency name, title of work, URL for obligatory registration). Also notice that the license is only for software. The scope of that license therefore has to be something narrower – it applies only to software, and presumably software that is not "a government work". I have no idea what software NASA could legally give away and is not a government work which is therefore not protected by copyright.
What happens if a country refuses to take its citizens back? With the covid-19 pandemic Argentina decided to establish limits for the return of its citizens and some of them could return to the country 5 months after this decision, and they had to remain for that time in foreign countries. As far as I know many countries let you stay in their borders for 6 months if you arent a citizen. What can happen if a country decides not to allow return to a large amount of citizens like this, which measures can be taken against citizens in the foreign country with a decision like this? Would they acquire a status of refugee or something or would they be considered criminals?	A question like that is impossible to answer in general, but your question includes some incorrect assumptions. Many countries try to prevent visitors to become de-facto residents through repeated visits. For instance, the Schengen area limits visitors on short-stay visa to 90 days out of every 180-day rolling window, and the UK seems to give their immigration officials more discretion on every re-entry. Many countries give political asylum to people who are persecuted in their home country. A pandemic, or generally bad living conditions, do not count as persecution. Many countries give refugee status to people who have to flee war or disaster in their home country. The default case for these rules is a person who is in danger and wants to travel to a safe country. Then there are rules for force majeure when a person in the country is forced to overstay through no fault of their own. How that is handled usually depends on how cooperative the visitor was at securing a timely return or a visa extension. During the early days of the pandemic, there have been blanket extensions in some countries. As travel re-opened, these have run out. One of the differences between the last three bullet points is how long the stay is permitted. Political asylum tends to be for the long term, refugee status lasts until the end of the disaster, and a force majeure exception might just last a few days. So if this is not just a hypothetical question, contact a lawyer or the immigration authorities where you are now. Generic answers on Stackexchange cannot replace specific, professional advice.	When can I re-apply for the citizenship, there is no date mentioned on the letter received. You can reapply as soon as you meet the criteria. If you don't move again to another state or USCIS district, and if you don't spend so much time outside the US that you fail to meet the physical presence requirement, then you can reapply on the three-month anniversary of your move to your current place of residence. The criteria are available at USCIS's Naturalization Information page: Naturalization Eligibility Requirements Before an individual applies for naturalization, he or she must meet a few requirements. Depending on the individual’s situation, there are different requirements that may apply. General requirements for naturalization are below. Be at least 18 years old at the time of filing Form N-400, Application for Naturalization. Be a permanent resident (have a “Green Card”) for at least 5 years. Show that you have lived for at least 3 months in the state or USCIS district where you apply. Demonstrate continuous residence in the United States for at least 5 years immediately preceding the date of filing Form N-400. Show that you have been physically present in the United States for at least 30 months out of the 5 years immediately preceding the date of filing Form N-400. Be able to read, write, and speak basic English. Have a basic understanding of U.S. history and government (civics). Be a person of good moral character. Demonstrate an attachment to the principles and ideals of the U.S. Constitution.	No, if, as you say we put aside the human rights questions surrounding the death penalty itself and assuming that the prisoners had been legitimately charged, convicted and had exhausted their appeals process. Once a person has been convicted, sentenced to death and has exhausted their appeals then the timing of the execution passes from the judicial branch to the executive branch of government. This is why governments can implement and remove moratoriums on executions at their discretion. Doubtless there are administrative rules and logistical issues involved in the actual timing of the execution but if these have all been correctly dealt with then they are essentially held at the pleasure of the person in the government charged with the decision. Was it legal? Probably. Was it ethical? ...	What you claim isn’t true. You can’t usually get German citizenship if you have another citizenship. You can (possibly) get German citizenship if you tried to get rid of another citizenship and failed. You still have the other citizenship, you are not stateless. It’s just that Germany would make an exception for you and allow you to have two citizenships in that case. So Germany will not consider you stateless, because it’s a fact you are not. They will consider you as someone who tried to become stateless.	When you breach a contract, you can get sued in local court, and if you don't show up to defend yourself, default judgment will be entered against you. Then the aggrieved party will have to collect, but the court in Washington (to invent a jurisdiction) can't enforce an order against a person in Norway (to invent another jurisdiction). So the aggrieved party would need to take enforcement of the judgment to the Norwegian courts. In the actual case of Norway, this is fairly simple, you just call an attorney in Norway to do the paperwork. It might be harder if the other jurisdiction is Belarus. If you return to the US, even if there is a money judgment against you for the rent owed, you will not be arrested for that debt. Depending on the state (about half of the states), you might be arrested for failing to comply with a court order to pay the debt. The difference lies in refusing to comply with a court order, versus simply having a debt. The State Department conveniently lists the reasons for denying a visa. Owing money or having an uncollected judgment against you is not one of the possible reasons, in fact even having been ordered by a court to pay, ignoring the order, and the court issuing an arrest warrant does not make you inadmissible.	As in most cases it depends on the details. The length of a blade (> 44mm and width > 10) is important and the circumstances. Assume a fine to something up to € 10000, but a sentence up to 3 years is also possible. In Germany it is not crime (anything that can be fined or minimal sentence is less than 1 year is not a crime). I assume that they took your home address and let you leave the country, which alone is a sign that it not a crime. Since you were so smart to place this in your luggage, where it garantied to be found by airport security, you will probably get something in the range of the minimal fine. You also cooperated by giving a statement, which will assist to lessen the fine (you were after all caught red handed). Having it on your person in a public space, the fine would have be higher. Swinging it around among peaple in a threatening manner, will lead you into the range of a sentence. When the fine arrives, there will be bank transaction form. Go to the next post office or bank and pay it, retaining the receipt. Border control will not be interested in you (they only get alerts for proper criminals). Customs (Zoll) could be interested to enforce the fine, show them the receipt. Pay the fine and get on with your life. As to the U.S. Consulate (forget Embassy, State Department: they deal only in diplomatic affairs) all they will tell you is you must obey the laws of the country you are in assisted in getting an English speaking lawyer when requested send you bill for their efforts A Consulate deals with citizen affairs (administration, assistance). Most Embassies have a Cousulate department inside, but not all. In Berlin it does not. The Cousulate is about 20 Kilometres away from the Embassy. The right to call them is based on the Vienna Conventions 1815 and 1961. All countries that reconised these conventions are required to allow a foreigner to contact their Cousulate. A dual citizen, when inside the country where they are a citizen, do not have this right.	Can I just go to the United States and marry him anyway, and still live in Canada? Basically, yes. But, if you tell the border patrol that you are engaged or headed to your wedding when crossing the border to attend your wedding, you may be denied entry, because you no longer qualify for a tourist visa or student visa, and now need a fiancee visa to enter the U.S. This can prevent you from crossing the border for a long time while a financee visa is processed. (I've seen this happen in real life more than once when I lived in Ann Arbor, Michigan which is near the Canadian border.) Once you are married, it is perfectly legal to live in Canada, although this may lead to tough questions from U.S. or Canadian immigration officials about whether you had a bona fide marriage if you later seek to gain U.S. citizenship, or he seeks to gain Canadian citizenship based upon being married, since not living together is circumstantial evidence that you have a sham marriage. This said, immigration officials tend to be more suspicious of sham marriages when one spouse from a poor country seeks citizenship in a rich country than they are in U.S.-Canadian marriages in either direction. Immigration officials are more suspicious if you do not have children together and are less suspicious if you have children together. Do I have to report this to anyone? You need a marriage license from the state or local government as applicable where the marriage takes place and it must be returned with signatures from the officiant and a couple of witnesses within the time set forth in the license. If you change your name upon marriage, you need to change it for purposes of all of your identification documents including your passport, usually by submitting your marriage license to the appropriate officials. If you are asked by a border crossing official if you are married or engaged to be married you are required to answer truthfully, but you do not have to volunteer the information. If either of you applies for a permanent residence visa or citizenship in the other country the immigration officials of that country must be informed on the application for the visa or citizenship.	The comments have basically covered this, but: It's a slightly weird parallel structure ("who shall not be at least 25, and been a citizen for 7 years, and who shall not be a resident"). The Constitution is not written in fluid 21st-century English. But the obviously correct way to parse the sentence is that no one can be a representative who isn't a 25-year-old or older who's been a citizen for at least 7 years; furthermore, no one can be a representative who wasn't a resident of the state they represent when they were elected. With some parts of the Constitution (like the Second Amendment), the drafting results in actual disputes about the intended meaning. With other parts (like here), only one reading makes any sense. It's the same with the requirements to be President. The Constitution says "No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President," which could be read as "you're not eligible unless, when the Constitution was adopted, you were either a citizen of the US or a natural-born citizen." But that's a silly reading, so "at the time of the Adoption" is read as only applying to "a Citizen of the United States:" natural-born citizens are eligible period, and people who were born before the US was a thing but were citizens by the time the Constitution was adopted were grandfathered in.
Is it legal to prevent customers from leaving gym class early? The following directive was issued to class participants: You may not leave class early. If you attend class you must stay for the entire class (unless there is an emergency). There are NO EXCEPTIONS to these rules. Instructors are aware and will be monitoring and enforcing these rules effective immediately. This appears to be threatening and unlawful imprisonment and restraint!	It depends on where you live, but "restrain" doesn't mean telling a person that they have to stay put, it implies either a physical blockage (locking the door) or a threat of force, and neither of those are present or suggested by the sign. We don't know what the consequences are, for example they might report you to your parents or even restrain you if you are a minor (that's who is in most "gym classes"). If you are an adult, the consequence could be some contractual sanction (read the contract) or termination of the contract for breach (read the contract). You can simply ask a supervisor how they intend to enforce this restriction.	Clean your tub. Scratch that off the list. Typo - forget about it, there is nothing here, clerical errors are curable if not outright reasonable. In CA your landlord can enter under certain circumstances. All but emergency require notice, agreement, or your presence. But what is your remedy? A civil suit for damages or call the cops and try to get the landlord charged with criminal trespass under CAL. PEN. CODE § 602.	If we go by Indian case law (as we should), you have to find a way. The relevant case is K.P. Adbul Gafoor v. New India Assurance Ltd, where appellant drove on a motor cycle on a learner's permit without a licensed driver positioned correctly, in violation of Rule 3 of the Rules, and smacked someone. The bulk of the case is about the insurance and liability consequences of violating the rule: the main point here is that the court deemed this to violate the rules.	What stops a university form doing anything it wants is the contract you entered with the university when you enrolled. (I'm writing from the perspective of a student, not faculty). You and they are bound by the contract, and part of that contract will be a clear outline of academic processes such as ethics, grading, class requirements and test taking, as well as penalties for cheating and plagiarism. That contract will be outlined in your student handbook. That handbook and contract will also clearly outline (or should) the grievance process and remediation for both students and faculty. Since you feel that the university is not being fair, you need to start with investigating that formal grievance process and look into gathering your materials and filing a complaint. The college will have an office that handles such grievances; you need to find it and talk to them. If they are a private college, yes, they do have their "own rules," but some aspects of federal, provincial and local civil and criminal law will still apply. Be aware that the school contract may bind you to arbitration - which means you have to deal with the college on all matters - and you may not be able to go to a public court on a civil matter. A lawyer will be able to tell if you are bound by arbitration and if so, that's the end of the road. If not, a lawyer will tell you if you have a criminal or civil case. In any event, the grievance process at the U will more than likely be your first step. If by chance criminal misconduct is found during the grievance process, then a federal, provincial or local prosecutor would be involved; we would assume the university would be forthcoming if that need appeared.	Generally a signature is binding even if you have not read the document you have signed; as far as the law is concerned you should have and it's too bad for you if you didn't. Of course, this presumes the contract is otherwise valid. In the circumstances you describe you should ask to see the document before signing. If that is not possible, then instead of signing you should write "I do not agree" instead and take the printed statement - only 1 in 100 people will actually check that you did sign. If you have signed and do not wish to be bound, you should contact the company immediately in writing and say that and that they can collect whatever goods they have supplied.	I feel that a person, not the subject of arrest, should be protected by the 4th amendment if they choose to remain in their vehicle, even if “ordered” to exit the vehicle by an officer. The intuition is fine, but is basically incorrect. I’m most interested to know: How would a driver (1) Politely (2) determine if a given instruction to exit the vehicle must be complied with, and (3) decline the instruction without giving the officer “cause” or otherwise damaging a potential case? From a practical perspective the only workable response is to comply. There are times when this is done without a reasonable suspicion (or in some cases probable cause) or other legal basis, but it is pretty much impossible for you to dispute this one the spot. Most of the time, the officer will have the legal authority to order you to leave the vehicle. If they order you to exit the vehicle despite not having the legal authority to do so, the right course of action is to comply and then to file a complaint with the agency employing the officer or to bring a civil lawsuit against the officer. There are good answers to a basically duplicate question at How can you tell if you have to follow a police officer's instructions?	Contracts are illegal if they require a signatory to break the law, so the contract here is detailing that this specific clause does not apply if following it would contradict the law. It's basically saying that no signatory may hold the other for breaking contract terms if the reason for breaking the contract terms is because the law specifically says these things are required. For example, if the contract reads "The hotel does not allow guests to have animals in the room", this creates an illegal situation if said animal is a guide dog assisting a blind person, which must be allowed under laws for Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). By changing this clause to "The hotel does not allow guests to have animals in the room, except as required by federal, state or local law." Then it is now acceptable. A able bodied guest will still be in breach of contract if a cat is brought into the room, but a blind person would not be in breach because the law says you cannot use this to bar a blind person with a guide dog, and the contract must comply with the law. The Cat Person can be thrown out for breech of contract, but the blind person cannot because this exception allows the blind person to bring the dog into the rented room.	A store owner may ban any person from that store that s/he chooses, provided that the ban is not for a reason forbidden by applicable anti-discrimination law, such as banning all people of a particular race or religion. That does not appear to be the case in this situation, from the description. Since this is a franchise, the store has a local owner who is not the chain company. The company will have a franchise contract with the local owner, which will specify in what ways the company can and cannot control the store. They might or might not have the power to require the store owner not to ban you, or not to engage in verbally abusive behavior in the store. In any case, you, or any third party, cannot force them to exercise such power, even if they have it under such a contract. It is very unlikely that law enforcement the authorities will treat the verbal harassment as a crime based on a customer report. You could publicize the situation, as by an online review, which might cause the chain company to take some action, for fear of bad publicity. But be careful. You have already learned that your initial understanding of the situation was significantly incomplete. If any public statements you make are untrue, and harmful to reputation, you could be accused of defamation and sued, perhaps successfully.
Don't police actually have an obligation to arrest in some domestic cases ala NRS 171.137? The previous answers say police have no duty to arrest. Yet it seems statutes in many states require arrests in some domestic violence cases. For example, in Nevada, NRS 171.137 is entitled, "Arrest required for suspected battery constituting domestic violence." Please clarify. Although this is a Nevada law it's a very common law in many states. Many domestic violence cases occur so this would give police obligations in a wide range of cases.	You are asking a different question The title to the earlier question -- "Do the police have a civil duty to do their job" -- is slightly misleading. The question is not whether the policy have an abstract "civil" duty to enforce the law, but whether they have a specific "constitutional" duty to do so. If they do have such a specific duty, then, as they OP says, they could "be sued for not doing their job." As ohwilleke explains thoroughly, the answer to this question is "no." The Supreme Court has consistently held there is no constitutional right to police enforcement of the law. In particular, the SCt has held that police aren't violating the 14th Amendment when they don't "do their job." According to the Court, someone who is hurt when the police don't enforce the law, is not deprived of "life, liberty or property without due process of law." This in turn means that the people who are hurt can't sue the police under §1983, which allows people to sue state or local officials who violate their constitutional rights. As you point out, the Nevada statute clearly requires officers to make an arrest in some cases. However, this requirement is not absolute; the statute also creates an exception to the requirement: a peace officer shall, unless mitigating circumstances exist, arrest a person when the peace officer has probable cause to believe that the person to be arrested has...committed a battery upon his or her spouse.. The statute goes on to explicitly exempt the officer and her department from liability if she decides not to make an arrest: Nothing in this section shall be construed to impose liability upon a peace officer or his or her employer for a determination made in good faith by the peace officer not to arrest a person pursuant to this section. Thus, the statute sends mixed signals to police officers. On the one hand, it requires them to make arrests in some domestic violence cases; on the other hand, it says they are not liable if they ignore this requirement. Taken together, the Nevada statute and the SCt's decisions mean people who are hurt if police don't make an arrest under 171.137 cannot sue the police under either state or federal law.	Answering the question title, a Texas law enforcement officer can certainly make arrests in Louisiana these days under the right circumstances (I'm not about to look up the laws as of 1934). For starters, Louisiana law grants any person the authority to make an arrest when the person being arrested has committed a felony, whether or not that felony was committed in the presence of the person making the arrest. This is normally a legally risky thing to do (the arrest is illegal unless the person actually committed a felony, while a cop's felony arrest is legal as long as the cop had probable cause), but in this case the pair had been involved in a kidnapping and a robbery in Louisiana. Any person could have made a lawful arrest, and could have used necessary force to effect that arrest. But suppose the gang turned out to be innocent of the Louisiana crimes. In that case, a citizen's arrest would be illegal. But the Texas lawmen weren't at the ambush alone. They were there with the parish sheriff and a deputy, who were Louisiana peace officers with the authority to make an arrest on probable cause. And under Article 219 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, A peace officer making a lawful arrest may call upon as many persons as he considers necessary to aid him in making the arrest. A person thus called upon shall be considered a peace officer for such purposes. Neither of these things depends on the Texas officers' status as Texas officers. There are some arrests which are legal based on that (e.g. hot pursuit), and a Texas officer has some extra powers in Louisiana based on federal law that make an arrest easier (e.g. cops in the US can carry concealed firearms nationwide without needing a CCW permit), but under normal circumstances a Texas police officer has no special authority to make an arrest in Louisiana. However, it's not at all uncommon for police agencies in different states (or at the state and federal level) to cooperate on something, and there are ways to make it work out. With more planning, there are normally formal ways to do it instead of needing to rely on "we'll ask you for assistance" (for instance, officers could formally be appointed as deputies in the appropriate agency; this happens a lot on federal task forces, where a deputized state or local cop gets nationwide jurisdiction). If Bonnie and Clyde existed these days but the feds wanted to involve state cops, they'd just set up a federal task force, make Hamer a special deputy US marshal, and go from there.	If the police become aware of the domestic violence through you reporting it or otherwise the matter is entirely in their hands. They will decide if they want to prosecute or not.	In case there is no way of knowing, thus no way to sue, would this seem like a loophole that practically abolishes the 4th amendment ? The 4th amendment only means that the officer needs a probable cause/reasonable suspicion to detain you. It absolutely does not mean that he has to tell you what that is. In fact, not telling you what the probable cause is is often a part of the officer's job because, if you are indeed a perpetrator, letting you know what the suspicions are could make you do things that would allow you to escape justice. There is certainly always a way to sue i.e. file a lawsuit, for which you do not need to know what the probable cause was. Instead, you contend that there was not any. And from this point the officer has to tell the court what it was, if any. If he fails to provide one, you win and get redressed for harassment — this is how your 4th amendment rights work. If he does provide a good probable cause, you lose because in this case you either: actually did something suspicious and knew there was a probable cause; OR jumped to the conclusion that the officer harassed you when he was simply doing his job.	It depends on the nature of the crime, among other things. Under Section 8 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (PACE) the police must provide evidence to a court that a search warrant is necessary to secure and obtain evidence relevant to an ongoing investigation into a crime. If there is evidence that time is of the essence with regards to the evidence at stake (e.g. there is a high probability that the evidence will be destroyed unless it is secured immediately) then the search warrant will be expedited. Once the search warrant has been secured, it will be an operational matter for the police to decide when and how to act on it. They could choose to do a dawn raid, for example, or they could monitor the suspect for a week and then search the property when the suspect is out. Be aware that under Section 18 of PACE, a search warrant is not necessarily required. The police may, in the course of arresting someone for an indictable offence, search the premises without a warrant provided certain criteria are met. Of course, this is predicated on the police having grounds for arrest, and in the vast majority of cases, a search warrant will be obtained.	So first things first, whether or not Stand Your Ground is in play, the burden of proof is always on the State to prove any crime did happen and any defense does not. Another thing that I think you confused in your question is it seems apparent that you think Stand Your Ground is Self Defense. This is not true. In the United States, self-defense is always a legal right for a victim of a potential crime, regardless of if your state has Stand Your Ground or Duty to Flee laws. Self-Defense typically can include justifiable homicide as you are not privy to the intent of the bad actor. Under Duty To Flee laws, you cannot claim self defense if you could reasonably get away from a criminal action safely... if given the choice between fight or flight, you must flee the scene. Stand Your Ground contradicts this and says that if you are in a public place and a criminal is trying to make you a victim, you have every right to defend yourself without any duty to remove yourself from the situation first... basically at this point, you can make either choice and not worry about losing justifiable Homicide. Making a criminal arrest of a Stand Your Ground claimant at the seen is not necessarily required. While the claim may be disputed, in the case of firearms, using an illegally owned weapon is typically ground for arrest regardless... (probably not in cases where the illegal gun was introduced to the scene by the dead criminal... and the victim picked it up in a scuffle... though this requires some measure of sorting out). Legal Fire Arms are very well documented and the fire arm in question will be confiscated as evidence. If it is found that it was not a justifiable homicide, the person in question is probably at the address tied to the gun. Now, again, Stand Your Ground only applies to steps needed for Self-Defense, it is not self-defense itself. Self-Defense authorizes only the amount of force needed to safely resolve the situation, up to and including leathal force, but it does not require you to kill the perpetrator in every instance it is invoked. For example, if merely pointing a gun at a perpetrator is enough to stop the crime, you do not get to pull the trigger. That flips it back into homicide. Similarly, if I pull my gun and the guy advances anyway, I may fire and if the guy is on the ground and out cold (thus, no longer a threat), I don't get to walk up, and put a second bullet between his eyes, execution style. This too is murder. As a bit of anecdotal evidence, when I was living in Florida, I worked for a man who just recently purchased a firearm for self-defense (in the home only) and he said that when he was filling out paperwork with the police, the cop looking over his paperwork said, "Now remember, if you have to use that, shoot to kill. It's less paperwork for us." Now, I wasn't there when to cop said it, I don't know what his tone was. I took it as the cop being a little funny, but maybe a little inappropriate. I cannot speak to how much that is indicitive of FL Police culture. It was hearsay on my part... I just thouht it was funny and... demonstrates the attitude towards self-defense. Essentially, by the time cops arrive at the scene, they HARD PART is over... they merely have to collect evidence and take witness statements. If the shooter is cooperating and his story checks out, it will look very bad if they detain a crime victim who defended himself. It's just bad PR. Ultimately, his job is to collect all evidence, not determine if the case should go to trial. As I mentioned, the gun was legally owned in the specific case, and more than likely the CCTV tape is collected, but not yet viewed. Hindsight may be 20/20 but at the time, I do not think it's fair to say that the cop knew this might not be such a clear cut case. In such cases, the cop may not make an arrest because there is not any crime that he can charge the man with and he is cooperating. And keep in mind that in the heat of the moment for the shooter, he may not even realize he did something that might break his self-defense case. Cops can detain a person claiming Stand Your Ground for just about any legitimate reason, even suspicion of homicide that the detainee will claim is self-defense.	It appears that Plummer v. State is still valid, but only in a very limited fact pattern. It is often quoted on the internet to justify the idea that a person may resist any unlawful arrest with force. That may have been true when Plummer was decided, and it was the clear holding of Bad Elk v. United States, 177 U.S. 529 (1900) But Bad Elk is bad law today -- the wide adoption of the Model Penal Code starting in 1962 removed the right to resist a merely unlawful arrest. The right to use self-defense against excessive force by an officer remains, but is narrowly limited, and courts rarely find such resistance justified. In State v. Mulvihill 57 N.J. 151 (1970) The Supreme Court of New Jersey held: If, in effectuating the arrest or the temporary detention, the officer employs excessive and unnecessary force, the citizen may respond or counter with the use of reasonable force to protect himself, and if in so doing the officer is injured no criminal offense has been committed. However, the Mulvihill court cautioned: State v. Koonce, 89 N.J. Super. 169 (App. Div. 1965) held that "a private citizen may not use force to resist arrest by one he knows or has good reason to believe is an authorized police officer engaged in the performance of his duties, whether or not the arrest is illegal under the circumstances obtaining." (89 N.J. Super. at 184.) The opinion put to rest the notion that the common law rule existing in some jurisdictions, which permits a citizen to resist, even with reasonable force, an unlawful arrest by a police officer, was applicable in New Jersey. ... Accordingly, in our State when an officer makes an arrest, legal or illegal, it is the duty of the citizen to submit and, in the event the seizure is illegal, to seek recourse in the courts for the invasion of his right of freedom. The Mulvihill court explained the difference in the two csase by saying: Despite his duty to submit quietly without physical resistance to an arrest made by an officer acting in the course of his duty, even though the arrest is illegal, his right to freedom from unreasonable seizure and confinement can be protected, restored and vindicated through legal processes. However, the rule permitting reasonable resistance to excessive force of the officer, whether the arrest is lawful or unlawful, is designed to protect a person's bodily integrity and health and so permits resort to self-defense. Simply stated, the law recognizes that liberty can be restored through legal processes but life or limb cannot be repaired in a courtroom. And so it holds that the reason for outlawing resistance to an unlawful arrest and requiring disputes over its legality to be resolved in the courts has no controlling application on the right to resist an officer's excessive force. People v. Curtis, 70 Cal. 2d 347, 74 Cal. Rptr. at 719. The Mulvihill court further warned that: [A citizen] cannot use greater force in protecting himself against the officer's unlawful force than reasonably appears to be necessary. If he employs such greater force, then he becomes the aggressor and forfeits the right to claim self-defense ... Furthermore, if he knows that if he desists from his physically defensive measures and submits to arrest the officer's unlawfully excessive force would cease, the arrestee must desist or lose his privilege of self-defense. The court said that the duty to desist and submit if that would stop the excessive force is analogous to the duty to retreat rather than use force in self defense when this is feasible. The Nolo Press page "Resisting Arrest When Police Use Excessive Force" says: It’s rare that someone being placed under arrest has the right to forcefully resist. But in most states, if the arresting officer uses excessive force that could cause “great bodily harm,” the arrestee has the right to defend him or herself. That’s because most states hold that an officer’s use of excessive force amounts to assault or battery, which a victim has a right to defend against. ... An officer’s use of force is “excessive” if it is likely to result in unjustifiable great bodily harm (serious injury). Most states consider whether a “reasonable person” under the circumstances would have believed that the officer’s use of force was likely to cause great physical harm (including death). If the answer is “yes”—if a reasonable person would have felt it necessary to resist in self-defense, and if that person used a reasonable degree of force when resisting, then the resistance is typically justified. But this is a very high standard to meet, such that courts hardly ever find that an arrestee’s forceful resistance was defensible. This article from policeone.com citing California law, says that forceful resistance to an arrest is almost never justified. It does agree that resistance to excessive force can be used; Section 693 requires that even if the officer were committing a public offense (crime), only that "self-defense" force that is sufficient to prevent the offense may be used. In other words, the subject may only use force to simply stop the assault/battery under color of authority and never any more than that. and says that: It is a rare circumstance when this assault/battery under color of authority actually occurs and an officer is charged, not because of some great law enforcement driven conspiracy but because it rarely happens. In short, Plummer is still valid, but limited to the fact pattern when the person being arrested is actually being subjected to excessive force likely to cause great bodily harm, or death, and only justifies sufficient force to prevent such harm. The lawfulness of the arrest does not matter, it the the danger caused by the excess force that justifies possible resistance. As a practical matter, if resistance is likely to escalate rather than prevent harm, it is highly unwise. When Plummer is cited, often with Bad Elk, to justify resistance to an unlawful arrest because of its unlawfulness, that is no longer valid law and has not been for decades. Note that is a person who is not a law enforcement officer (LEO) but who is pretending to be one, tries to make an "arrest" this would not be an arrest at all, but an assault or an attempted abduction, and the victim would be justified in using reasonable force in self-defense, although not excessive force. This is not the Plummer rule, but the normal law of self-defense. However any arrestee should be careful. Claiming that the arresters are impersonators when they are in fact plainclothes LEOs will not go well. If a reasonable person should have known that they were LEOs, there is no right to resist unless excessive force is used. Note further that if non-LEOs attempt to make a "citizen's arrest", not impersonating officers, the right to self-defence only applies if excessive force is used, or there is a reasonable fear of excessive force likely to cause great bodily harm or death. Basically the Plummer rule still applies. Also, all of this is a matter of state law, and while Plummer should be good law in most if not all states, the exact rule may vary by state. In 2012 a few US states retained the common-law rule that any unlawful arrest justified resistance, according to the Nolo page linked above. That may have changed, or may change when a case arises. The question does not specify a state, and a precise answer depends on the specific state.	There is no requirement to interview the victim and/or the suspect prior to filing charges. Often statements are taken from the parties involved/witnesses by police and presented to the District Attorney's office as evidence. However charges can be filed without either party being interviewed, especially by the DA. This can often be the case in things like domestic violence cases, where the victim refuses to cooperate and the perpetrator refuses to talk ("lawyer up" or invoke 5th amendment rights). Charges can be filed based on circumstantial evidence of the crime (in the example, marks on the fist of the perpetrator and injuries to the victim, along with proximity). The police will try to interview the suspect and/or victim, but usually the prosecutor does not get involved at this point until charges are filed and the defendant has retained a lawyer (or declined one).
Can a landlord enter common rooms, in a house that is leased individually room by room, without notice? I live in a large house shared with several roommates. We each have our own lease with the landlord. The landlord has been letting himself into the house frequently with no explanation. I was under the impression this was illegal, but am not sure considering the landlord only enters common areas such as hallways and the kitchen (though these are still within the confines of the house). I found the information here saying A landlord may enter: Any common areas that are shared with others like hallways, courtyards and laundry facilities – no notice is required This seems to be talking more about apartment buildings with hallways anyone can walk through. Without warning or reason, can the landlord knock on the door and be allowed in if whoever answers says it's okay?	The actual law in BC, the Residential Tenancy Act, guaranteed a tenant's rights to the rental unit and the common areas, and restricts the landlord's right to enter the rental unit. Common areas are distinct from the rental unit. A common areas is "any part of residential property the use of which is shared by tenants, or by a landlord and one or more tenants", and a rental unit is a "living accommodation rented or intended to be rented to a tenant". In this case, that would be the room. There is no restriction at all on landlord's access to common areas, and there is no requirement that landlord access to common areas be for specific purposes. Access to the rental unit, on the other hand, must be for a reasonable purpose.	do I have a case against them in small claims court? Yes. Your description altogether indicates that there is --at least-- an implicit contract between you and the roommates. That implicit contract is palpable from the roommates' subsequent conduct, which includes --but is not necessarily limited to-- their excuses and promises. Although there is no written contract between you and the roommates, evidence that you have paid utilities in full places on your roommates the burden of disproving the default (and common sense) presumption that bills would be split among all four roommates. Your landlord can testify via an affidavit what he knows about that arrangement and/or what he informs each new roommate on the issue of how utilities are paid. You might want to email your roommates a reminder [to pay you] in such a way that prompts them to reflect their excuses/promises/admissions in writing. The terms of their written response might evidence an oral agreement. In the alternative, the roommates would have the burden to prove that they paid you, or that you promised to cover their utilities for free. The former scenario is precisely why a reasonable payer typically requires --or should require-- a receipt when making payments (as opposed to the payee when receiving them). Regardless, your description suggests that your roommates would be unable to prove either scenario. Also the landlord could include in his affidavit that the roommates have defaulted on their rent payments as well. If the landlord refuses to produce an affidavit, you can always visit the court where eviction proceedings are taking place and obtain copy of the relevant records. With those records you would evidence the roommates' pattern of lack of payment. Although obtaining copies from the court makes your landlord's affidavit somewhat unnecessary, it is in the landlord's best interest to cooperate with you because (1) it would be unreasonable for him to alienate himself from the only tenant who honors his lease, and (2) he might need your cooperation as witness at some point. Even if the roommates were successful in proving that there was neither a verbal agreement nor an implicit contract but only "unfounded expectations" on your part, you could ask for a ruling in equity in case your claim of breach of contract fails. In terms of mere "expectations", it is much more reasonable for you to expect them to pay their share than for three three individuals to presume an unrelated roommate will cover their utilities for free. The latter just departs from common sense and common practices. how do I prevent this from happening again with future roommates? Strictly speaking, it is impossible to absolutely prevent that situation from occurring again. However, you may take the following precautions to reduce your exposure. Have your roommates sign an agreement that reflects each party's obligations and deadlines. Your agreement should also state that it is each roommate's responsibility to keep his/her receipts --or akin evidence-- in case a dispute for non-payment arises. This would streamline the production of evidence if the matter ends up in court. Consider whether or not asking each party for an aval or endorser is practicable. This provides some sort of "insurance" of roommates' default risk. Lastly, do not wait for a party's debt to accumulate that much before taking legal action. The longer you wait, the unlikelier you are to recover that money because the party may go broke or simply disappear. Moreover, keep in mind that if a party's debt exceeds the maximum amount handled in Small Claims Court, your litigation will become more involved because it would have to be in a court of general jurisdiction (meaning a circuit or district court).	Generally, if someone asks you to leave their property you have to leave. Just because a place is owned by the public, doesn't mean anyone can go there any time they wish. Military bases, firehouses, and jails are owned by the public, but many of these have limited access to the public. It may be open to the general public, but that does not mean restrictions cannot be put into place, either on times, or activities, or individuals. For example, public parks often have time and activity restrictions; schools have the power to restrict individuals from their premises, either specifically or by general category. As a general point of law, the owner of any property, or their agent, can order anyone without the right to stay (e.g. not a co-owner or tenant), and that person must depart, otherwise that person is tresspassing. The Social Service Administrator is almost certainly an agent of the controlling entity that owns the property. Thus their demand that you leave the premises is enforceable, unless you have a non-revokable right to be in that space. As user Justaguy points out there are some exceptions. Most notably, police can some times enter a property uninvited or against the owner's wishes (such as under emergency circumstances or with a warrant).	Your lawyer will advise you whether to worry, but it is not a crime to not pay the rent. The action that the landlord can take is (a) evicting you and (b) suing you for the unpaid rent. Whether a written lease is necessary depends on which province / territory you are in, since that is the level at which landlord-tenant law is determined. As far as I know, no province allows a person to avoid their rent obligation on the grounds that there was no signed lease. It doesn't matter if you have been living elsewhere most of the time or all of the time.	First, a landlord cannot just expel a tenant, this involved getting a court order where the judge tells the tenant to leave. Second, she might think that "You're not a tenant, you're just living here" but that is pretty much what it means to be a tenant – she agreed to let the relative live there. There does not have to be a detailed lease written up, though the term of such unwritten agreements is usually month-to-month (this is all about the laws of the particular state, but no state authorizes instant expulsion). You would need to look at the laws of your state for the "abuse" question. Using Washington as an example, and trying to make the best case possible that bailing out is against the law, the potential legal concern is "abandonment", which is defined as an action or inaction by a person or entity with a duty of care for a vulnerable adult that leaves the vulnerable person without the means or ability to obtain necessary food, clothing, shelter, or health care. the failure of a vulnerable adult, not living in a facility, to provide for himself or herself the goods and services necessary for the vulnerable adult's physical or mental health, and the absence of which impairs or threatens the vulnerable adult's well-being. This definition may include a vulnerable adult who is receiving services through home health, hospice, or a home care agency, or an individual provider when the neglect is not a result of inaction by that agency or individual provider. RCW 74.34.200 creates a legal cause of action for abandonment, abuse, financial exploitation, or neglect of a vulnerable adult. Then one might sue for abandonment if one is living at home and receives care from a home health, hospice, or home care agency, or an individual provider But, "individual provider" is a defined legal term: a person under contract with the department to provide services in the home under chapter 74.09 or 74.39A RCW If the tenant is under contract with the state to provide services, then abandoning the vulnerable adult could get you sued. The courts do not declare that a duty of care exists because of a genetic relationship. A duty of care might be found from a contractual relation (one not involving a state social services agency), for example "You can live here if you take care of me". So there is a legal concern over abandonment, which the person should talk out with an attorney (which is possible since instant-eviction is not an option). Said attorney might also discuss the concept of guardianship.	As a general rule, legal language is interpreted loosely with respect to singular versus plural, or male versus female (in interpreting pronouns). A clause that uses the word "tenant" can thus be construed as referring to multiple tenants, and "tenants" can also refer to a single tenant. Likewise, "he, him" refers to a third person, regardless of gender. If the intent of an agreement is that only a single person shall reside in a place, then the wording of the contract would have to say that, and you can't derive that from using "tenant" rather than "tenant or tenants". I don't think the issue comes down to "treating y'all as one person", it comes down to whether the obligation is joint, a series of several obligations, or a joint and several obligation. You would look for expressions like "We and each of us agree...", vs. "Each of us agree...", or "We agree..." to sort that out: I assume that the language just says "Tenant agrees...", that is, there is nothing at all in the wording of the lease that resolves the matter. Tenant (whoever that is) has an obligation to Landlord to pay rent. It doesn't matter if Tenant is 1 person or 10: you have to pay the rent. If 5 out of 10 of those people mysteriously disappear, the other 5 still have to pay a now-doubled rent per person. Each person is fully responsible for all of the lease obligations, and if you are the only reliable person in a lease with 10 parties, you could get stuck with the entire obligation. If Tenant needs to go away for some reason, Tenant can normally negotiate with another person to assume their obligations, so Tenant would come up with an arrangement with a new person, and the new person would have an obligation to (old) Tenant – this is basically a private arrangement that doesn't involve the Landlord. However: it is pretty standard that landlords get a say in letting in new tenants, and you have a clause in your agreement that says that. There are two ways for the old tenant to "go away". One is to completely terminate the old agreement, and the landlord signs a new lease with the new person: the old tenant is completely free of any subsequent obligations, and if the new tenant fails to pay rent, the landlord has to go after the new tenant. The other way is by assigning his obligation (as described above): the agreement is between the old tenant and the new tenant (with the landlord's consent). The question now is, what is the meaning of the clause "the assignee shall sign a separate written agreement with Landlord and Tenant"? (Earlier, I missed the significance of "Landlord and Tenant"). The core question is whether the new arrangement is a novation, or is it an assignment? A novation requires agreement between all parties, and that is what seems to be implied here. California landlord law then tells you that this "makes the new tenant (rather than the original tenant) solely responsible to the landlord". In contrast, "Like a sublease, an assignment is a contract between the original tenant and the new tenant (not the landlord)". Since this involves the landlord, the conclusion is inescapable that this is not actually an assignment (despite the use of the word "assignee"). All of the parties to the agreement would have to agree to these new terms, if in fact there is an agreement that substitutes D for C in this agreement with the landlord (a notation). If C remains on the hook and this is just a personal arrangement between C and D (with Landlords consent) – which is not what the clause says – then you don't get a vote in the C-D arrangement.	If I don't attend the hearing, can I get evicted? Yes. Never ignore a court hearing date. The Tribunal could otherwise impose an outcome without hearing your side of the story. If you ultimately paid the rent and the late fees, and the Tribunal didn't know that, you could be unjustly evicted if you don't present your side of the story. It could simply be a case, for example, where the landlord confused your non-payment with someone else's. But after the Tribunal rules, fixing that mistake is much more difficult than fixing it at a hearing. It could be that making two late payments that are cured later is still grounds for eviction under the lease, although I very much doubt it. In that case, it still pays to show up to make sure that the Tribunal has all of the facts favorable to you before it makes its decision.	You could first look for a force majeure clause in the lease which says something about natural disasters and the like. If there is a clause which says e.g. "Landlord will not be held responsible for problems arising from ice storms", that doesn't help you, but maybe it specifies e.g. rent reduction of $2/day for lack of electricity. That doesn't mean he can ignore the law. However, in this situation, a particular reading of the law ("there must be an infallible supply of electricity") imposes an impossible requirement on the landlord, and the courts probably won't require a landlord to do the impossible. It is not clear that your situation violates either the letter or the spirit of the law. Take clause (d): your "heating facilities" presumably conformed to applicable law at the time of installation and have since been maintained, and they are adequate, but they don't work if the grid doesn't supply power (and that is not a matter under the landlord's control). In other words, he provided the "infrastructure", and the problem is on the power company's end. Likewise "electrical lighting with wiring and electrical equipment" -- an ordinary interpretation of that clause is "wires and fixtures", and doesn't include "flow of electrons", which is supplied by your local power company.
Working 60% hours, via UK furlough scheme. How does this apply to weeks with a bank holiday? I'm on partial furlough, working 60% hours, with the gov. furlough scheme paying the fourth day. Next week has a bank holiday Monday. Should I still work 3 days that week, with Monday and Friday as the days off? Or should I work only 2 days that week, ensuring that Monday and 2 other days are off? I'm unsure how the bank holiday affects this.	Here's what the gov't has to say: Furloughed workers Where a bank holiday falls inside a worker’s period of furlough and the worker would have usually worked the bank holiday, their furlough will be unaffected by the bank holiday. However, if the worker would usually have had the bank holiday as annual leave, there are 2 options. The bank holiday is taken as annual leave If the employer and the worker agree that the bank holiday can be taken as annual leave while on furlough, the employer must pay the correct holiday pay for the worker. Employers may also require workers to take the bank holiday as annual leave with the correct notice periods. The bank holiday is deferred If the employer and the worker agree that the bank holiday will not be taken as annual leave at that time, the worker must still receive the day of annual leave that they would have received. This holiday can be deferred till a later date, but the worker should still receive their full holiday entitlement. So if you would normally have the Bank Holiday off (and as part of your annual leave entitlement) and you and the employer don't agree to defer it then it's annual leave, not Furlough, as to what that means for pay purposes: Furloughed workers An employer should not automatically pay a worker on holiday the rate of pay that they are receiving while on furlough, unless the employer has agreed to not reduce the worker’s pay while on furlough. If a worker on furlough takes annual leave, an employer must calculate and pay the correct holiday pay in accordance with current legislation - see the standard guidance. Where this calculated rate is above the pay the worker receives while on furlough, the employer must pay the difference. However, as taking holiday does not break the furlough period, the employer can continue to claim the 80% grant from the government to cover most of the cost of holiday pay. But what does this mean with regards to your number of days? Employees can take holiday whilst on furlough. If an employee is flexibly furloughed then any hours taken as holiday during the claim period should be counted as furloughed hours rather than working hours. Well it means that if you're off on the Bank Holiday (as annual leave) even though they have to pay you the full amount it is still counted as a furlough day and you'll still be working three days that week, with the Monday being a furlough day. If you and the employer agreed to defer the Bank Holiday then you could conceivably work the Monday + two other days. But there's no permutation where you only work two days without taking an additional leave day.	First review the existing contract for anything that specifies what happens at the end of the term. I have seen ones that switch to month to month, others automatically extend by a whole year. In the United states the rental law is done at the state level or even more local than that. So I took a look at the UK policies. I focused on England. Guidance How to rent: the checklist for renting in England Updated 24 March 2023 At the end of the fixed period If you want to stay If you want to extend your tenancy after any initial fixed period, there are a number of important issues to consider. Check Shelter’s website for advice. Do you want to sign up to a new fixed term? If not, you will be on a ‘rolling periodic tenancy’. This means you carry on as before but with no fixed term. Your tenancy agreement should say how much notice you must give the landlord if you want to leave the property – one month’s notice is typical. Shelter publishes advice on how you can end your tenancy. I then went to the shelter website How to end a periodic tenancy: How much notice You can give your landlord a legal notice called a 'notice to quit' to end a rolling tenancy. This is a more formal option. Your tenancy will end legally if you follow the rules on how much notice and where to send it. A legal notice must: be in writing give the right amount of notice end on the correct day Here is an example of a notice to quit. A legal notice ends your tenancy and your right to live in your home. Joint tenancies will end for all tenants even if only one of you gives notice. You cannot withdraw a valid notice if you change your mind. Your landlord may agree to let you or other joint tenants stay on after a notice ends. Minimum notice periods You need to give at least: 1 month if your rent is due monthly 4 weeks if your rent is due weekly You can usually give the minimum notice to end your tenancy if your most recent agreement does not mention a longer notice period or if you've never had a written agreement. You may still need to give more than the minimum notice to make sure it ends on the right day. If your agreement says you must give more notice Your agreement might have a 'notice clause'. For example, if it says you have to give 2 months' notice. A notice clause might not apply after your fixed term has ended but sometimes it will. When will the longer notice apply? The longer notice period will only apply if either: you never had a fixed term agreement your agreement says it continues as a contractual periodic tenancy after the fixed term You can ignore a notice clause in your most recent agreement if both: your fixed term has ended your agreement does not say that it continues as a contractual periodic tenancy It looks like the notice period is a month, unless the contract says that the notice period is longer during the periodic tenancy.	Yes, the employee can choose not to accept the contract offered at the end of the probationary period and thereby allow the probationary period to end without accepting a long-term position. This is usually called "quitting".	The Immigration Act 2016 introduced the so-called 'right to rent' provisions under which a landlord can be prosecuted for renting accommodation to someone who is not legally in the UK. Everyone in the UK, Brits included, is subject to the Act. This gives the landlord the right to examine your work permit and to see if your visa is valid. The landlord will make a copy of the information. This makes the landlord a data controller which imposes restrictions on how the information can be used. Because this became controversial, the Information Commissioner published a brochure on the things a landlord can do with your data. All things considered and based upon what you wrote, if the landlord did not get your permission to use the data, then it's likely he is in breach. But this does not mean it's actionable or that it would be advisable to make a formal complaint to the Commissioner. If you want to pursue it, you can use the Commissioner's "Report a Concern" page as a starting point. Alternatively, you can lodge a formal complaint with your landlord and he will have to respond to it. What does the law say? The act giving the landlord the right to access your data is in the 2016 act linked above. Everything else is in the Data Protection Act 1998. The ILPA Information Sheet is at "Right to Rent". "The information sheet was updated on 01 November 2016 to take account of the second commencement order issued by the government, on 31 October 2016, bringing further provisions into force." The information sheet is recommended reading for anyone in the UK on a work permit. Disclaimer: I'm a member.	I've litigated cases like these before. The IRS enforcement reaction is swift and severe. Penalties for the employer are heavy and rarely waived. It would be rare for a business like this to stay operational long enough to issue a W-2. A business like this would probably be shut down by the IRS and have the people responsible for the payroll function, at a minimum, promptly burdened with tax liens, within four to six months. These cases also constitute a significant share of all criminal tax prosecutions. The odds of someone doing this spending several years in federal prison is high. Generally speaking, if the wrongdoing is fully on the part of the employer without the collusion or knowledge of the employee, the IRS will not force the employee to double pay the taxes that should have been withheld by the employer in this situation. Instead, this IRS will try to recover the amounts that were withheld from the employees but not delivered to the IRS. It will seek to recover these amounts from the employer and also from other responsible persons in the organization (and from outsourced professionals) with the authority to pay the IRS who did not do so. There may be circumstances, if push comes to shove, where the IRS could collect from the employees in a case like this one (I've never had occasion to need to research that issue), but that would be the rare exception and not the rule, in practice. On the other hand, if the employer simply does not withhold taxes or prepare W-2s at all, and either 1099s people who should have been classified as employees (or files no information tax returns at all), the IRS will generally insist that the employee pay income taxes on the full amount owed and that they pay the employee part of payroll taxes. It will also pursue the employer for the employer's share of payroll taxes. The employer will also be jointly and severally liable for any taxes that should have been reported and subjected to withholding that are not paid by the employee (perhaps because the employee spent all the money). Sometimes cases like this are also criminally prosecuted, but it is less common to do so.	In the U.S. severance payments are not provided for statutorily, and are rarely made when an employee quits or is fired for cause. However, even when not provided for within contracts it is common to see voluntary severances paid during lay-offs. Furthermore, in the U.S. it is more likely that they would be "laid off" in order to qualify for unemployment insurance. In Pennsylvania one can make claims on the state-run unemployment insurance system only if one is able to work and does not refuse suitable work when offered. If one quits one is not eligible for these payments. Ultimately unemployment claims are born by the employer (since their legally-mandated unemployment insurance premiums are adjusted based on realized claims). So managers with the authority to layoff employees can impose real costs on their companies, both in terms of direct severance payments (which may be optional), and in terms of the inflated unemployment premiums that will hit the company down the road. However, I have never heard of a company attempting to recoup such costs from managers, since such decisions are specifically delegated to managers with hiring/firing authority. It seems much more likely that a manager deemed to have abused the company's purse would be demoted or fired rather than being sued, unless there were some gross fraud involved (e.g., kickbacks).	Let’s say I go to a cash machine, ask for £100, and the machine gives me £10,000. I use my banking app and see that £100 left my account, not £10,000. At this point I haven’t done anything illegal. If I asked for another £100 and got £10,000 again, that might be illegal. But the extra £9,900 are not mine. They are the bank’s money. If I try to keep it, that is simply theft.	Clearly in this case the writing does not reflect your actual agreement. If you were to bill for 1.5x your normal rate for hours over 40/week, relying on the writing, and it came to court, you might win, based on the general rule that matters explicitly covered in the written agreement are treated as final, and evidence of contradictory oral agreements are often not accepted to contradict the contract document. This is known as the parole evidence rule. But you don't plan to issue such a bill, so that won't come up. I don't see that you are at any legal risk. But you could send the client a letter saying that you signed the contract document so as not to hold the job up, but you think there is a mistake in it (pointing out exactly where and what the error is). This would help establish your ethics and good faith, so that if somehow there was a problem over this later (although that seems unlikely) you can't be accused of any improper actions. Keep a copy of any such letter. By the way, if you are an independent contractor, the governmental standard for overtime does not normally apply (in the US). If you are an employee of a consulting company, it may or may not, depending on your salary level and the kind of work you do. An independent contractor can contract for a higher rate for overtime hours, if the client is willing to agree. Many clients will not be willing.
Does charging a defendant with more than can be proven confer some advantages to a prosecutor in the US? Sometimes in criminal cases with a lot of media attention it seems like the charges brought against the defendant are much more ambitious than the public evidence and circumstance would support. Of course it is always possible that there is non-public evidence that would merit more serious charges, but it seems too common for that to be the reason all of the time. Is it advantageous for the prosecutor to charge more than they know they can prove in criminal cases? If it is, what benefits (other than political “tough on crime” stuff) does it offer? I assume it offers more leverage and room to negotiate in plea deal bargaining and when the overcharging is "horizontal" it also allows more opportunities to win the case. Are there benefits beyond that based on how the legal system works? Are there any mechanisms that discourage overcharging a defendant in a case where media attention might be incentivizing more sensational charges? I did search a bit, but most of the things I found were defense attorneys discussing the abusiveness of overcharging. I was hoping to find out if there was more nuance to it. I have a feeling that "overcharging" is a loaded term, but I don't know a word for "charging a little bit more than you can prove for good reason".	Overcharging does confer an advantage on the prosecution, specifically, it enhances the prosecutor's position in plea bargaining, allowing the prosecutor to "compromise" while still getting the actual conviction sought. There is also a more tangible issue. If a prosecutor brings a charge that carries the death penalty as a potential sentence, the jury that will be selected in the case is "death qualified". This means that people who are morally opposed to the death penalty are excluded from serving as jurors in the case. But since people opposed to the death penalty are also more likely to acquit a criminal defendant than someone not opposed to the death penalty, a death qualified jury is more likely to convict on each and every one of the charges before it, even if everyone on the jury promptly agrees in deliberations that the prosecutor has not established the death penalty carrying charges beyond a reasonable doubt. Thus, bringing a weak death penalty charge both enhances the odds that there will be a conviction of something at trial, and enhances the plea bargaining position of the prosecutor both due to that greater change of prevailing on the merits at trial, and because the "worst case scenario" still drives the plea bargaining process to a significant extent. Furthermore, jury trials are inherently uncertain ordeals. My working estimate that I share with my clients is that even if the law and the facts seem to perfectly favor one outcome or another, that there is at least a 10% chance that the jury will get the wrong result. And with an additional charge carries the death penalty, or a long term in prison, as a possible sentence, a 10% risk of that happening is enough to strongly encourage a criminal defendant to plea guilty in a case where the defendant might otherwise "roll the dice" at trial if the more serious charge wasn't on the table. There is also a more subtle issue, which isn't precisely "overcharging" but is related. At trial, the prosecution is only allowed to introduce evidence which is "relevant" to the charges presented to a jury. So, for example, suppose that the primary charge at a trial is aggravated assault. In a pure aggravated assault case, the prosecution would probably not be allowed to introduce the fact that the defendant was suspected of being a drug dealer or participant in organized crime. But if a charge of drug dealing the minimum quantity of a drug for a charge of that type that was found in the vicinity of the defendant were brought, even if showing the defendant actually owned those drugs is difficult or impossible to prove beyond a reasonable doubt, the drug dealing charge would open up the ability of the prosecution to present all sorts of evidence showing that the defendant was affiliated with a drug dealing cartel. And while this evidence wouldn't be legally relevant to the more serious aggravated assault charge brought, this character attack and legally irrelevant context might sway the jury. Also, even if the jury would have convicted anyway, the presence of additional relevant issues in the case would make it easier for the prosecution to prevail on appeal in the face of a defense argument that the judge improperly allowed the jury to consider irrelevant and prejudicial evidence. As something of an aside, fighting alleged overcharging by the prosecution is one of the core responsibilities of a criminal defense attorney. It is quite rare that someone going to trial on criminal charges is not guilty of some crime (and when this is the case, the criminal defense attorneys' job is the hardest). But it is far more common for there to be a case where a criminal defendant is undeniably guilty of some crime (e.g. larceny), but where some other more serious charge (e.g. robbery or burglary) is marginal at best. Making sure that a criminal defendant is only punished for the crimes that he or she clearly did commit, and not for more serious overcharged crimes, is frequently a major issue for a criminal defense attorney defending someone who is clearly guilty of some crime.	Generally an affirmative defense raises some ground other than an element of the offense or civil claim, such as justification (e.g. self-defense), privilege (I'm a soldier acting under lawful orders so I'm immune from liability), the invalidity of a law, statute of limitations, insanity, a pardon, bankruptcy, a settlement agreement, or payment of the amount owed in full. In a civil case, an affirmative defense has to be raised in the answer to the complaint failed by the plaintiff or a timely amendment to that answer. The prosecution/plaintiff has to overcome an affirmative defense only if the defendant raises it, and in a civil case, at least, the burden of proof for an affirmative defense is on the defendant. The requirement that a defendant raise the defense going to something beyond the elements of the crime or civil claim is what makes it an "affirmative" defense. Affirmative defenses are conclusively presumed to be unavailable to the defendant if not raised. Usually, it is possible to prevail in a civil or criminal case by establishing a complete affirmative defense, even if the defendant admits all of the elements of the crime or civil claim against the defendant have been proven. Also, many affirmative defenses (e.g. failure to mitigate damages, or heat of passion) are incomplete affirmative defenses that reduce the consequences that a defendant will face if the prosecution/plaintiff establishes a prima facie case (i.e. proves all the elements of the crime or civil claim), but will not completely eliminate all consequences of the prosecution/plaintiffs' proof of all elements of the crime or civil claim for the defendant. But the prosecution/plaintiff must always prove each and every element of a crime or civil claim (beyond a reasonable doubt in criminal cases, and by preponderance of the evidence or by clear and convincing evidence in most non-criminal claims) even if the defendant fails to present any evidence or make any arguments related to the element of the crime or civil claim to prevail on the merits. Something that undermines an element of the crime or civil claim is a mere regular defense, because it doesn't have to be raised affirmatively, although in civil cases, facts that are alleged in a plaintiff's complaint are deemed admitted if they are not affirmatively denied, making the distinction between affirmative defenses and ordinary defenses in civil cases rather subtle. Of course, the term "defense" can be used to encompass both affirmative defenses, and other defenses which are not affirmative defenses (such as defenses that disprove an element of the crime or civil claim). Just to complicate matters further, there are a small number of ordinary defenses that still have to be raised affirmatively in advance in a criminal case despite the fact that it disproves an element of the crime, rather than advancing some other matter. The main example of this is an alibi defense (i.e. I wasn't at the scene of the crime when it happened).	The Supreme Court has said that "when a prosecutor seeks to rely upon consent to justify the lawfulness of a search, he has the burden of proving that the consent was, in fact, freely and voluntarily given".1 This needs to be "clear and convincing" proof.2 The "clear and convincing" standard is higher than simply "more likely than not" or "preponderance of the evidence".3 It has been equated with "highly probable".4 In your hypothetical, the prosecution failed to prove that it was more likely than not that consent was freely and voluntarily given. They are far from meeting the "clear and convincing" standard that is required. The evidence resulting from the search would be excluded. I also recommend gracey209's answer, which explains why this hypothetical is not realistic, and describes many other factors that go into the determination of whether a search is reasonable -- the touchstone of the Fourth Amendment is reasonableness, not consent. 1. Bumper v. North Carolina 391 U.S. 543 (1968) 2. State v. Danby, 11 Ohio App. 3d 38 (1983): "Accordingly, a warrantless search based upon the consent of the defendant is valid if his consent is voluntarily given. [...] Furthermore, the degree of proof constitutionally required is proof by "clear and positive" evidence. [...] In construing the phrase "clear and positive" in terms of evidentiary proof, we observe that several courts have held that it is quantitatively equivalent to proof by clear and convincing evidence." 3. Calderon v. Thompson 523 U.S. 538 (1998) 4. Colorado v. New Mexico 467 U.S. 310 (1984): "Last Term, the Court made clear that Colorado's proof would be judged by a clear and convincing evidence standard. [... W]e thought a diversion of interstate water should be allowed only if Colorado could place in the ultimate factfinder an abiding conviction that the truth of its factual contentions are highly probable."	As a comment by @DavidSchwartz notes, this is not wrong. Questions of law but not fact are allowed. It is worth noting that the line drawn is arbitrary. In Colorado, where I practice, jurors issue written questions (pre-reviewed by the judge and counsel for all parties before being presented) to witnesses at the close of the testimony of each witness called by a party to testify. This is very helpful to counsel, as it provides indirect evidence of whether the jury understands what they are being told, and often juries will directly ask questions that for tactical reasons, both parties have refrained from asking that go to the heart of the matter. It also frequently clarifies misunderstandings that trained legal professionals assumed were not made about terminology. This is more problematic in criminal trials, where jury questions could provide evidence pushing a case over the threshold of proof needed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the prosecution failed to provide, than in civil cases with a preponderance of the evidence standard. Also, as a matter of reality, when jurors ask questions, counsel often loathe to object even when they have valid grounds to do so, for fear of offending the decision-maker, unless it is really critical to keep certain information away from the jury.	Several scholars have addressed this issue. Here's a quick bibliography. It appears that the most relevant "experiments" are the imposition of loser pays in medical malpractice suits in Florida for the first half of the 1980s, and Alaska's loser pays system. The Gryphon article below includes and discusses a decent amount of empirical data; the Di Pietro et al report is very extensive and has a lot of data. The Florida experiment resulted in a significant increase in suits dropped without settlement or trial, a significant decrease in the number of trials, and, apparently, one spectacular fee award in favor of a plaintiff, which impelled the Florida medical establishment to torpedo the law. Susanne Di Pietro et al, Alaska's English Rule: Attorney's Fee Shifting in Civil Cases (1995), http://www.ajc.state.ak.us/reports/atyfee.pdf. Marie Gryphon, Assessing the Effects of a "Loser Pays" Rule on the American Legal System: An Economic Analysis and Proposal for Reform, 8 Rutgers J. L. & Pub. Pol'y 567 (2011). Douglas C. Rennie, Rule 82 & Tort Reform: An Empirical Study of the Impact of Alaska's English Rule on Federal Civil Case Filings, 29 Alaska L. Rev. 1 (2012). David A. Root, Attorney Fee-Shifting in America: Comparing, Contrasting, and Combining the "American Rule" and "English Rule", 15 Ind. Int'l & Comp. L. Rev. 583 (2005) (student article) (not available online). James R. Maxeiner, Cost and Fee Allocation in Civil Procedure, 58 Am. J. Comp. L. 195 (2010) (not available online).	The most innocent of your scenarios is "against the rules", so less innocent acts fair worse. The idea behind researching legal theory and precedent (presumably not presidents) is that surely it is good for a juror to know what the law is. But that thinking is wrong. The judge will instruct you as to what the law is, and will also instruct you that "the law" is limited to what he says it is. I will draw on the instructions for an antitrust case, Best Buy v. Toshiba, HannStar. The core instruction is: It is your duty to find the facts from all the evidence in the case. To those facts you will apply the law as I give it to you. The preliminary instructions (the pattern instructions for California civil trials) say the same basic thing: At the end of the trial, I will explain the law that you must follow to reach your verdict. You must follow the law as I explain it to you, even if you do not agree with the law. The judge instructs the jury that: When a party has the burden of proof on any claim or affirmative defense by a preponderance of the evidence, it means you must be persuaded by the evidence that the claim or affirmative defense is more probably true than not true. Your research might find alternative statements of the law out there, which seem entirely plausible. That doesn't matter: you have to set aside whatever ideas (about the law) that you've gotten from anybody besides the judge. In fact, if the judge makes a (serious) mistake and rules against a party in a manner that is contrary to established law, and you know this (it doesn't matter how), you are supposed to apply the law (including rulings during trial as to admissibility) as given to you by the judge. As for a case of a juror knowing that the judge was mistaken (specifically, knowing based on his pre-existing knowledge of statutes and case law – not based on forbidden research during a trial), we can get the "should" from the absolute instruction to follow the judges instructions. Additionally, if you read transcripts of voir dire (not a trivial task), you can observe judges probing attorneys who happen to be in the prospective pool, asking questions to determine whether that person can just do as they are told. But it would be difficult to establish a "hard rule". There never will be an instruction that says "You must follow my orders even if you know for a fact that my orders are wrong" – jury instructions never admit the possibility of judicial error.	Q: Why don't US prosecutors press for imprisonment for crime in the banking industry? Q. Why aren't US prosecutors (and UK prosecutors for that matter) not pressing for imprisonment in such cases? Is this because there are no such laws under bankers can be so indicted (notably, in the case reported on above, there is the additional complication of extradition) . . . ? Prosecutors have the legal authority to prosecute bankers for crimes, and not infrequently do press charge bankers with crimes and press for imprisonment for crimes in the banking industry, and have obtained many very long prison sentences in cases like these. For example, "following the savings-and-loan crisis of the 1980s, more than 1,000 bankers of all stripes were jailed for their transgressions." And, in 2008, the laws involved were, if anything, easier to prosecute and had stricter penalties than they did in the 1980s. There were 35 bankers convicted and sent to prison in the financial crisis, although arguably only one of them was really a senior official. This said, the real question is not why they don't do this at all, but why prosecutors exercise their discretion to refrain from seeking imprisonment or lengthy imprisonment, in cases where they either have a conviction or could easily secure a conviction. A former justice department prosecutor (in the Enron case) argues in an Atlantic article that it is harder than it looks. But, he ignores the fact that a lot of people looking at the very Enron case he prosecuted after the fact has concluded that the criminal prosecution may have done more harm than good, leading to significant harm to innocent people (for example by destroying the careers and wealth of Arthur Anderson accountants who had no involvement with the case, due to a conviction that was ultimately overturned on appeal). This changed the pro-prosecution of corporations attitude that had prevailed before then (corporations are easier to prosecute than individuals since you don't have to figure out exactly who in the corporation committed the wrong). This time, regulators and securities law enforcers sought mostly civil fines against entities with some success: 49 financial institutions have paid various government entities and private plaintiffs nearly $190 billion in fines and settlements, according to an analysis by the investment bank Keefe, Bruyette & Woods. That may seem like a big number, but the money has come from shareholders, not individual bankers. (Settlements were levied on corporations, not specific employees, and paid out as corporate expenses—in some cases, tax-deductible ones.) The same link also points out the two very early criminal prosecutions against individuals resulted in acquittals by juries at trial, for reasons that may have been very specific to those trials, undermining the willingness of prosecutors to press even strong cases for almost three years and undermining the credibility of their threat to prosecute criminally. Also, this is not a universal rule. For example, China routinely executes people who are convicted in summary trials of banking law violations and corruption charges. Q. Is this due to the principle of limited liability? No. Banking officials in a limited liability entity (and all banks are limited liability entities) can have criminal liability for acts in violation of banking and fraud laws, notwithstanding limited liability. Is this because . . . powerful vested interests prevents the actual execution of the law as it is intended? If so - how exactly are they prevented? This does happen but not often. Sometimes this happens, but not very often. The corruption angle is a popular narrative on the political very progressive left of American politics, but as I explain below (as you note "Chomsky, the formation of Western capitalism was in large part by due to "radical judicial activism".", and Chomsky is a very left wing social and economic historian almost to the point of Marxist analysis), this visceral narrative isn't really accurate most of the time. First, for what it is worth, the prosecutors play a much larger role in this than "activist" judges do. Secondly, the decision making process is more nuanced and less blatantly corrupt and self-interested than his attempt at "legal realist" analysis would suggest. There are legitimate reasons for someone in a prosecutor's shoes to focus less on these cases, even if in the end analysis you think that they have made the wrong choices in these cases. The case for prosecuting banking fraud severely is basically a utilitarian one, but criminal prosecution is guided by norms beyond utilitarian norms. There are certainly cases where an elected prosecutor or high level elected official is persuaded not to bring criminal charges or to be lenient due to pressure from powerful vested interest. When this is done, a white collar criminal defense attorney, or a "fixer" who deals with political sensitive cases (sometimes on an elected official's staff and sometimes not), or an elected official or political party official contacts the prosecutor or the prosecutor's boss or is the prosecutor's boss, and based upon the plea from the powerful interests (direct or indirect) urges the prosecutor to back off and the prosecutor complies. At the most extreme level, a Governor or President or parole board can pardon someone facing prison for banking crimes, which has happened, but is extremely rare. But, this sort of direct intervention in an individual case is not terribly common. My guess would be that 1% to 10% of banking prosecutions are affected by this kind of influence particular to a given case. This is far too small a number of cases to reflect the reluctance of prosecutors to bring criminal bank fraud cases that we observe. More Often Policy Decisions Are Involved Budgets And Institutional Case Prioritization Much more common would be for the elected prosecutor or the administration that employs an appointed prosecutor to decide to deprioritize a particular kind of case and/or to reduce funding (both at the law enforcement/regulatory agency level and at the subdepartment of the prosecuting attorney's organization level) for prosecution of these kinds of cases as a matter of broad policy. Every prosecutor's office and law enforcement office on the planet has more crimes that it could prosecute and pursue than it has resources to do so, so it is always necessary to have some kind of priorities to decide which of those cases will be pursued. For example, perhaps the Justice Department funds a white collar crime enforcement office with the resources to prosecute only 750 cases a year, and there are 7,500 strong cases that the offices could prosecute. The white collar crime prosecution office has to then prioritize which of the 7,500 strong cases is chooses to pursue. It might, for example, in good faith, decide the focus on white collar crime cases that harm "widows and orphans" and other large groups of people who can't afford to hire their own lawyers to bring civil cases to sue the wrongdoers themselves to mitigate the harm that they suffer. More specifically, a policy set in place by Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder in the Justice Department in 1999 was followed: The so-called Holder Doctrine, a June 1999 memorandum written by the then–deputy attorney general warning of the dangers of prosecuting big banks—a variant of the “too big to fail” argument that has since become so familiar. Holder’s memo asserted that “collateral consequences” from prosecutions—including corporate instability or collapse—should be taken into account when deciding whether to prosecute a big financial institution. That sentiment was echoed as late as 2012 by Lanny Breuer, then the head of the Justice Department’s criminal division, who said in a speech at the New York City Bar Association that he felt it was his duty to consider the health of the company, the industry, and the markets in deciding whether or not to file charges. This was a top level policy choice made a decade before the Financial Crisis arose, not an individualized act of corrupt interference. Advocacy From Representatives Of Victims Another common voice for leniency are lawyers on behalf of victims of white collar crimes (I've been in this spot myself on behalf of clients). Why? Mostly for two reasons: People in prison don't make future income to compensate the victims out of. People prosecuted criminally pay fines and court costs that don't go to the victims and reduce the pool of available funds for the victims. The private lawyers representing victims recognize that not prosecuting a white collar criminal leaves that person at large to commit future economic crimes (white collar criminals are rarely a physical threat to the people in the community around them or to anyone who doesn't do business with them) and that it fails to strongly discourage others from doing the same thing in the future. Institutional victims of banking crimes and other white collar crimes may also urge prosecutors not to prosecute the crimes that victimized them, because they fear that the publicity would harm them more than the criminal penalties for the offender (whom they have ample means to sue in a civil action) would benefit them. The fact that victims seek leniency more often in white collar crime cases than in almost any kind of case (other than domestic violence cases, where victims also often urge leniency out of love and as a result of their economic dependency on the perpetrator), often causes prosecutors to determine that criminal prosecutions seeking long prison sentences are not a priority for the victims of these crimes and to prioritize their case loads accordingly. To get the $190 billion of settlement money that was paid from individuals would have required convictions of 1900 people capable of paying $100,000,000 each in 1900 very hard fought individual criminal cases, instead of 49 civil cases. This may or may not have been possible, as the most culpable figures were often in upper management, while the most affluent potential defendants were in top management and would have been harder to pin with personal criminal liability. Many top managers are relatively hands off in their management style and didn't get into the culpable criminal details. There are plenty of very influential and powerful bankers who were highly culpable who would have had less than $10,000,000 of net worth, much of which wasn't tainted with improper conduct, which isn't to say that prosecutors couldn't have seized it from them for fines and restitution, but it does make the moral case for doing so less clearly compelling. Evaluating Priorities For Limited And Expensive Prison Resources Prosecutors sometimes reason in white collar crime cases that keeping a white collar criminal in prison is very expensive to the state (up to $70,000 per person per year), and doesn't change the risk of physical harm to the general public, and that a felony conviction itself and fines and publicity and probation conditions are often sufficient to mitigate the risk that the convicted person will reoffend and to discourage others from doing the same thing in the future. Parole boards, in systems that have them, often release white collar criminals as early as possible, applying the same reasoning. Also, white collar criminals tend to be model prisoners. An incarcerated white collar defendant is also depriving the public of tax revenues on income that person would otherwise receive if out of prison. A long prison sentence can victimize the public economically in amounts comparable to a moderate magnitude economic crime. Crudely speaking, prosecutors reason: "Why spend huge amounts of scarce prison money to lock someone up when we have murders and rapists and people who steal things at gun point and violent criminals who seriously injure people without justification who really need to be our priority to get off the streets? The devious and dishonest banker doesn't present the same sort of risk to the general public and his conviction and probation conditions should suffice to prevent him from having the ability to do this in the future." Social Class Bias Yet another reason is that often prosecutors and the people who set policy for prosecutors don't see white collar crimes as culpable in the same way that they do blue collar crimes. Most prosecutors spend the vast majority of their careers prosecuting blue collar criminals, terrorists and the like. These are people from a different social class, who live lives very unlike their own, and the people who are victimized by these crimes tend to be middle class or more affluent people and businesses. Banks, for example, are routinely victims of armed robberies which prosecutors prosecute, and of embezzlement by low level employees, which prosecutors prosecute. Bankers socio-economically and culturally are a lot like the prosecutors themselves (who are lawyers), their peers, and the victims they usually defend, and are rarely like the people that they usually prosecute (lower class, often minority people, who have never worked in an office, failed in school, are quick to anger and hurt others, etc.). At an individual case level, a white collar criminal defense lawyer can often marshal very impressive character witnesses to say that the defendant is basically a good guy who messed up once, while this is frequently very difficult for blue collar criminal defendants to do in a way that really reaches prosecutors and judges. The bottom line is that prosecutors (and judges, many of whom are former prosecutors) sympathize with, understand and relate to white collar criminals far more than they do with ordinary blue collar criminals. And, this colors their judgments about what kinds of punishments (criminal or non-criminal) are appropriate for the kind of conduct that these people commit. Their instinct is that a crime that might be committed by someone like me is probably not as serious as a crime that a judge or prosecutor would never dream of committing like an armed robbery of a bank, even though economically, the banking fraud crime may have caused $500,000,000 of harm while the armed bank robbery may have caused only $5,000 of harm.	It is the use of a "menace" which creates the crime, not the nature or validity of the demand. That's not correct. You've inadvertently missed the other element of the offence: that it's an "unwarranted demand". A person is guilty of blackmail if, with a view to gain for himself or another or with intent to cause loss to another, he makes any unwarranted demand with menaces; and for this purpose a demand with menaces is unwarranted unless the person making it does so in the belief— (a) that he has reasonable grounds for making the demand; and (b) that the use of the menaces is a proper means of reinforcing the demand. https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1968/60/section/21 For example, I may have reasonable grounds under the Consumer Rights Act to demand a refund for a faulty good. It might be sensible to moderate one's language, e.g. "If I do not receive a satisfactory response from you within 30 days of the date of this letter, I intend to issue proceedings against you in the county court without further notice. This may increase your liability for costs." vs. "If I do not receive the money from you within 30 days of the date of this letter I'll take you to the f***ing cleaners, sunshine." But the language doesn't make the demand unwarranted.
Legal principles in refusing to pay advertised reward for return of lost item if it was returned without knowledge of the ad Say person X lost his valuable item and advertised a reward for the return of it. Person Y, who knew X personally, found the item before reading the ad, and returned it to X, who just thanked Y for that. Later Y read the ad and demanded the reward. X refused. Contract Law teaches us that it was perfectly legal for X to refuse as there was no contract. Which legal principles apply here? P.S. It was a question in a test, to which I answered that the principle was past consideration as Y returned the item before reading the ad and so without expecting any reward. However, the tutor did not give any credit for my answer and explained that "X never agreed to pay Y anything. To accept an offer, you must be aware of it.".	The formation of a contract occurs at the point where an offer is made and accepted by a person to whom it was made. The acceptance must be in reliance of the offer - if you don’t know the offer has been made you cannot accept it because you lack the intent to create a legal obligation. The reward for the lost dog is the textbook example. A real example is R v Clarke (1927) 40 CLR 227 in the High Court of Australia.	Absent a specified jurisdiction, I'm going to assume the US state of New York. This conduct falls squarely within the definition of extortion under New York Penal Law section 155.05(2)(e): A person obtains property by extortion when he compels or induces another person to deliver such property to himself or to a third person by means of instilling in him a fear that, if the property is not so delivered, the actor or another will: [...] (iv) Accuse some person of a crime or cause criminal charges to be instituted against him; There is a defense under section 155.15(2): In any prosecution for larceny by extortion committed by instilling in the victim a fear that he or another person would be charged with a crime, it is an affirmative defense that the defendant reasonably believed the threatened charge to be true and that his sole purpose was to compel or induce the victim to take reasonable action to make good the wrong which was the subject of such threatened charge. However, in your hypothetical, the customer is just seeking a payout. This defense is meant for situations like a theft victim telling the thief "give me back my property or I'll call the cops;" unless paying the customer is actually a reasonable action to make up for the crime, the customer can't use this defense. If the crime is a federal one, this is also blackmail under 18 U.S. Code § 873: Whoever, under a threat of informing, or as a consideration for not informing, against any violation of any law of the United States, demands or receives any money or other valuable thing, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both. If interstate communications are involved, 18 U.S. Code § 875(d) can also apply: Whoever, with intent to extort from any person, firm, association, or corporation, any money or other thing of value, transmits in interstate or foreign commerce any communication containing any threat to injure the property or reputation of the addressee or of another or the reputation of a deceased person or any threat to accuse the addressee or any other person of a crime, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.	You're missing some pretty important details in describing the facts of this case. The most important of which is: What were the agreed terms upon which Alice obtained possession of the car prior to paying? Your description says: Alice takes the car and doesn't pay. If that's literally true, then this case is both criminal theft and the tort of conversion — not breach of contract. Since the remainder of your question references a breach of contract, then I have to conclude that the fact as you stated it is not literally correct and there is some important missing detail about the terms upon which Alice was in possession of the car when she crashed it. So, I will have to invent some scenarios that would fit two other facts you describe: The jury awarded Bob $5,000. The jury found Alice to be in breach of contract. The following are the scenarios I can think of that would match the facts (as I understand them and speculated where important details are missing from the question). Maybe this is a small claims court and the damages are capped at $5,000? I never heard of a jury trial in small claims court but I guess it could be possible. Or maybe it was actually a judge and use of the term jury was careless or otherwise inaccurate? Maybe the terms under which Alice was in possession of the car when she crashed it put the parties in position where they effectively shared liability or risk of damage to the car? Like maybe Bob (or both parties) was/were required to carry insurance on the car while Alice was "test driving" it. I only use the term "test driving" as a placeholder for whatever she was doing with the car prior to paying for it which is left unclear by the question. Maybe Bob was found to have contributed to the breach of contract by something he did or didn't do. Similar to the above speculation about insurance. All this would be much easier to analyze if we knew how and under what terms Alice came to possess the car. Maybe there was only $5k of damage done to the car? Or, alternatively, the car was only found to be worth $5k and, for whatever reason (again, which we can not fully analyze given only the partial set of facts presented) the liquidated value of the car was the basis for the damage award and not the contracted price. (Consistent with @jimsug's comment.) I can easily imagine a scenario where Bob and Alice are close friends or family so the entire transaction is handled very loosely and informally and Bob let's Alice drive the vehicle while she is gathering the money to pay him. In this case, the jury might decide Bob shares the liability with Alice since the terms of the sales contract did not transfer the risk of liability to Alice during the time she was driving prior to payment.	You had bought product A. That constitutes you offering the seller a contract for you to get product A for your money. They keep the money and send product B - and now are in breach of the contract, as that is materially different from the contract both agreed to. Legal recourse is, depending on the customer protection laws, a refund of the payments or getting the correct product A. If you have a right for the Product A depends on exactly how it was advertized and the exact ToS.	One possible reading of this clause is: The tenant is required to pay for the preparation of a forfeiture notice, even if ("notwithstanding that") the forfeiture doesn't actually happen ("forfeiture is avoided")--but the tenant doesn't have to pay for the notice if the forfeiture doesn't happen for the following reason ("avoided otherwise than by"): because the court said so ("by relief granted by the court"). In other words: if the Court says the forfeiture notice is bogus, the tenant doesn't have to pay for it. Otherwise, he or she does.	You have read it: legally It doesn’t matter if you haven’t read it in fact. At law, you have. Therefore you cannot avoid obligations or consequences by saying “ I didn’t read it”. It’s an extension of the common law principle that if you affix your ‘mark’ to a document you were acknowledging that you understood it and would abide by it: even if your mark was an X because you were illiterate. There are protections. At common law an unconscionable term is unenforceable and may void the contract entirely. Additionally, many jurisdictions have passed legislation to make unfair contract terms unenforceable, particularly in contracts of adhesion. Further, consumer protection laws often have non-excludable warranties that operate in spite of the contract.	I think the law there is quite clear - you have 14 days to return the goods for a full refund, except for digital content, which you can't return once you started downloading it. That's what it says. The arguments that you try to give were quite obvious to the law makers. I think you can assume they were aware that "digital content does not have a physical form". Now if you purchased, but haven't downloaded or started downloading yet, then obviously you can get your money back. You came up with some theory that this is a "visual vanity item". You can't see it unless you download it. Once you download it, that's it. If you don't download it, you can return it. Let me repeat this: Your fancy analogies mean nothing. There are in the EU laws about being allowed to return goods for a refund. There's the general rule for buying in a store (no right other what the store offers voluntarily), online purchases (some days to return), and online purchases of digital goods (no return once you started downloading). That's the law. Your attempts at redefining the situation are totally pointless. The law says what it says. What you try to redefine doesn't mean one thing. The law clearly distinguishes several situations, and analogies don't count. What happens counts. You bought from a digital item from an online store that needs to be downloaded. And as soon as you start downloading, there is your right to return it gone. And your reasons for wanting to return the goods are completely irrelevant. You don't need any reasons, and having reasons doesn't help you.	No While you can be bound to terms you had the opportunity to read and didn’t, you cannot be bound to terms that you did not have the opportunity to read. That doesn’t mean that you don’t have a contract but it will be on different conditions to those in the undisclosed terms. For a contract to be valid, the parties must agree on the essential terms, for a phone contract, what service the phone company is giving and how much the consumer pays. Incidental terms can be left undefined and they will, if needed, be filled in by a court with reasonable terms. However, this only happens to the extent necessary to give effect to the primary purpose of the contract. For example, late fees or termination fees are not strictly necessary (common law principles of damages for breach of contract work just fine) so, if the undisclosed terms include them, they will be unenforceable. Notwithstanding, it’s quite likely that refusing to disclose in the advance violates state or Federal consumer protection laws against misleading or deceptive conduct.
Why are law firms with non-lawyer owners/directors uncommon? Most law firms exist as partnerships of their main lawyers who are the owners/directors. Why isn't the model popular where a non-lawyer but talented leader/organizer/visionary just puppets lawyers on the payroll who represent clients of the firm? Are lawyers too smart and/or noble to be puppeted that way?	In some jurisdictions it's against the code of ethics. For example, in the united-states, Model Rule of Professional Conduct 5.4(b) says: A lawyer shall not form a partnership with a nonlawyer if any of the activities of the partnership consist of the practice of law. The idea has to do with independence: Lawyers are officers of the court and—as members of a regulated profession—can be bound to professional codes. Talented leader/organizer/visionaries aren't bound in any such way. The comment to the Rule explains, "Where someone other than the client pays the lawyer's fee or salary, or recommends employment of the lawyer, that arrangement does not modify the lawyer's obligation to the client." This can create a conflict, and states resolve it by regulating the partnership's composition. Other jurisdictions go even further and it’s prohibited in law.	In business dealings, you would have a contract with a company, not with its owner. The new owner inherits both the assets and liabilities of the company. It's up to the buyer of the business to do due diligence before buying the company. The old owner may escape obligations to clients and suppliers once the sale of the business is complete, but the new owner could sue the old owner for fraud. (It may be possible to escape some liabilities by declaring bankruptcy, but that's not the situation you described. One unethical accounting trick that a company can use is to split the company into two corporations such that one branch inherits the liabilities, and it go defunct.)	There's a few good reasons that spring to mind. Firstly, it's possible that Tesla or Microsoft have been themselves licensed something where the license is not sub-licenseable. This would prevent them from subsequently licensing you, but a promise/pledge is not a license and they can go right ahead and make promises. Secondly, a license is broadly an agreement between two parties. A promise doesn't require formal acceptance whereas a license does. To answer your question regarding a covenant not to sue - that's something else entirely. A covenant not to sue is a legal agreement between parties where the party seeking damages agrees not to sue the party it has cause against, whilst still preserving the existence of the cause (and conditions may have been set that must be met for the covenant to stand). For example, Party A still maintains that Party B used work that was not licensed to Party B, but Party A has agreed not to sue on the matter, provided that Party B advertises the fact that the work was used.	I think what you're talking about is probably quite rare. There are certainly law firms that market their ability to thoroughly investigate the facts, aggressively question or impeach hostile witnesses, present compelling evidence at trial, or make persuasive oral arguments. But I don't think I've ever heard of a firm that treats any particular litigation tactic as its specialty rather than treating it as part of its specialization in domestic relations, DUI defense, employment law, etc. If you think of litigating at different stages of a case as "techniques or functions," then I'd point to the various firms that consider themselves trial specialists, or appellate specialists, or even Supreme Court specialists. Even then, though, any of those specialties is going to involve a variety of discrete techniques or functions. A trial lawyer needs to do investigations and cross examinations and closing statements, and a Supreme Court specialist needs to be able to petition for cert, draft merit briefs, and give oral arguments.	What's the use of contracts if you can't take a contract violator to court? A clear, thoughtful contract can be a deterrent to misconduct, and Australia is one of many jurisdictions where pro se litigation is allowed. Self-represented litigants certainly have to undergo a steep learning curve and are expected to comply with a code of conduct, procedural law, and so forth, but my point is that hiring a lawyer is not compulsory. Even if for some reason the defrauded party declines to sue the tortfeasor (thereby forfeiting the recovery of the losses), there is a societal obligation to alert others about the tortfeasor's misconduct. Making the contract available to others facilitates alerting them on objective grounds so they don't become the tortfeasor's next victim, and it simultaneously helps for setting the record straight that the damages/losses were not one's own fault. Without a contract, it would be more difficult for others get a sense of whether misconduct occurred at all. Or worst, halfway down the line, you don't have any money left to pay your lawyers, and they leave the case. Hence the importance to litigate in pro per from the start. It is easy for a person retaining a lawyer to postpone (be it due to family obligations, workload, and so forth) his learning of the law. But that postponement only makes the client more vulnerable to his lawyer's subsequent withdrawal when court proceedings are midway: the client would have the dilemma of either finding another lawyer to resume the case --predictably at a higher cost--, or cram the learning curve in trying to keep up with the proceedings.	That really sucks. I've had similar experiences when handling the probate proceedings of lawyers who were not good about returning original wills to clients. I am providing an answer under general principles without researching Oregon specific accounting, record retention and probate laws, to at least give you a start although I recognize that a better answer would research these questions. The accounts/clients from her business were sold to another woman. Is it legal for us to transfer everything to her possession? Probably yes. There should be a government agency in Oregon that regulates accountants that has rules regarding that question. The linked rule seems to govern this situation. It says in Rule 801-030-0015(d) that: (d) Custody and disposition of working papers. (A) A licensee may not sell, transfer or bequeath working papers described in this rule to anyone other than one or more surviving partners or stockholders, or new partners or stockholders of the licensee, or any combined or merged organization or successor in interest to the licensee, without the prior written consent of the client or the client’s personal representative or assignee. (B) A licensee is not prohibited from making a temporary transfer of working papers or other material necessary to the conduct of peer reviews or for the disclosure of information as provided by section (1)(b) of this rule. (C) A licensee shall implement reasonable procedures for the safe custody of working papers and shall retain working papers for a period sufficient to meet the needs of the licensee’s practice and to satisfy applicable professional standards and pertinent legal requirements for record retention. (D) A licensee shall retain working papers during the pendency of any Board investigation, disciplinary action, or other legal action involving the licensee. Licensees shall not dispose of such working papers until notified in writing by the Board of the closure of the investigation or until final disposition of the legal action or proceeding if no Board investigation is pending. So, a transfer to a successor firm appears to be permitted. What if she refuses to take the documents? Her probate estate could retain them and stay open, they could be returned to clients, or there could be a rule established by the Oregon body that regulates accountants that authorizes a central depository of such records. In Colorado, for example, in the case of law practices with no successors, original wills and estate planning documents can be deposited in the records of the court with probate jurisdiction that has jurisdiction over the territory where the decedent's practice was located. But, I could not locate any provision of this kind in Oregon law. Is it legal for us to destroy/shred/etc. the documents? In many cases, yes. Some states, by statute or regulation, and others by custom, allow business records to be destroyed as a matter of course, normally one year after the longest statute of limitations that could apply to a dispute where the records would be relevant (often seven years since the longest normally applicable tax statute of limitations is six years). Destroying tax returns is usually not a big concern because a transcript of the old tax returns can be ordered from the tax collection agency where they were filed. But, business records related to purchases of property and capital improvements and depreciation, and related to divorces, can be relevant for decades after they were created, so the more honorable course of action would be to make at least a cursory effort (such as a postcard sent to a last known address of each client with a deadline for requesting a return of their file) to return the files of clients that include original business records as opposed to mere copies of tax returns. Oregon has a seven year retention rule for most purposes pursuant to Rule 801-030-0015(e) which is linked above: (e) Retention of attest and audit working papers. (A) Licensees must maintain, for a period of at least seven years, the working papers for any attest or compilation services performed by the licensee together with any other supporting information, in sufficient detail to support the conclusions reached in such services. (B) The seven-year retention period described in paragraph (A) of this subsection is extended if a longer period is required for purposes of a Board investigation as provided in paragraph (d)(D) of this rule and OAR 801-010-0115(3). The referenced rule in that rule states: (3) Requirements upon resignation. Upon resignation, a former licensee is required to: (a) Surrender the CPA certificate or PA license to the Board; (b) Take all reasonable steps to avoid foreseeable harm to any client, including but not limited to providing written notice of resignation under this section to all clients and inform all clients of where client records and work papers will be stored and of the clients’ right to secure copies of all such records and work papers at no cost to the client; (c) Maintain client records for a period of at least six years, or return such records to the client; and (d) Continue to comply with the requirements of OAR Chapter 801 Division 030 pertaining to confidential information and client records. (e) For the purpose of subsection (b) above and unless otherwise required by the Board, a resigning licensee of a registered firm is required to give written notice to only those firm clients for which the resigning licensee was the sole or primary CPA on an engagement, an engagement leader, or the client relationship manager. In practice, the consequences of destroying a record that shouldn't have been destroyed are likely to be minimal, because any recovery would be limited to the assets of the estate and there is a time limit for making claims against estates which is quite strict, and your grandma has no license to revoke. But, again, the honorable thing to do in order to honor her legacy and do right by her former clients would be to either transfer the records to a successor firm or to attempt to return them, as she would be required to do if she had surrendered a license during life.	If the company makes a contract, and as a result of that contract it owes more money than it has, then the company goes bankrupt and the owners and directors can walk away from it. This covers the owners/directors in cases of ordinary business contracts. However if an employee (including an owner or director) does something sufficiently harmful then under the law of torts they can be personally liable as well as the company. Examples are negligence and fraud; if you build someone's new roof while acting as an employee and the roof leaks then its likely to be the company on the hook for damages. However if you misrepresented your qualifications or acted negligently then you might well be personally liable. This is all very general. Details are going to be specific to your jurisdiction. So the answer is that having a company is certainly better than making every contract in your own name, but its not complete cover. You can probably get insurance if this is a concern, but its likely to be expensive.	In the U.S. a board member would not be an employee just by virtue of being a board member, even if they were compensated for attending board meetings. The CEO, an employee, might or might not also be a board member. Employees can be fired by their manager. A board member can't be fired from the board but, typically, only removed by a vote of shareholders. They are not assigned tasks by managers of the company. This is 100% clear in CA under employment code 622 (a) “Employee” does not include a director of a corporation or association performing services in his or her capacity as a director. I was a CEO of a private company I co-founded I was a board member as a result of voting myself on the board via my stock ownership. The majority of the board could fire me as CEO but I would still be a board member. If outside board members did get compensation, it would be as a consultant, paid with a 1099. The CA code does say that a board member could take on actual work, like auditing financial information, that might fall under the activities of an employee.
What is the benefit of a large lawyer team? A pretty common trope in different kinds of media is the idea that large corporations or rich people can screw people like they want and get away with it, because they have oh so many lawyers at their disposal. Mr. Burns from the simpsons comes to my mind immediately. Is there any truth behind this assumption? Can a large lawyer team render you invulnerable to certain lawsuits? I have no experience with any real applications of jurisprudence, so I find it really strange. Some points I can think of: When the lawsuit is so large and complicated that you need the manpower to sift through all its aspects. Still, if you poisoned an ecosystem your guilt should be provable and you would be condemned no matter the number of lawyers. Intimidating your opponent with the number of your lawyers to make them concede to a extrajudicial solution. It's just a code for bribing the judges. But none of those would explain this phenomenon properly. Is it even a real thing?	There are times when having a large law firm work on a case can be an advantage. It is rare for the number of lawyers working on a particular case to be more than three or four plus a few paralegals, even in a case where there are virtually unlimited resources at a party's disposal. In those cases, the primary benefit of having a large law firm at your disposal is that by paying top dollar for those attorneys, you may (but certainly don't always) get particularly competent attorneys at firms that have good systems in place. If you are willing to spend the money you can also have the attorney and paralegal team work exhaustively to leave no stone unturned in terms of legal research, style and proofreading, "wild goose chase" factual and legal research of matters like trial court arguments from other cases that the opposing counsel has participated in, and trial presentations with lavish presentation quality. For example, in one case where my firm was litigating against a large law firm in state supreme court arguments, the firm had seven law firm partners who had served as clerks in that court earlier in their careers participate in mock oral arguments to help the appellate lawyer who would be presented the case in oral arguments to the Colorado Supreme Court prepare (with four members of your core team and seven mock justices plus some paralegals participating this was a $5000+ per hour activity). A typical run of the mill appellate brief prepared competently might take 100 hours, while a large firm might devote 800 hours to the same task (both of these are hypothetical round numbers suggested just to get the point across). This incredibly intense working up of cases, moreover, often involves attorneys who aren't really starting from scratch as they has handled many similar cases before in their careers, while their smaller firm competition may have only encountered the issues presented for the first time. You are also paying for connections and experience. For example, a large law firm may have an easier time retaining the most decorated expert witnesses to argue on their behalf. These attorneys may also have handled numerous cases in front of the judge or judges who will be deciding the case (and if they haven't someone else in the large firm probably has) and thus can better predict what approach will be received best by that particular judge. The exception to the rule that the maximal economies of scale are reached with a quite small group of lawyers is that in addition to this core group of lawyers, some cases, such as class action lawsuits, or cases involving complex transactions (e.g. construction project disputes in a large project with hundreds of contractors) may require an immense amount of factual discovery in the trial court in the form of depositions of dozens or hundreds of people with relevant knowledge, and/or review of vast volumes of documents (e.g. I've had several cases with whole rooms stacked floor to ceiling with relevant documents in banker's boxes). In cases like those, you need an army of senior paralegals and junior attorneys to interview witnesses, take depositions and review and summarize documents to get to the bottom of the factual matters needed to prove a case. The down side of this approach, however, is that it is extremely expensive relative to the alternatives per task, and frequently impossible to recover your costs and attorney fees from the other party, perhaps because they aren't permitted to be awarded, perhaps because a judge would find some or all of your fees and costs to be unreasonable, or perhaps because the other side simply can't afford to pay them. So, using a firm like this really only makes sense if the stakes involved are very high, or if there are long term strategic reasons to litigate. Spending $1,000,000 on attorneys' fees and costs is a very expensive way to litigate a $100,000 one off dispute. But spending $1,000,000 on attorneys' fees and costs is perfectly sensible if there is $100,000,000 in controversy in the case at hand, or if a favorable outcome will influence the outcome of a large number of future disputed of the same type. The other dirty little secret is that lots of the work done by large law firms for which their clients pay an immense amount of money isn't done very well. One inherent down side of being large is that a large law firm is bureaucratic and prone to the kinds of mistakes that all large organizations have, for example, in diffusing responsibility for mistakes that can allow mistakes to fall through the cracks. Also, while the typical large law firm lawyer is typically more knowledgable than the typical small firm lawyer about the field at issue, this doesn't always happen. Sometimes junior attorneys get assigned too much responsibility on cases in areas where they have blind spots in their knowledge, and sometimes a large firm attorney ends up working a case due to personal connections with the client rather than because that attorney is the most qualified person in the firm to handle it. Also, while some very brilliant lawyers do indeed work at large law firms, technical competence isn' the only consideration in hiring. Successful large firm lawyers need to be team players, need to conform and function well in a large bureaucracy, and need to have the social capital to be comfortable on a day to day basis with the firm's other lawyers and their affluent and big business clients. Many large firm lawyers have those soft skills while having only competent rather than excellent legal acumen. Further, since most large law firm lawyers go straight from law school to a big firm (sometimes with a detour clerking for a judge for a couple of years), and large law firms handle mostly very big cases that are usually settled by lead attorneys before going to trial, most large law firm attorneys aren't particularly experienced at trial work. Some large law firms compensate for that by laterally hiring former prosecutors, former criminal defense lawyers and former high volume personal injury litigators to do that work, but often, large law firms have few lawyers in the courtroom with much trial experience relative to how many years they have practiced law. They may be very well prepared, but often there is no substitute for hands on trial experience. Still large law firms tend to fight extremely hard in trial, but tend to be pushovers in settlement discussions. This is driven by the reality that the client will incur huge amounts of attorneys fees and costs to go the distance, and by the fact that professionally, the worst thing that a large firm lawyer can do it to have an unexpected and unpredictable bad outcome at trial. So, large firm attorneys seek to give their clients low expectations about what is possible in litigation in order to make it possible to make cases with significant uncertainty go away with settlements larger than would really have been necessary to settle the case with a more total client litigation and settlement cost sensitive law firm.	For instance, clients often ask them for an assessment of "the chance of X going through". While clients can make it clear (in writing) that lawyers will not be held legally liable for giving "pure advice", lawyers often still refuse to give any guidance (even when they clearly do have one in mind). I do this on a regular basis. This said, lawyers are ill equipped to evaluate cases in these terms, because they don't see a full and unbiased sample of cases that they study academically, because there are too many distinctions between cases to make apples to apples comparisons of them, and because most lawyers went into law because they don't like thinking about things in mathematical terms. Lawyers will not infrequently say that a case or argument is strong or weak, or very strong or virtually frivolous, but evaluating the strength of a case is difficult and there are good academic studies that show that lawyers systemically overestimate the strength of their own cases. So, humility about the likelihood of a particular outcome is a good professional norm to have in place. Basically, law contains lots of uncertainty and the known unknowns and unknown unknowns predominate over what is known, most of the time.	Lawyers are useful in litigation the way engineers are useful construction or doctors are useful in surgery The know what they’re doing and have done it many times before: you haven’t. In your particular situation your lawyer can advise you if you actually have a case worth pursuing and the best way to do so. In most jurisdictions lawyers cannot represent you in small claims court but they can handle your application and coach you in advance. As to your final question: lawyers are professionals and it’s frankly insulting to suggest that a professional would deliberately mislead for personal gain - the overwhelming majority won’t and the tiny fraction that will are criminals.	The defense lawyer has the duty to do the best for his client. The client will be convicted if he or she is guilty beyond reasonable doubt. If the lawyer can create a reasonable doubt and manages to free his client then he has done a good job. So yes, if the lawyer knows that some other person might have committed the crime, to the degree that it creates reasonable doubt, then the lawyer must raise this. Of course if it turns out that there is just some phantasist making wild accusations, that might not be helpful.	How should I proceed? I am asking law friends to recommend some employment lawyers, but other than this, can I do anything else? You definitely don't need an employment lawyer for this. From a legal standpoint, the matter is very simple: If you grant their request (whether by signing or otherwise expressing your acceptance), you would be waiving any remedies currently available to you for their breach of contract. The company's attempt to override its contract with you is quite naive, but the company can always (and evidently does) try to get away with its liability nonetheless. I would not be surprised if the company subsequently tries harder to intimidate you, but that does not change your legal position & merits unless you sign the waiver the company is pursuing. Asking for your post-termination availability reinforces the notion of company's poor planning and subpar management.	Typically in defamation law, claims made persuiant to litigation are not defamatory, since they are going to be tested for validity if the case goes to trial. I'm not familiar with any differences in what is generally done in settlements between the U.K. and the U.S., but since both are Common Law countries, and Settlements are very common in civil proceedings in the U.S., it's a good start. Generally a settlemant can occur anytime before the verdict of the case is rendered, although usually it will happen after preliminary hearings during the Discovery phase. In the U.S., Discovery is very broad and one need not prove that the requested items contain evidence but might contain evidence. This means that, for example, you could request a substantial amount of e-mail records from the opposing party because somewhere on the company e-mail server, there might be something to help your case. And even if after you sift through the emails and find no smoking guns related to your case, you could find some dirty laundry that's unrelated but still damning... if not more so than the initial case. Many people, especially big compainies, would rather just give the ex-employee some what he/she wants, if it means they don't get to see the proverbial man behind the curtain. Additionally the practice might fall into a legally gray area of the law that, if it reaches trial, could hurt the company or even the industry if a judge rules against the company, effectively saying that this gray area is now definately illegal. Better to eat the loss of capital with the settling out of court than to take the much larger hit of the buisness practice being illegalized all together. Typically in settlements, both parties agree to terms and sign a contract. While the whole of the terms are never discussed, almost all include that the plaintiff will drop the case and never bring the matter to court again and that both parties will sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) meaning that they won't discuss the rest of the settlement terms with anyone not party to them. If the plaintiff does break the NDA, the defendant can sue for breech of contract and recover at the least the monitary compensation they awarded in the settlement. Conversely, if the respondent breaks the NDA, the plaintiff can refile their initial suit with the addition of breech of contract (and this time it will get to court... and all the dirty laundry sees the harsh light of day.). While the respondent in a settled case can possibly sue for defamation if the plaintiff said the respondent did what the initial suit claimed they did (legally, it was never proven or disproven), or they were guilty (again, since no verdict was reached at trial, no guilt was established), the breech of contract is a much more airtight case and doesn't open up discovery to the respondent's cupability in the settled case (since the breech is about discussing the settled case at all, not the validity of the accusations of the settled case). Typically they would not go this route because then it opens the can of worms the settlement was trying to keep a lid on.	Whether any person, provided that they are in full legal capacity (not a minor, not incapacitated etc.), needs a lawyer, is to be decided by that person. Even criminal defendants can be self-represented if they've got the balls for it — the law does not impose a requirement to have a lawyer when the person does not want it. Considerations as to whether to have a lawyer are very fact-specific and person-specific. Assuming that Steve is not literate in law, it would probably be good idea for him to get a lawyer before answering any questions. The facts are such that it is not totally impossible that he may be charged, especially if he inadvertently says something not in his favor, or otherwise says something favorable to McRobberface.	What you describe is forbidden by corporate law in every jurisdiction with which I'm familiar. I don't know the law in Quebec, but in principle: An entity in control of a corporation can't use that control to unjustly enrich himself at the expense of other shareholders. (If he does so through deceit then he is committing the common law tort of fraud, and quite likely a criminal offense.) A trustee or fiduciary that uses his control of assets to enrich himself at the expense of those to whom he owes a duty (e.g., minority shareholders) is guilty of various statutory offenses, among which may be "Breach of Fiduciary Duty" and "Fraudulent transfer." Sales of corporate assets in general must be done through an "arms-length" mechanism. If they are being auctioned off, and the auction isn't open, so that an insider is able to purchase them below "fair market value," then, once again, a fraud has been committed. The grading and remedies vary by jurisdiction. Of course, whether it's worth pursuing a remedy through legal action depends (as always) on: the amount at stake, the cost of pursuing the remedy, statutory allowances for punitive damages, the likelihood and cost of collecting on any judgement won. Only a lawyer familiar with the jurisdiction, the complaint, and the corporation's governing documents could help you answer that question.
Is sending the complains to the whole community instead of the Title IX office legal? A woman received an unwanted "offensive" text message during an official college event from a man: "I am not sure if you are dressing like in a night-club". Although the text message seemed to be polite and did not involve protected characteristics, the woman felt offended, emotionally harmed and believed that the man is sexually harassing her. Since it happened only once, the woman thinks that the title IX allegation would have a slim chance to be successful (i.e. legally not harassing); and during the conversation, the woman responded with sexually offensive language, so the woman did not bother to bring the entire thing up to file a formal Title IX complain. Instead, the woman choose to distribute her version of the story among the community and write complains to the professors also in the event, referring the man as a "harasser". The man's daily research and study was severely harmed because many are no longer willing to work with him. Getting her messages, some others also write to the man harshly accusing him for the "misconduct". What legal troubles will the woman (and others who accused the man) be facing? Maybe Title IX allegation?	If the factual information contained in her statement (without regard to the spin or interpretation she places on those facts, which are a matter of opinion) are true, she has every legal right and privilege to continue what she is doing. If the factual information is false in some material respect that damages his reputation, it would be possible for the person who is the subject of the statements to bring a defamation against her seeking money damages, although it is unlikely to prevail and likely to give rise to only a nominal money damages award if he prevails.	You can always be sued, but truth is an absolute defense to libel. Your actions could be perceived in any way imaginable. What usually matters for legal purposes is how a "reasonable person" would perceive them. As an example, Pennsylvania's Megan's Law Website warns: Any person who uses the information contained herein to threaten, intimidate, or harass the registrant or their family, or who otherwise misuses this information, may be subject to criminal prosecution or civil liability. It further clarifies: Public access to information about registered sexual offenders is intended solely as a means of public protection, any other use prohibited.	I assume based on your reference to .edu and your can-spam-act-of-2003 tag that you are interested in United States law. The scheme you describe is illegal under the CAN-SPAM Act. 15 USC 7704 (b) (1) (a) (ii) (b) Aggravated violations relating to commercial electronic mail (1) Address harvesting and dictionary attacks (A) In general It is unlawful for any person to initiate the transmission, to a protected computer, of a commercial electronic mail message that is unlawful under subsection (a), or to assist in the origination of such message through the provision or selection of addresses to which the message will be transmitted, if such person had actual knowledge, or knowledge fairly implied on the basis of objective circumstances, that— (i) the electronic mail address of the recipient was obtained using an automated means from an Internet website or proprietary online service operated by another person, and such website or online service included, at the time the address was obtained, a notice stating that the operator of such website or online service will not give, sell, or otherwise transfer addresses maintained by such website or online service to any other party for the purposes of initiating, or enabling others to initiate, electronic mail messages; or (ii) the electronic mail address of the recipient was obtained using an automated means that generates possible electronic mail addresses by combining names, letters, or numbers into numerous permutations. The last part (ii) specifically forbids what you propose ("combining names... into various permutations). Under 15 USC 7706 you may be liable for statutory damages of up to $250 per email. In addition to being illegal, I suspect your plan will also be ineffective: this sort of spam attack would be really easy for the university to detect and block.	What stops a university form doing anything it wants is the contract you entered with the university when you enrolled. (I'm writing from the perspective of a student, not faculty). You and they are bound by the contract, and part of that contract will be a clear outline of academic processes such as ethics, grading, class requirements and test taking, as well as penalties for cheating and plagiarism. That contract will be outlined in your student handbook. That handbook and contract will also clearly outline (or should) the grievance process and remediation for both students and faculty. Since you feel that the university is not being fair, you need to start with investigating that formal grievance process and look into gathering your materials and filing a complaint. The college will have an office that handles such grievances; you need to find it and talk to them. If they are a private college, yes, they do have their "own rules," but some aspects of federal, provincial and local civil and criminal law will still apply. Be aware that the school contract may bind you to arbitration - which means you have to deal with the college on all matters - and you may not be able to go to a public court on a civil matter. A lawyer will be able to tell if you are bound by arbitration and if so, that's the end of the road. If not, a lawyer will tell you if you have a criminal or civil case. In any event, the grievance process at the U will more than likely be your first step. If by chance criminal misconduct is found during the grievance process, then a federal, provincial or local prosecutor would be involved; we would assume the university would be forthcoming if that need appeared.	Is it true? No, that is inaccurate. References to protected categories are not a requisite element of harassment. Typically harassment is defined as a pattern of conduct (thus encompassing two or more acts) consisting of unconsented contact that would cause a reasonable person to be frightened, annoyed, distressed, molested, and/or experience other unpleasant emotions. See, for instance, the definition of harassment in Michigan legislation, MCL 750.411h(1)(c). The notion of harassment can --but does not necessarily-- involve targeting or attacking of one or multiple protected categories in which the victim belongs. For instance, sexual harassment is understood as harassment with purposes of mocking the victim's sexual orientation, or procuring sexual gratification from/with that person. The adjective "sexual" merely qualifies the context of the troubling pattern of conduct, but that term in and of itself is not what imports the character of harassment. The examples in the paragraph you quote are inaccurate and/or inconclusive because they would highly depend on the context. The adjective "selfish" is not sufficiently related to Judaism, whence it would be unreasonable for a Jew to allege religious harassment merely because somebody called him "selfish". Instead, a finding of religious harassment would involve repulsive allusions to themes or elements to which Jews would be sensitive based on historical grounds (such as nazism, and antisemitism), doctrinary grounds (jokes about pigs), and so forth. Where I can find a complete list that includes all the possible words? For the reasons explained above, there is no such list. Words would have to be assessed in light of the context in which the course of conduct takes place. Furthermore, not all harassment involves words. Harassment, regardless of its type, can be in the form of drawings, gestures, physical contact (such as sexually molesting a person), voiceless phone calls, and following a person, to name just a few methods.	If I understand your question, you're asking the difference between something like this: "You shouldn't do business with Bob; he's a child molester. Raped a whole bunch of kids. Everyone knows about it." and this: "You're thinking of doing business with Bob? Huh. That's your call, of course. I won't say anything against Bob. But Bill is in the same business, and I happen to know that Bill has never molested any kids." or this: "There are three people you could do business with. There's me. I've never molested any kids. There's Bill; he's a little expensive, but he's never molested any kids either. Then there's Bob. I don't have anything to say about Bob." I don't know the answer under German law, but under U.S. law, it's surprisingly complicated, and varies by jurisdiction. Here is a thorough but somewhat dated article on the subject. New York has recently established an explicit test for defamation by implication: To survive a motion to dismiss a claim for defamation by implication where the factual statements at issue are substantially true, the plaintiff must make a rigorous showing that the language of the communication as a whole can be reasonably read both to impart a defamatory inference and to affirmatively suggest that the author intended or endorsed that inference. Stepanov v Dow Jones & Co., 2014 NY Slip Op 03940 (App. Div. May 29, 2014). That opinion also discusses the other approaches used in other U.S. states. Under that standard, it seems clear that my example statements would be defamatory; any juror would immediately understand both the factual implication and that it was 100% intentional. In practical terms, I doubt any court in the United States would not consider them defamatory. In general, defamation is harder to prove in the United States than in other jurisdictions, because of the strong protections afforded to speech under the First Amendment--but I don't know enough about German law to speak to that issue.	united-states The rules on what constitutes defamation under US law are fairly straightforward. For a statement to be defamatory, it must be: A statement of fact (not opinion); that is False; and Communicated to at least one other person (the law refers to this as "publication" but it does not mean just being in print, any form of communication will do); and Harmful to someone's reputation, so that people think less of the person because of the statement, or are less inclined to do business with or associate with the person. There are some exceptions to point 4, kinds of statements where harm is assumed. Such statements are called "defamation per se". But even in such cases evidence of harm is often included in a defamation suit. The exceptions include: Accusing a person of a crime, particularly a serious crime; accusing a person of dishonest business dealings; accusing a person of incompetence in the person's job, trade, or profession; traditionally, accusing a person of having a sexually transmitted disease (this may no longer apply in some jurisdictions); traditionally, accusing a woman of sexual immorality, that is of having sex before marriage or outside of marriage (this also may no longer apply in some jurisdictions). The plaintiff (person bringing the suit) must at least allege (claim) points 1-3, and point 4 unless the claim is for defamation per se. The plaintiff must present evidence sufficient to confine the court of all but point 2, falsity. In addition, (in US law) if the plaintiff is a public official, or a "public figure" then the plaintiff must also allege and prove "actual malice" (an unfortunate term). This means that the plaintiff must show that the statement was made with knowledge that it was false, or with reckless disregard for its truth or falsity. Actual malice is usually hard to prove. The actual malice standard derives from the case of New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254 (1964). Prior to that case there was no federal law of defamation, and no constitutional dimension to US defamation cases. A statement of opinion, such as "I think product A is a better value than product B" can never be defamation in US law. Nor can a provably true statement. Nor can a statement that is essentially true, even if it contains minor errors. (None of these are true in all countries.) Some states still maintain the traditional split between libel and slander, with libel being written (or in some places broadcast) defamation, and slander being spoken. In other states the two have been merged into a single action of defamation. When they are separate, libel tends to carry larger damages, and slander may not recognize defamation per se, but require proof of damage to reputation. Some people are said to be "defamation proof" meaning that their reputation is already so bad that nothing can harm it further. Taking care to research facts, particularly negative statements about people, helps avoid defamation in general, and makes proving actual malice much harder. Keeping written records of such research is also a good practice. It is good if negative statements are supported by multiple reliable sources. It is also good practice to make statements of opinion clearly statements of opinion, not statements of fact, and to make statements of fact only when supported by research with citable reliable sources. Following such practices will make defamation suits less likely, and less likely to succeed if any are brought.	A voicemail greeting, like any original sequence of words, will be protected by copyright. Making and publishing a copy without permission would be an infringement of that copyright, and could subject the person who does it to a civil lawsuit. However, such a greeting normally has no commercial value, and it is hard to see how any actual damages could be assessed. In the US, statutory damages could apply, but since the greeting is unlikely to carry a copyright notice, the person sued might claim to be an "innocent infringer", which could significantly reduce the damages assessed. (However if such a person had read this answer, and that were brought out in court, s/he would be on notice of the copyright protection, and could not claim to be "innocent".) Moreover, the defendant could still raise the defense of fair-use (In the US). The would be no harm to the market for the work, since there is no market, which would favor fair use. The whole of the work would probably be used, which would tend against fair use. A greeting is somewhat creative, more so than a work of non-fiction, although usually less so than actual fiction or verse, which leans slightly against fair use. It is hard to say if this kind of reuse would be considered transformative, it would probably depend on what sort of commentary, if any, was provided. In all, a fair use defense seems pretty close to a coin flip, but not as predictable. In any case, judges often do not favor suits over technical infringements of works with no commercial value where no meaningful damage has occurred, and often award minimal damages within the statutory range, which is wide. Given all that, the risk of suit seems low. The question mentions "school district administrators" If the person doing this is a student, this might be looked on negatively by the school district, which might be able to frame it as against some district policy or other. Consider possible repercussions carefully. As always on Law.SE, this is not legal advice. Before acting you may wish to consult an actual lawyer.
Could a programmer use the code that they made for another company? If someone made a piece of software for another company but never gave away the intellectual property rights or signed anything, could they use that code in other similar software? Could they sell it? Assume that they were not an employee of that company and that they never signed a contract of any sort with the company, but that they were paid.	For cases where this occurred within the United States, with works created on or after January 1, 1978: (the OP has since clarified that their scenario occurred elsewhere) By default, the author (the actual creator) of a work is the owner of the copyright. However, this is not the case if the work is a "work made for hire" for an employer. In that case, the company is considered the author of the work, and owns the copyright. From US Copyright Office Circular 09: If a work is made for hire, an employer is considered the author even if an employee actually created the work. The employer can be a firm, an organization, or an individual. Works are considered to be made for hire in two situations, as described by that circular (emphasis added): a) a work prepared by an employee within the scope of his or her employment or b) a work specially ordered or commissioned...if the parties expressly agree in a written instrument signed by them that the work shall be considered a work made for hire. If no written agreement was signed and no employment relationship existed, then ownership of the copyright to the software would go to the person who wrote it, and they would be able to do anything that a copyright holder could do with a work, including using it however they want or selling it. Do note that this would only apply to software or changes made by the person in this situation. They could not, for example, sell or distribute any other piece of the software written by other people without the copyright holder's permission, even if these pieces are necessary to use the software that this person created.	Is this work for hire? There is an arguable case to be made that you are an employee for copyright law purposes and, if so, the copyright belongs to the company. The closer an employment relationship comes to regular, salaried employment, the more likely it is that a work created within the scope of that employment will be a work made for hire. But because no precise standard exists for determining whether a work is made for hire under part 1 of the definition in section 101 of the copyright law, consultation with a lawyer may be advisable. Second, if you do own the copyright, there is clearly an implied licence with the company to allow them to use it. It is arguable that the licence is exclusive since the software is bespoke and made specifically for the company. Can you sign an agreement now Yes, but … It is clear that the purpose of signing the agreement is to screw the company over (with the compliance of 2 of the directors). That’s a contract entered into in bad faith and possibly for an illegal purpose and would likely be found invalid. You need to understand that the company is a distinct legal entity from its owners and it has its own rights. People make the mistake of thinking the owners are the company: they aren’t. The two rebel founders are on dangerous legal ground. Assuming they are the directors of the company, they have a fiduciary duty to act in the best interests of the company. That is, they must put the company’s interests ahead of their own. It is clearly not in the company’s interest to have a rival business start so they cannot plan to do that while they are directors - they need to resign first. You are not so much at risk - as an employee/contractor your duty is to follow the directions of the company (the company - not a faction within the company). However, if you aid the other two in what might be a crime, you could be in trouble.	You can make a derivative work if: the original is not under copyright, you are the copyright owner, you hold a licence from the copyright owner that says you can, or your usage is fair use or fair dealing as applicable. For your proposal, the image is copyright, you don’t own it, you don’t have a licence and what you propose is neither fair use nor fair dealing. You can’t do it and you can be sued if you do.	You are creating a derivative work. You are only allowed to do this if the library comes with a license that allows this. If you want to give your derivative work to anyone else, copying it is copyright infringement unless the license allows it. Copying the derivative work and attaching a different license is most likely to be copyright infringement. And if people receive a copy with an open source license that is not justified and rely on it, that’s creating one unholy legal mess for everyone involved and can be massively more expensive than plain copyright infringement. No license means you don’t have permission to do anything with it, not creating derivative work, not distributing it, and certainly not publish it with an open source license.	You would have to look at your contract with the company or the company's rules. Some companies have clauses that say they own things you develop while working for them and some don't. Without knowing your specific company's policy, it is impossible to say.	The requirement to make the code publicly available is binding on Olio, and on Olio's successor, Flex. Olio, by accepting the code under the GPL, had contracted with the original author of that code, one of the contract provisions being to make any modified code available publicly. If Olio fails to abide by that agreement, it is in violation of the license, and the original author could sue Olio for copyright infringement, or sue Flex as having bought the assets and liabilities. But the individual employees of Olio are not under any obligation to publish such modified code, as they were presumably not parties to the license deal -- Olio was. Therefore the NDA does not require them to violate any law or contract to which they might be parties. The NDA could probably not be used to prevent the employees from testifying if called in such a copyright suit. If the NDA did require an illegal action, it would be void. If it merely required a person to violate a civil agreement that could be settled for money, it might or might not be enforceable, depending on the exact provisions, its reasonableness under the exact circumstances, and the local law.	It depends on what information you are sharing, how you got it, and what rights the business asserts over the information. For example, if it is content created by the business and they claim copyright protection you can only use it without their permission in accordance with Fair use exceptions. If you obtain the information through some limited/conditional access agreement you would be subject to the terms of that agreement. As always: If you want a legal opinion specific to your use case you need to consult a lawyer in your jurisdiction.	I'm not sure this would be a copyright violation. 17 USC 117 says: (a)Making of Additional Copy or Adaptation by Owner of Copy.—Notwithstanding the provisions of section 106, it is not an infringement for the owner of a copy of a computer program to make or authorize the making of another copy or adaptation of that computer program provided: (1) that such a new copy or adaptation is created as an essential step in the utilization of the computer program in conjunction with a machine and that it is used in no other manner... Due to the shutdown of the license server, it is impossible to use the program without an adaptation. It is therefore an "essential step in the utilization of the computer program", and not infringing, in my opinion.
Friend using my address for tax return If a friend uses my home address for his tax return, and he owes the IRS tons of money, will I be liable in any way? Also normally would it be a problem if he filed a tax return with my address, and I filed a tax return with the same address in the same tax year?	If a friend uses my home address for his tax return, and he owes the IRS tons of money, will I be liable in any way? Assuming that this is an income tax or sale tax return, rather than a property tax return, generally not. The only case where you could be liable is where you were conspiring to help him evade tax collection somehow, or conspiring to evade state sales or income taxes. For example, suppose that your friend had no connection to your home in your state (Nevada) with no income taxes and has never even set foot in your state, and actually lives in a state with high income taxes (California). But your friend is using your address to falsely claim residency in Nevada with your knowledge and cooperation to avoid paying California income taxes. To make it spicy, let's assume that your friend's state income tax liability would be $400,000 in California, but $0 in Nevada. In that case, you might have felony criminal liability under California's tax evasion statutes (for which you could be extradited to California) for conspiring with your friend to evade his California income tax liability. But if you had no idea of what your friend was up to, and simply agreed to forward mail to him at your address (the way a typical mail drop company does), you would typically have no criminal or civil liability (subject to the "willful blindness" exception to lack of knowledge where you strongly suspect that your friend is up to no good but take a don't ask, don't tell approach). Also normally would it be a problem if he filed a tax return with my address, and I filed a tax return with the same address in the same tax year? No.	The transaction you describe is a "taxable gift" to the extent that it exceeds $15,000 in fair market value (as of 2019) and that your significant other is not your U.S. citizen spouse now (special rules apply to non-U.S. citizen spouses and an unlimited amount of gifts can be made without being taxable to a spouse, including a same sex spouse). The first $15,000 of fair market value per donor per donee per year doesn't count, however (there is a $100,000 of fair market value per donor per donee exemption per year for gifts to non-citizen spouses, if a qualified domestic trust is not the true recipient of the gift). This means that the donor is required to report the gift on IRS Form 709 by April 15, of the year following the year in which the gift is made (or later if the donor files for an extension). But, each person is entitled to make up to $11,400,000 of tax free gifts (during life and at death combined) that would otherwise be taxable per lifetime, and this amount is indexed for inflation, so it goes up each year. So, in your situation, it is highly unlikely that any tax would actually be due in connection with your filing of Form 709, even though the donor is required to complete and file that form. In the event that both the annual and lifetime gift exclusions have been exceeded, the tax rate would be 40% of the fair market value of the gift (net of the mortgage debt to which the house is subject. For example, if the house were worth $40,000,000 and had a $10,000,000 mortgage and you were given a 50% interest in it, the amount of the taxable gift would be $14,985,000 of which at least $3,485,000 would be subject to a 40% gift tax, i.e. $1,394,000), if you didn't get married (the tax would be $1,360,000 if you were a non-citizen spouse of the donor). At one time there were some states with their own state gift taxes that had to be considered, but as of 2019, there are no such states. Also, upon a sale of the house, the donee would be subject to one half of the capital gain that the donor would otherwise have owed taxes upon (this is called a "carry over basis"). We paid with a loan from a family member which I helped to pay back. I also paid for work done on the home. This could arguably reduce the amount of the gift (which would ordinarily be valued at fair market value as of the date of the gift), but given the amount of the lifetime exclusion, that detail is probably irrelevant unless your home is a world class mansion or castle.	It is certainly possible for the same action to break multiple laws, and be chargeable as multiple crimes. For example, shooting and killing someone may be assault, assault with a deadly weapon, and murder all at the same time. For a different example a person who simply omits to file an income tax return may be guilty of both failure to file a required return, and failure to pay tax due, and in some cases failure to par required estimated tax due as well. For yet another example, driving well above the speed limit may be a violation of the speed limit law, and also careless driving, and possibly also reckless driving. In the first case the assault etc may be lesser included offenses in the charge of murder. That means that they are automatically available to a jury (or judge) trying the accused, who can convict on one of the lesser included charges if they do not convict on the primary count. For the more general case, I don't know of any special term for the situation. It is not usual to have law A which says "do not do X", and also law B which says "you must follow law A". There is no general principle against having such redundant laws, nor is there, in the US, any Constitutional rule against such laws. But legislatures do not normally bother to enact such redundant laws. Laws which will sometimes overlap in their coverage, but in some cases do not overlap are common.	As I understand it, they are required to give notice of an intent to levy. Publication 594 gives their version of what they can do, and how. If you don't want to pay what they claim you owe, you can request a Collection Due Process hearing which means Form 12153. You may receive a CP504 Notice, which seems to be one of two "final notices": it is actually final w.r.t. levying state tax refunds, and is penultimate otherwise. Their page on levying mentions a crucial last stem of sending you a Final Notice of Intent to Levy, which is required according to IRC sections 6330 and 6331 which derives from 26 USC 6330 (most of the notice requirement) and 26 USC 6331. If you get notice CP90 which I think is called Final Notice of Intent to Levy and Notice of Your Right to a Hearing, then, dude, you've been served. There is in fact additional process that they have to do before actually taking, but that as far as I know, is the last part involving notification. Take note of the US Code parts, 26 USC 6330, 6331, because unlike IRS advertising, the US Code states what the law is.	I think this shows a misunderstanding of the meaning of the GDPR. A data subject has the right to demand information, correction, deletion etc. about some of their data held by some institutions, depending on the legal basis for the data processing. One John Smith does not have the right to see the data of any other data subject named John Smith, and he cannot even demand to know if there are other John Smiths in the database. The data controller has to make reasonable steps to ensure that an individual who seeks account information is in fact the individual who is the data subject. In the case of an email, that's usually easy -- if John Smith can access the mail account [email protected], one can assume that he is the John Smith who opened the account. If not, then not. If the data controller has the birthplace and birthdate in their records, they can possibly match that against some government-issue identity document, too, but why would they have that data?	My understanding is that the "flow-through" treatment is specifically a tax law concept. The LLC has its own income, which it can use to pay expenses or acquire assets or for whatever other purpose, and such assets become the property of the LLC. It's just that when it comes time to pay taxes, the LLC's net income is taxed as income to the owner. But that does not mean that the LLC's income is treated the same as the owner's income in all other legal contexts.	Are the monetary donations collected by the recipient subject to federal taxation according to IRS law? Yes. Usually, money received from an activity from third-parties with no personal relationship to you (assuming that "you" are not a tax exempt organization), are taxable income under Section 61 of the Internal Revenue Code as interpreted by case law, as a form of "compensation for services", under I.R.C. § 61(a)(1), or as "gross income derived from business", under I.R.C. § 61(a)(2) (exactly which prong of I.R.C. § 61(a) it comes under isn't legally relevant for tax purposes in this situation). This is also informed by I.R.C. § 83(a) (which is a general rule even though the balance of the Code section applies mostly to equity compensation in entities), which states in the pertinent parts (material in brackets inserted for clarity): If, in connection with the performance of services, property is transferred to any person other than the person for whom such services are performed, the excess of the fair market value of such property . . . over the amount (if any) paid for such property [by the person who receives the property], shall be included in the gross income of the person who performed such services[.] But, gifts are expressly excluded from income under Section 102 of the Internal Revenue Code as interpreted by case law. One point which the case law makes clear, however, is that an obligation to pay doesn't need to be a legally binding obligation to make a payment something that counts as income rather than a gift. The tax law instead looks at the substance of the interaction and the reality of how decent, well mannered people would act under circumstances in which they receive an uncompensated benefit. Ultimately, whether are voluntary payment made through a private individual or business's website is taxable income or is not taxable because it is a gift is a case by case determination to be made in light of all of the relevant facts. For example, if your mother donates $7,500 to your website on your birthday, even though all of your other "donations" are from third-parties whom you have never met in person in amounts from $5 to $100 and you have provided all of those other third-parties with some kind of service or benefit through your website (e.g. they were allowed to read free webcomics or listen to music you wrote and recorded without charge over the website), the donation from your mother probably counts as a gift, even though the other donations probably count as income taxable income. But, in the absence for any reason for the donation other than gratitude for the performance of the services provided by the website, or for the conduct of the business that the website belongs to, the donation will generally be treated as income under Sections 61 and 83, rather than as a gift under Section 102. The notion of a gift is normally limited by case law and suggestive related section of the Internal Revenue Code that illustrate its intended meaning in the case of gift loans and bargain sales made for donative purposes, to circumstances in which the person making the gift has received nothing in return for it. A donation to a website usually wouldn't meet this test to show a transfer's character as a gift. The most familiar example, upon which there is a great deal of case law and authoritative guidance, is that tips paid to restaurant and hospitality industry workers are income rather than gifts, and are subject not only to income taxation but also to FICA payroll taxation. These tipping situations are closely analogous to voluntary payments made through a website. There are a great many tax regulations, court cases interpreting tax law, and authoritative guidances from the IRS (such a revenue rulings) that address the basic concepts that I've set forth above. And, the income tax law authorities are further informed by the statutes and case law governing gift taxation, which is, as intended, interpreted to define a gift in a matter that dovetails more or less perfectly with the definition of a gift for purposes of Internal Revenue Code Section 102. As the IRS explains at its website discussing the gift tax for which the concept of a gift is defined consistently with the income tax concept of a gift: The gift tax is a tax on the transfer of property by one individual to another while receiving nothing, or less than full value, in return. The tax applies whether or not the donor intends the transfer to be a gift. The gift tax applies to the transfer by gift of any type of property. You make a gift if you give property (including money), or the use of or income from property, without expecting to receive something of at least equal value in return. If you sell something at less than its full value or if you make an interest-free or reduced-interest loan, you may be making a gift. Donations which are not income are gifts and there is a tax on gifts given (paid by the donor rather than the person receiving the gift). But, there is a $15,000 per donor per donee exception per year from gift taxation for gifts under the Internal Revenue Code, in addition to more than $12 million per lifetime per person exemption from gift and estate taxation for gifts in excess of this $15,000 amount (called the annual exclusion) and inheritances left at death. So, usually, if a transfer is treated as a gift rather than as income, no tax will be due. But this part of this answer's short summary of the law is the top level conceptual framework for all of those other subordinate tax law authorities. Also, this income is also subject to self-employment taxation, which is imposed in lieu of FICA on income which is not a wage, salary or employment-related tip. Often self-employment taxes are due on self-employment income even when no federal income tax is owed upon it. if there is a clear answer, do states with personal income taxes do the same regarding website donations? Most states and localities with a personal income tax start from the federal definition of income and modify that definition in ways that the taxing jurisdiction deems fit either to make sense (limiting the tax to income related to the state, for example, at least for non-residents), or to fit local policy preferences (e.g. exempting from income taxation, capital gains made in an investment in the state favored by state lawmakers). Almost no states or localities have chosen to deviate from the federal definition of income for income tax purposes with respect to donations made to websites that are not non-profit entities.	That is private. Who you work for is not information that is disclosed publicly by any state actor in Germany, just like your taxes. In fact, that or who you are employed at is often regarded as personal and private information. Nigh impossible through agencies Public agencies like the Fiskus (tax), Agentur für Arbeit, and immigration are not allowed to give any information about a person to anyone but that person or another agency that has the right to that information. Yes, (generally speaking) the tax office may not even say that a person exists (or doesn't) and what their tax number is to anyone but the person in question.
Being convicted in one jurisdiction and serving the sentence in another After William Boychuk, a Canadian, was convicted of murder in North Carolina, he was allowed to serve his life sentence in Canada. Now the New Zealand mosque terrorist has been sentenced to life without parole (an unprecedented sentence according to the article linked below) and New Zealand's foreign minister Winston Peters says he wants him to serve his sentence in Australia since that's where he's from. The Australian prime minister Scott Morrison said that would not be a normal practice, and NZ prime minister Jacinda Ardern said "[T]here isn't a legal basis for it. It would be a very complex undertaking." How widespread is such a practice? Is this a unique treaty between the U.S. and Canada, or something done everywhere except that it's unheard of in Australia and New Zealand, or something between those extremes? https://www.tvnz.co.nz/content/tvnz/onenews/story/2020/08/27/peters.html?fbclid=IwAR0aV7y1rNit1S5qv0w92EyL1H7P6H3eiaGWiiaAMzbnJBBh6rNA-dUPIJo	It is possible in principle, in the US, under the Bureau of Prison Treaty Transfer program, so that one could serve your time in Australia for example -- but not New Zealand, which isn't part of a bilateral or multilateral treaty with the US: here is the list. Canada and Australia are on the list via the Convention on the Transfer of Sentenced Persons. New Zealand is (by choice) not a participant.	While the point made by user6726 is not wrong with respect to this particular statute, it doesn't address a more basic point about how the supremacy clause works. Federal criminal laws govern punishments for federal crimes in the federal criminal justice system. Federal prosecutors bringing federal criminal charges against criminal defendants in the federal criminal justice system can and do secure death penalty sentences against criminal defendants in states where there is no state death penalty. One recent case where that happened was the Boston Marathon bombing case where a defendant was sentenced to death in federal court for the crime for violation of a federal criminal statute, despite the fact that Massachusetts has no death penalty of its own. This is not a supremacy clause issue. No state law had to be changed or invalidated because of the existence of the federal law. States law governs how the state criminal justice system works, not the federal criminal justice system. When we say that a state has abolished the death penalty, we mean that it has abolished it in the state criminal justice system. This doesn't absolutely foreclose the possibility that the death penalty will be imposed in that state on federal charges, although it does make it far less likely that the death penalty will be imposed. Partially, this is because "blue collar" crime is handled by the states. Partially, this is because out of comity and a concern that juries in states without a death penalty are less likely to vote for a capital sentence, federal prosecutors are less likely to seek the death penalty in a state without capital punishment than in a state with capital punishment. For example, there are 2,902 people on death row as of 2016, in the U.S. Almost 98% of death penalty convictions that have not yet been carried out were obtained in state courts. Only, 62 involve civilian death penalties imposed in federal courts (mostly in states that have the death penalty) and another 6 involve death penalties imposed in military courts (mostly in states that allow the death penalty or abroad). All of the other cases arose in state courts.	Hate Speech is not a crime in the United States. Rather, they have "Hate Crimes" which are charged only when the prosecution wishes to show that the crime was motivated by hatred of a protected class of people (I.E. the killer shouts a slur at his victim.). They cannot be charged in absence. Spoken word, advocacy for policies that favor one protected class over another, and other signs of hatred are not in and of themselves crimes. Unless a content provider is physically within Australia's borders, their is little legal recourse. The United States does not extradite anyone to a country to face charges for crimes that are not criminal offenses in the United States. Since the site promotes these ideas but has not used the ideas as a motivation to engage criminal activity, they would not extradite the accused individual(s).	What a country claims to be the case certainly doesn't guarantee what is the case. The constitution (at least as of 2012) of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (aka North Korea) says: Article 67. Citizens are guaranteed freedom of speech, the press, assembly, demonstration and association. The State shall guarantee the conditions for the free activities of democratic political parties and social organizations. Needless to say, North Korea is not generally considered a bastion of free speech. The People's Republic of China has a similar provision in its constitution. When we get to countries where those outside the country consider there to be some level of freedom of speech, there are still restrictions. In the UK, the Official Secrets Act makes it a crime for any person to republish leaked classified information. Germany makes it illegal to deny that the Holocaust happened. Until 2013, Canada made it illegal for a person to use telecommunications to say something that would expose people to hatred for some reason covered by antidiscrimination law. Many, many countries criminalize child pornography. Many, many countries have copyright laws. "Free speech" does not mean "you can say whatever you want and the government can't stop you." It means "as a general rule, the government can't restrict what you're saying because they don't like it." I am unaware of any country with a functional government with unfettered freedom of speech.	Yes, this is allowed. A famous example was the Rodney King beating, where police officers were acquitted at the state level but convicted federally. US v. Lanza formalized the rule, and it has survived the application of the double jeopardy rule to the states. It's called the separate sovereigns doctrine, and also applies to prosecutions by two states (see Heath v. Alabama) and by an Indian tribe and the feds (see US v. Wheeler). It does not apply between DC and the feds or territories and the feds, because DC and territorial laws are established under the power of the federal government. These prosecutions are uncommon. As far as the feds go, they normally consider a state prosecution to have satisfied the federal interest in the case (win or lose). But prosecution by multiple sovereigns is not barred by the Fifth Amendment.	This article is from an official Emirates news agency, which confirms the change (Federal Law 12/2016). This is a change to Federal Law 5/2012, replacing Article 9 (the translation into English is odd because the verb phrase goes first). The level of the penalty has increased (minimum 150K → minimum 500K; maximum 500K → 2M). Incarceration is changed from "imprisonment" to "temporary imprisonment", which might mean that previously the term was life. In either case, they have an "and" problem that the punishment is "(temporary) imprisonment and a fine ... or either of these two penalties". Presumably the Arabic version is dispositive. Apart from that, the new version of the law identifies the offender as Whoever uses a fraudulent computer network protocol address (IP address) by using a false address or a third-party address by any other means for the purpose of committing a crime or preventing its discovery whereas the old law only said whoever uses a fraudulent computer network protocol address by using a false address or a third-party address by any other means for the purpose of committing a crime or preventing its discovery. Thus the meaning of "computer network protocol address" is defined as being equivalent to "IP address". In other words, there is no substantive change beyond the stiffer penalty. There does not seem to any provision allowing one to ask for exceptions. Article 30 of the underlying law strongly suggests that there is no exception and you should not ask. On a separate note, only Etisalat and Du are authorized to provide telecommunications services, pursuant to Federal Decree Law No. 3/2003. This article from August 24, 2015 also links to a number of related articles indicating that everything is illegal.	It is an unquestioned pre-American axiom, expressed in Latin as actus reus non facit reum nisi mens sit rea ("the act is not culpable unless the mind is guilty") which has been part of the Anglo-American legal system since at least the 17th century. It is thus presupposed in all criminal proceedings. It's not that a person only commits a crime with free will, it's that it is not deemed to be a crime if there is no free will. A person can be held at gunpoint and required to commit a criminal act: the person does indeed have free will to choose to be killed rather than commit the act, but the act is legally excused since dying is never held to be the only acceptable alternative to committing an otherwise-criminal act.	They could be prosecuted in any state where there was evidence that part of the crime was committed. Realistically, either State A or State B could prosecute for conspiracy to murder as an additional charge, because the conspiracy clearly spanned more than one state, even if they can't prove where the crime was committed, although physical evidence (e.g. traces of camp sites, footprints, testimony about landmarks, evidence of poop with human DNA from the victim in it), would usually make it possible to show that some part of the crime was committed in the state. There is probably also a federal crime that could be implicated such as "murder involving flight across a state line" (hypothetical, but I'm sure that there is something similar on the books). I'm not going to address the further hypothetical as it is too bizzare and law is ultimately very context specific. Find a more plausible fact pattern, perhaps with a different crime, and ask a separate question if you want to really address the issue.
Labelling of exhibits in US criminal court. Why the repetition of letters? I have been watching a series of videos of a criminal trial in the USA. I have noticed that exhibits for the defence are labelled with four consecutive letters but often (if not always) these letters are repetitive, e.g. JJJJ and KKKK. I'm on day 5 and have only just realised this so I haven't gone back to watch all the previous videos again in order to check. I'm sure about JJJJ and KKKK. Here's an example: Defence lawyer: I'm going to show you what's been marked as defendant's exhibit KKKK. Video: Skylar Richardson Trial Day 5 Witness: Dr John White - Gynecologist Part 2 Question Why would the labelling have repetition? For example, why might it not be KAAA? Or simply single letters, J, K, L, etc? At whose discretion/direction are the numbers allocated? The judge's, the counsels? Is there a standard or does each trial 'invent' its own standard for this?	Different courts have different practices, but I believe the general practice is for plaintiffs to use exhibit numbers, and for defendants to use exhibit letters. As with most procedural questions, the final decision belongs to the judge. The repetition in letters comes in when you get to the end of the alphabet. After you've used A-Z, you go to AA, BB, CC ... ZZ, then AAA, BBB, CCC, and so on.	Evidence is simply those things (verbal and physical) which are given to the court as evidence. When a witness gives testimony, that’s evidence. When a gun is submitted as an exhibit, that’s evidence. When an expert report is tendered, that’s evidence. Basically, whatever either party in the case submits to the court to prove their case is evidence. There is noting objectionable about the sentence - they are saying the statement is true, as they will be required to do in court and that they intend to submit it as evidence. While it’s not evidence yet, when submitted to the court, it will be. Courts have rules about what is allowed to be put into evidence (e.g. relevance, hearsay) and there may be some parts of the statement that fall foul of these - the other party can object to the proposed evidence on those grounds and the first party can withdraw it, the parties can agree on a modification or the judge rules on it. This can (and should) be done now in order to save time in the hearing. Evidence and proof are not the same thing. The judge will consider and weigh all the evidence and, where it is contradictory decide which to believe and which to reject in order to determine if the party which has the onus of proof has met it.	In closing arguments, an attorney should only refer to evidence that was admitted at trial. In opening arguments, an attorney may refer to evidence that the attorney reasonably believes will be admitted at trial, and if the attorney has grounds to admit the transcript as an exhibit, could do so. If not, the attorney could still reasonable state: the evidence will show that an arresting officer described Mr. Jones as "crazy" without showing a transcript or explaining where it comes from (on the theory that the officer will either testify to that effect at trial or will be impeached at trial with the transcript for testifying in a contrary manner). Usually the transcript can usually be admitted only for impeachment, so usually it wouldn't be admissible absent contrary testimony at trial. But there are exceptions that apply to that rule which could make it admissible and hence proper to reference or show in opening arguments.	A self-represented person, as a practical matter, has no choice but to engage with the court when an oral argument is conducted. A person present in a courtroom likewise has an obligation to acknowledge a judge addressing them. Usually it wouldn't be contemptuous to fail to appear at oral arguments of a fully briefed matter (e.g. a motion for summary judgment, or an appeal), but it would generally be viewed negatively. One could respond to a question from the court with "I don't really have anything more to say, my brief speaks for itself." And, sometimes a court would leave it at that, but if the court insists there is really no other option than to clarify and explain yourself. Most often, this helps more than hurts a pro se party, although I've certainly seen cases with ghost written pleadings (which are authorized if disclosed in many jurisdictions) where this isn't the case. A fairly common tactic in civil litigation is the take a deposition of a party, or to call a party to the witness stand, and to ask them if they really want the relief that their filed legal documents says that they do, as a way to narrow the scope of the claims brought against the questioning lawyer's client. But, this is less of an issue with a pro se party when the person who drafted the legal documents and the person engaging in oral arguments are the same person. This can't be done in criminal litigation, but I could see a prosecutor trying to do something similar in oral argument, although usually in that context, the judge and not the prosecutor, is asking the questions.	I will assume that your question pertains to the United States. In other jurisdictions, different rules could apply. Context matters. The usual penalty for spoliation of evidence (the technical term for what you describe) in a civil case is a judicial determination or jury instruction that the evidence destroyed would have established the relevant part of the other side's case had it not been destroyed. In all of these cases, your failure to take affirmative action to preserve the evidence once you knew that there was a bona fide likelihood that you would be sued could be held against you by making an adverse determination that the evidence would have been unfavorable to you and possibly also money sanctions. You could not be held in contempt of court for this if these events happened before a case was commenced. In a criminal case, where you are a defendant, you have an absolute right to not incriminate yourself and do not have to take affirmative action to preserve evidence, although this right is limited to criminal cases and your failure to preserve evidence can still be held against you in a civil case. Certainly, in situation 4 you are a potential criminal defendant, so the 5th Amendment protection would apply. In situations 1 and 2, where the precautions were not put in place to facilitate a crime, the 5th Amendment would protect you if you were a potential criminal defendant, but suppose that you are a bystander like a third party ISP representative. If you were a third party, at a minimum you would have to be put on notice of the police need for the evidence, would probably have had to have had the police ask you for the evidence, and of course, would have to be aware that the destruction was imminent and have the power to prevent that destruction. If all those conditions were present, you might be guilty of obstruction of justice (there are precedents for inaction knowing of the consequences in the fact of a police question amounting to obstruction of justice). In situation 3, this kind of action pretty much amounts to being an accessory to some crime before the fact (unless someone was successfully deceived by a very elaborate story) and would likely make anyone involved part of a conspiracy to commit the crime that the destruction of the papers would facilitate. While the papers themselves might have been evidence of a crime or civil wrong, the destruction of the papers might itself be considered part of the crime, regardless of what could be established regarding the actual content of the papers.	To what degree are such emails admissible in court as evidence, and what weight do they carry? Your own statement, when offered by you as evidence, is hearsay, unless it comes within an exception to that rule. Recorded recollection might be one of the better exceptions. There is also a chance that you could get it in as a business record of the company if you were using a company email account and the company stores all of its email communications. The documents also sometimes come in to provide fair context for a conversation with a party-opponent's statements that are admissible. It appears that Canada does not follow the modern British rule (which repealed the hearsay rule in civil cases in 1995), which if it were available, would come in without any difficulty at all. But, Canada does have what it calls a "principled exception" (which is somewhat broader than the parallel U.S. residual hearsay exception) that is generally available if the document can be shown to be reliable and there is an unavailable witness, or if there proponent of the document can show that it is reliable and necessary for other reasons. Even if the document itself is not admissible since it is hearsay, you could still testify as to what the boss said from your own recollection, and then have your lawyer ask you why you are sure that this is what was said. You would answer that you contemporaneously wrote a confirming letter to the boss spelling out what was said and you reviewed it to refresh your recollection before testifying at the hearing or trial. These kinds of confirming letters are used quite frequently in business and employment litigation. And, in my experience, these statements tend to be surprisingly effective and persuasive, because, while they do not foreclose the possibility that the person writing it was lying or inaccurate in the confirming email account, it does rule out the possibility that you forgot exactly what was said, and you provided the boss with an opportunity to dispute you which the boss didn't feel an obligation to correct. If one party has a coherent account in confirming emails of what was said, and the other party is trying to remember what happened a year or two earlier without notes from the witness stand, the person with the coherent, documented account is almost always going to come across as more credible unless the other side can show that your confirming emails are not infrequently gross misrepresentations of what really occurred. (I've also dealt with witnesses like that now and then.)	Your ability to assert your Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination is not limited to cases where you are on trial or have been accused of a crime. Your ability to assert that right is also not an absolute bar against being ordered to testify: if you are given immunity, you can be forced to testify. Alice cannot hold Bob in contempt – only the judge can. Bob can explain to the judge why a simple truthful "yes" or "no" answer is not possible, if he knows how to do that (does he understand the notion of a false presupposition, or unclarity?). He could for example assert truthfully that he does not understand the question (pointing to the distinction between "Charlie's body falling on the vase, causing it to fall and break", and "Charlie acting with apparent intent to break the vase", since it's not patently obvious that the former scenario constitutes "breaking the vase"). However (changing the scenario a bit), he has to understand that if the question is "Did Charlie shoot Delilah?" and the fact is that Ethan forced Charlie to shoot Delilah, saying "No" based on a theory of blame is not reasonably interpreted as truthful testimony. Taking the 5th, without setting forth your basis (not understanding the question) runs the risk that the prosecution will grant immunity from prosecution, and therefore you don't get to avoid answering the question. Immunity covers various things except that it does not cover prosecution for perjurious testimony. See US v. Apfelbaum, 445 U.S. 115: the Fifth Amendment does not prevent the use of respondent's immunized testimony at his trial for false swearing because, at the time he was granted immunity, the privilege would not have protected him against false testimony that he later might decide to give. Immunity is conferred under the control of some applicable statutory law, such as 18 USC 6002 which says that no testimony or other information compelled under the order (or any information directly or indirectly derived from such testimony or other information) may be used against the witness in any criminal case, except a prosecution for perjury, giving a false statement, or otherwise failing to comply with the order.	Yes. The jurisdiction I am familiar with is England and Wales. Conviction requires evidence (witness testimony is evidence) which proves the case "beyond reasonable doubt". It is open to the jury to find the witness so convincing that they find that they are sure the defendant committed the crime. In general of course, prosecutors prefer to have some supporting evidence (either additional witnesses, or circumstantial evidence - like DNA.)
Why aren't churches registered more massively? When reading an article in the Huffington Post about how easy it is to register a church (as shown by John Oliver) I was wondering why the practice is not more widespread. The American IRS does not take a position on religions so a minimal effort to check the marks would easily allow for tax benefits. I would guess that the more money is on the table, the more "organized" the organization could be (I am not talking about the philosophical aspect but the formal one, that is having all the processes in place so that an audit comes clean)). I am from Europe where the financing of churches is more around taxing the believers, rather than having the church exempted from paying taxes so the usefulness of having a church is smaller (this is visible through the small number of recent churches, and when these arise it is rather a matter of dogma)). It seems however than in the US it is different.	Ignoring the question of whether knowingly trying to deceive the IRS about the nature and purposes of an organization is a crime or even a lie, running any sort of tax-exempt organization for your own benefit is tax evasion and a crime. What you propose actually does happen in the US, but it's non commonly done by claiming tax exempt status a religious organization. Instead of registering fake churches (which strictly speaking isn't necessary as user6726's answer says), it's simpler just to register a fake charity. You don't need any of those things that you've noted that the IRS says a religious organization must have. Done intelligently, people running these scam charities do just enough charitable work to avoid investigation by the authorities while diverting the majority of earnings and donations of the organization to themselves through salaries and payments to for-profit businesses they own. Done not-so-intelligently, virtually all the proceeds of the scam charity end up in the hands the people running it, and those people often get caught and end up in jail. If proven, the charges against Steve Bannon would be a notable recent example of this. While it's less common with religious organizations, people have done time for misusing a religious organization's tax exempt status. For example a Virginia couple were sentenced to prison for crimes relating to a scheme to route profits from a business through a religion organization they had set up.	Different jurisdictions have different attitudes and histories. The difference is probably more cultural than legal and both leases are quite likely legal in both jurisdictions. In general, US jurisdictions tend towards laissez-faire capitalism and contracts have a buyer beware slant. Civil-law European countries are much more collective and have very strong consumer protection. Canada and other Commonwealth countries fall somewhere in the middle.	For the same reason that states require doctors to be licensed Surely, if I want an unqualified, unlicensed surgeon (or a person that says they’re a surgeon) to crack open my cranium and poke my brain, that’s up to me? There is no doubt that requiring people to attend medical school for half a decade and then spending a similar period as an intern and a resident is a large barrier to entry compared to handing high school graduates a scalpel and a bone saw and telling them to learn on the job. The same applies to engineers, lawyers, plumbers, electricians, builders etc. I mean if a building falls down because the engineer or builder didn’t know what they were doing, it can’t kill that many people, can it? Even drivers for that matter - it’s a large cost to individuals and businesses to learn to drive, pass a test, maintain a license and a relatively clean record, register a car, keep it roadworthy etc. Surely it would be simpler to let anyone drive anything and if they cause someone harm, like dying, for that individual to seek redress through the courts? We’ll, there’s a reason why states mandate things and it’s economic rather than legal. When people don’t trust each other transaction costs go up. These costs are usually borne by the consumer as the suppliers engage in a “race to the bottom” - whoever provides the worst service at the lowest cost wins. Further, these costs are borne unevenly - most consumers are fine, some are very severely damaged; possibly with no real redress. By imposing minimum standards, the state places these costs in the hands of the people who are best positioned to manage them - the supplier. Once a user has given their data to the supplier they have no control over it. Therefore the economical optimal solution to maximize economy-wide output is to make the supplier legally responsible for managing the data in accordance with minimum standards. Extraterritoriality In an ideal world, there would be universal privacy standards. There would also be universal standards for training doctors and engineers. But there aren’t. Therefore, countries and states impose their own standards on organizations that operate within their jurisdiction. The threshold for the GDPR (and most other privacy laws) is whether you are targeting users within their jurisdiction. If so, they have the power under international law to assert sovereignty even if you are located elsewhere. A state has power where it says it has power. Otherwise, you could plan a terrorist attack on the USA from the UK and not have to fear prosecution. That’s what extradition treaties and honoring other nation’s civil judgements is all about. A website or similar platform operates in each and every jurisdiction it is accessible from. Like a surgeon with unlimited plane tickets. Therefore, it must comply with the law in each and every jurisdiction it’s operating in. Countries have adopted one of 2 solutions - China’s is to simply block all external sites, everyone else has said you can operate here but you have to follow our rules, just like every other business has to. Now, you may not like this but there is no doubt they have the legal power to do it.	The Cayman Islands are well known as a tax haven. They have a corporate tax of 0%, and that includes income from abroad. So by moving your company officially to the Cayman Islands, you can avoid to pay a lot of taxes. Now of course most other countries will still send you a tax bill for any income you make with business activities within their borders. But there are accounting tricks to get around that. For example, many countries only tax profits, not revenue. So you can reduce your annual profits of your national subsidiaries to zero by having them pay money to your company on the caymans. For example, you can transfer your trademark to your subsidiary on the Cayman Islands and then have your subisdiaries in all other countries pay the Cayman company an annual license fee for using that brand name. And the license fee happens to be just so expensive that your national taxable profits become zero. And no, that's not just a Chinese thing. Corporations all around the world use that method to avoid taxes.	International organizations such as the UN are typically treated similar to foreign governments, and thus enjoy various privileges. One consequence is that typically, income from employment by these organizations is not subject to taxation by the host countries where the employee lives or carries out their work. However, the details depend very much on the tax laws in that host country. The employee might still be required to file taxes, but would then likely be able to declare the income as tax-free under the corresponding provision of the national tax law. This usually also depends a lot on the treaties which created the international organisation. For example, the Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations contains an explicit tax exemption for UN officials, though not necessarily for regular employees. As an example for how a country treats employees of international organization, the IRS has guidance regarding US tax law here. Other countries tend to have similar rules, albeit with less accessible online documentation :)	There is currently no law requiring a candidate for US President to release tax records to appear on the ballot. Nor is there any law requiring the President to release such records after taking office. There are laws requiring members of congress, and other Federal officials, to make public some limited information about their finances. This is much less than the information that would be included in an income tax return. Congress could pass a law requiring candidates to release their returns, but it seems unlikely that the current Congress will do so. States have broad authority over Federal elections. A state could pass a law requiring a candidate to release his or her returns as a condition of appearing on the ballot. Such a law might be challenged on Due process grounds. This would be an untested legal area, so there is no telling how a court would rule on such a challenge to such a law. Congress, or an individual house of Congress, may subpoena almost any information in pursuit of its investigation function. Investigations must be related to possible legislation, meaning it must be related to a subject about which Congress has power to pass a law. But the relation can be rather remote, as long as the information might inform the judgement of members of congress in considering a possible law. There does not have to be an actual law under consideration. Investigations have been challenged, and in a few cases there have been court rulings that an investigation was not related to possible legislation, and so Congress was not allowed to enforce subpoenas on that subject, nor to compel testimony. But such rulings have been rare. Previous Presidents have asserted, under the name of "Executive privilege", a right not to disclose information, such as internal discussions within the executive branch. This is not explicitly specified by the US Constitution, nor by any law, but has been generally accepted, and in some cases supported by court rulings. No court has ever clearly defined the extent or limits of Executive privilege. A House committee issued a subpoena this year for President Trump's tax records, or some of them. I forget whether this was addressed to the IRS or to the Treasury Dept. This has been challenged in court, and the matter is still in court. I be3live that one of the grounds asserted against the subpoena was that it was not to look into tax issues, as specified in the law authorizing the subpoena. No one yet knows how that case will proceed. The NY State Attorney General is investigating allegations that the Trump Organization, and various individuals, violated NY law, including by falsely reporting campaign expenses and contributions. In pursuit of that investigation, he issued a subpoena for various records which he claims will reveal possible evidence of those illegal actions. He pretty learly has the authority to subpoena records which might be evidence in a criminal case. This subpoena has also been challenged, but seems pretty likely to be upheld. However the subpoena was as part of a Grand Jury investigation, and Grand Jury proceedings, including evidence obtained by subpoena, are by law secret unless an indictment and trial results. So even if the subpoena is upheld, this should not lead to the public release of the records, unless someone is put on trial for some crime, and the records are evidence in that case. Even then the judge can order the records not to be released to the public.	Legally there is no problem. What you say is protected speech under the 1st Amendment as long as it is either true or a matter of opinion. However Ron Beyer's comment is a good one; while legal this sounds very inadvisable. You would be far better off hiring a lawyer. The Mr Dicks of this world make money from the widespread fear of legal action. He will probably fold as soon as he sees a letter from a lawyer threatening a lawsuit. Until then stalling doesn't cost him anything so he will carry on doing it. BTW, don't delay. I don't know about the US, but over here in the UK there are a number of ways that people like Mr Dick can make it hard to collect. Don't give him time to play shell games with his assets.	In the second case, is there anything to declare to the taxes? Yes, just like in the scenario of depositing in your bank account. Otherwise it would be easy for everybody to avoid the heavy tax burden by bartering or transacting without the use of official currency. The Code général des impôts in its Article 13 includes in the concept of bénéfice ou revenu imposable the market value of profits and benefits in kind ("y compris la valeur des profits et avantages en nature").
Is the presence of a melee weapon such as a knife enough legal justification for a police man to shoot the possessor of the knife? Background Recently, Jacob Blake of Kenosha, Wisconsin was shot in the back 4 times by police officer Rusten Sheskey while the officers were attempting to arrest Blake over a domestic violence dispute. When talking to Wisconsin state investigators later, Jacob Blake admitted to investigators that he did have a knife in his possession as stated by Attorney General Joshua Kaul: Kaul says Blake had a knife. "Mr. Blake admitted he had a knife in his possession and DCI agents recovered a knife on the driver's side floorboards of Mr. Blake's vehicle." However, the shooting committed by Officer Rusten has caused unrest in the area of Kenosha, Wisconsin, given the concurrent resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement at the time of the shooting. It is the fact of the knife as well as the strong response that has encouraged me to ask the following question: Question Given the presence of the knife in addition to the officers attempting to arrest Jacob Blake for a domestic violence dispute, was that enough justification for the 7 shots (4 of which hit Blake) as a reasonable response by Officer Rusten Sheskey?	The mere presence of a weapon is probably not, on its own, justification to shoot the possessor. Ultimately, the actions will be judged under the totality of the circumstances related to the shooting. I want to be as neutral as possible here in sharing the information that has thus far come to light but nowhere has "the presence of a melee weapon" been used as justification for the police shooting. This shooting may be found, after an investigation, to be unjustified or it may be found to be justified. Here is some of the information available. The report issued by Wisconsin Attorney General Joshua Kaul has additional information: Kenosha Police Department officers were dispatched to a residence in the 2800 block of 40th Street after a female caller reported that her boyfriend was present and was not supposed to be on the premises. Although the statement from the Attorney General doesn't mention a restraining order filed against Mr. Blake, the criminal complaint filed by an Assistant District Attorney on July 7, 2020 seems to indicate that Mr. Blake had waived the necessity of a restraining order and agreed to stay away from the property. An arrest warrant had been issued based on the criminal complaint. Police officers are trained to be extra cautious when approaching individuals subject to felony arrests. The Attorney General stated: During the incident, officers attempted to arrest Jacob S. Blake, age 29. Law enforcement deployed a taser to attempt to stop Mr. Blake, however the taser was not successful in stopping Mr. Blake. Mr. Blake walked around his vehicle, opened the driver’s side door, and leaned forward. There are reported witness statements from Raysean White that the police repeatedly told Mr. Blake to "drop the knife." No witnesses, that we currently know of, have come forward to say if Mr. Blake was holding the knife that was reportedly found on the floorboard. Also from the Attorney General report: During the investigation following the initial incident, Mr. Blake admitted that he had a knife in his possession. DCI agents recovered a knife from the driver’s side floorboard of Mr. Blake’s vehicle. A search of the vehicle located no additional weapons. Under Wisconsin law, it is a felony to resist arrest while armed with a dangerous weapon or threatening to use a dangerous weapon whether or not the arrestee has a dangerous weapon. All of the above information, along with any other information gathered from the investigation being conducted by the Wisconsin Division of Criminal Investigation will be used to determine if the use of deadly force was reasonable. It would be unreasonable to draw a conclusion either way regarding the use of deadly force with the limited information available to us. It is not unusual, though, to see the use of deadly force, or the threatened use of deadly force, when an arrestee physically resists arrest. Your ultimate question as to whether or not seven shots were justified is much more difficult to answer. If we assume that the use of deadly force was justified, a fact currently undetermined, it is much more difficult to say that too many shots were fired. A properly trained police officer will be taught to shoot until the threat justifying the use of force is neutralized. The Attorney General's report states: While holding onto Mr. Blake’s shirt, Officer Rusten Sheskey fired his service weapon 7 times. and further states: No other officer fired their weapon. Kenosha Police Department does not have body cameras, therefore the officers were not wearing body cameras. It is possible that only Officer Sheskey knows if seven shots were justified. It's possible that Officer Sheskey was affected by adrenaline and shot more times than necessary and it's also possible that Officer Sheskey shot until he no longer perceived Mr. Blake to be a threat. It is not possible, today, to answer your question about the reasonableness of seven shots and it's possible that it will never be answerable.	There are no such laws that are specific to rape, but there are general laws about false statements. In every state there is some law against making a false statement to a government official, e.g. Washington RCW 9A.76.175 which says that one who "knowingly makes a false or misleading material statement to a public servant is guilty of a gross misdemeanor". To shift context slightly, if you report to the police that Smith stole your lawn mower when in fact you gave it to him, that is a false statement. However, there would have to be clear proof that you lied in your report, and not that there was a misunderstanding. If Smith stole the mower but the evidence did not support a theft conviction, that does not mean that you can be prosecuted for making a false statement (whereas, if someone has a video of you telling Smith "Here's a mower, which I give to you because I like you", then you could almost be prosecuted for making a false statement, were it not for the fact that the video is illegal in Washington). Perjury is the other related crime: RCW 9A.72.020 "a materially false statement which he or she knows to be false under an oath required or authorized by law". [Addendum] About the video of the mower being given away... Washington is an all-party consent state, meaning that you can't just record people, you have to have their permission (everybody's permission). RCW 9.73.050 says that information obtained by illegal recording shall be inadmissible in any civil or criminal case in all courts of general or limited jurisdiction in this state, except with the permission of the person whose rights have been violated in an action brought for damages under the provisions of RCW 9.73.030 through 9.73.080 which is to say, "unless the person(s) who did not give permission to be recorded now give permission for the evidence to be admitted". Since "you" would be the one making a false statement, "you" would have an interest in suppressing the video, thus "you" could withhold permission for the video to be introduced.	I interpret the sentence "intruder enters your home using the internet" in the question as not as physically entering the home but as virtually entering the home, in other words hacking into the victim's home network remotely. When that interpretation is incorrect, please comment. Note that an action can only be considered self-defense when the self-defense prevents a crime currently in progress from being completed. When A hacked into B's computer and then B punches A in the face later, that's not self-defense, that's illegal vigilante justice. The self-defense argument would only work if it actually prevents the completion of the crime. For example, if A and B were in the same room, A sees B hacking into A's computer right now and uses physical force to prevent B from completing the hack (like yanking the keyboard out of B's hands). Also keep in mind that the intensity of self-defense must be appropriate for the severity of the crime. What is and is not appropriate is for a court to decide in each individual case, and the guidelines that are to be applied vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. But causing bodily harm to people when the crime they are committing does not cause bodily harm is often not considered within the limits of self-defense. For further information about what is and is not allowed in self-defense, I recommend the series about self-defense by Law Comic.	Illinois has a "Castle Doctrine" which includes dwellings and other qualified buildings, but not a general "Stand your Ground" doctrine. Normally, to claim self-defense one has to show that they were not able to retreat and had to use force, but in Illinois you do not have a duty to retreat if you are preventing criminal interference with a dwelling or with real property that you or a family member owns, or you have a legal duty to protect (see Ill Code 720-2 and Ill Code 720-3). In order to use deadly force in any case, it must be to prevent a forcible felony, which is defined as (720 ILCS 5/2-8): "Forcible felony" means treason, first degree murder, second degree murder, predatory criminal sexual assault of a child, aggravated criminal sexual assault, criminal sexual assault, robbery, burglary, residential burglary, aggravated arson, arson, aggravated kidnaping, kidnaping, aggravated battery resulting in great bodily harm or permanent disability or disfigurement and any other felony which involves the use or threat of physical force or violence against any individual. So, assuming you have no legal duty to protect the 7-11, you would not be justified in using deadly force against rioters merely on the basis that they were committing a forcible felony against the building. On the other hand, if you were in the store or could see someone in the store being attacked, you may be able to successfully defend deadly force used to protect yourself or that person.	§Sec. 54-212 of the ordinance states (a) It shall be unlawful for any person to manufacture, sell, offer or display for sale, give, lend, transfer ownership of, acquire, carry or possess any assault weapon or large capacity magazine in Cook County So if the gun is an assault weapon, it is not legal to sell. That ends the legal inquiry. Beyond that, we can only conjecture as to possibilities, for example (1) you may be mistaken in your assessment of some particular firearm, (2) the authorities don't know yet so haven't taken action or (3) they do know and they have taken action. Your link did not lead to any obvious things that count as an assault weapon, perhaps you could be more specific.	There is a relevant law, Title 18 section 907 which states that "A person commits a misdemeanor of the first degree if he possesses any instrument of crime with intent to employ it criminally". So possession of lock picks is not a crime per se. In Com. v. Gendrachi 389 A.2d 604 we are reminded that "intent need not be directly proved, but may be inferred from the circumstances surrounding the incident out of which the charges arise". The accused was busted in mildly suspicious circumstances at 5:20 am in the dead of winter, urinating. The court notes that "There is no evidence that appellant's hands were on the door or that he made an attempt to extract the tools from his pocket and apply them to the door. In fact, there is no act or statement by appellant that would lead one to infer that he intended to use the tools at that time", and that "appellant is a certified locksmith and it is not unreasonable to find the tools of his trade in his pocket, especially when he is wearing his work attire". Note that this is on appeal: he was convicted initially. The point is that there is a lot of slop in cashing out the legal concept of "intent". Pennsylvania does not, apparently, have any specific laws that refer to lock picks. It does have a statute that addresses having criminal tools, which are defined as (including) "Anything used for criminal purposes and possessed by the actor under circumstances not manifestly appropriate for lawful uses it may have". Mr. Gendrachi had those very tools, and the appeals court did not say anything to suggest that the tools were not "criminal tools" (and in FN 5 they actually point out that the Commonwealth cannot say that the tools were weapons, a ludicrous proposition never raised by anyone – so by failing to deny that lock picks are criminal tools, they are adoptively admitting that they are criminal tools). Thus I conclude that there is a law in PA, that lock picks are burglary tools, and that the government would have to prove intent to use criminally.	These charges aren't the same offense. They are three different offenses, all of which arise from the same conduct. Imagine throwing a grenade in a building because you saw a police officer about to discover evidence connecting you to a crime. I think most people would agree that there's no reason you could not be charged with murder, arson, and tampering with evidence under those circumstances. Likewise, Chauvin committed multiple distinct offenses when he kneeled on George Floyd's neck -- for instance, murder charges are based on the act of causing a death, while manslaughter charges are based on the act of creating a risk of death -- and the state is free to seek punishment for all of those offenses. Double jeopardy doesn't have any application to the case at this point. The Double Jeopardy Clause doesn't say you can't face multiple charges for the same conduct; it says you can't face multiple trials for the same charges.	Note that an essential element of the offense here is "with purpose to use it criminally." The specifications in B allow a presumption of such purpose, but such a presumption is rebuttable. The tools of a locksmith are somewhat different from those of a criminal "cracksman", I understand, and would probably not be considered "designed or specially adapted for criminal use". But even if they were, proof of regular employment as a locksmith would tend to rebut the presumption of criminal intent. Possession of tools with the intent of lawfully opening one's own lock would not be criminal intent, but a judge or jury might not be convinced of that.
Creating a contract that will prevent you from amending it So the question is, can you create a contract that will prevent you and other persons involved in from amending it? Let's assume that two parties agree on	No. Whatever clauses and terms existed in this contract, a second contract between the parties could modify it to remove such a clause, or to directly make such an amendment, or to annul the contract entirely. You can make it a requirement that amendments be unanimous among the parties (as opposed to e.g. unilateral, allowing one party to make certain changes, variously without approval or without notice). Such a clause may also be unenforceable for another reason, but this doesn't fit any of the general points for unenforceability, except perhaps being against public policy if a jurisdiction happened to regulate contracts to that degree.	Is there any way I can defend myself against penalties when mistakes are made in my favor? Another option, in a similar vein to your suggestions, is to make a contemporaneous record of the conversations. Then send an email* to the public official detailing what was said and agreed, along with a request that they reply with any observations or amendments within a certain time frame. That way you have a date-stamped document properly addressed to the other party to use as evidence or leverage. *or a recorded delivery letter etc	To form a contract, you must have: Intention to create legal relations Agreement Consideration Legal Capacity Genuine Consent Legality of Objects On the face of it, Alice and Bob's agreement meets these criteria so it is a legally binding contract and Alice would have every prospect of success in a legal action for breach of contract. Specifically: by writing out and signing the agreement they are showing an intention to be legally bound what they have each agreed to do is vey clear; more than many I have seen both parties have provided consideration: dog walking and money there is no suggestion that either was legally incapable of forming a contract genuine consent refers to them actually agreeing what they though they agreed, for example if Alice asked Bob to walk her dog (meaning the Great Dane) and Bob agreed (meaning the Jack Russell) there has not been genuine consent dog walking and paying money are both legal	Yes A software license is just a contract and parties to a contract are free to agree whatever terms they wish under the doctrine of freedom to contract. Government can restrict what terms can be used in a contract either in general (e.g. for being against public policy) or specifically (e.g. by requiring wages be paid in money). None of the terms you mention fall foul of any restrictions I know of.	Depends on the NDA Just like any other contract, it does what it says it does. You could draft the NDA either way.	Can the HOA compel payment? Yes, at least from the standpoint of unjust enrichment or quantum meruit. That is because the resident obtains some benefit(s) from the HOA's activity & expenses, such as the maintenance of common areas and other items that advance the common good of the community. However, a drastic or arbitrary increase in invoices might not be enforceable, especially if these are unreasonable. The HOA would need to persuade in court that the resident accepted or would have knowingly and willfully accepted such drastic change. HOA bylaws: Are they enforceable absent a contract? If by bylaws you mean something other than bills, the question would depend on the substance & scope of those bylaws as well as the HOA's/resident's jurisdiction. It is noteworthy that a written & signed contract is oftentimes unnecessary. There is the notion of "implicit contract" to refer to rights and duties that can be inferred from the parties' conduct and the expectations that can be inferred therefrom. This notion of implicit contract is common in situations where there is no written document that reflects the parties' intent in the relation they willfully enter.	In general, you cannot neither change contracts nor restrict/nullify other people's rights by your acts alone. The people who hired you personally have a contract with you, not with your LLC. So, if someone has a claim against you, then their claim should not be contingent of your LLC going bankrupt or not; they have a right to have their damages restored by you (who was the entity they hired). Otherwise, fraud/liability delinquency would be trivial: get debts on your name and, when the things get difficult, create a shell LLC and let it go bankrupt.	Do you have a contract? It depends on the website’s terms but almost certainly not. It is standard practice in e-commerce terms and conditions that your selecting “buy” and giving the vendor money does not create a contract; you are merely making an offer that the vendor can accept or reject. For example, Amazon’s terms are clear that the contract only comes into existence when they dispatch the goods, until then they are free to cancel your order and return your money. Here the vendor rejected the offer. Is this false advertising? Maybe. It would depend on the specifics of the ad and whether, overall, a reasonable person would be mislead or deceived. It’s possible you misunderstood but that doesn’t necessarily make it misleading or deceptive. I misunderstand a lot of things; that doesn’t mean they were objectively misleading or deceptive. Notwithstanding, a business does not have to make good on false advertising. An incorrect advertised price does not force the business to anccept offers of that price. It may force a correction and may require the item to not be sold until the price is corrected and it may expose the business to fines, but it does not give anyone the right to buy at that price.
Why do gyms in the US want their customers to fill out a waiver, rather than just having a sign on the wall about the T&Cs? Whenever you participate in a gym or some other related facility such as a rock climbing gym, the business forces you to fill out an annoying long waiver where you promise not to sue them if you accidentally kill yourself with a barbell. But why is this the case? Couldn't the gym just hang a giant "you may die if you enter this door" sign in the front and absolve themselves of all responsibility? I've been a member of several gyms when I lived in Europe and never had to sign a waiver, so I do know its legally possible in some jurisdictions.	A signed waiver provides more definitive proof of knowledge and consent than a sign posted on a wall.	I was told that when you sign something in the UK, then it is your signature, no matter what name you are using. So if you sign a contract with my name, then it's your signature and you are bound by the contract. Things might be invalid because you signed and not me. For example, if you sign a contract selling my car in my name, then that contract is not valid. If some document needs signatures of two witnesses, and you sign with your name, then with my name, then there are no two signatures. As far as I know, signing under a false name is not in itself criminal, but might very well be supporting fraud, for example, and might therefore be illegal. The contract for the sale of my car, signed by you using my name, would very likely be part of fraud and therefore criminal.	There are not enough facts to draw a conclusion First, it’s not clear that the document you signed amounts to a contract. For example, what consideration did the school give you in return for the permission you gave them? Providing you with an education doesn’t count - they were legally obliged to do that already. If it is a contract then whether and how it can be revoked would depend on the terms of that contract witch I’m guessing you don’t have a copy of. Notwithstanding, as a minor, you have the right to void the contract until a reasonable time after you turn 18. Even if it is now many years since that happened, it might be reasonable since you only just discovered the website. If it isn’t a contract, then it would be revocable at any time. Practicalities Make a fuss and they may take the photos down even if they are not obliged to. They presumably have plenty of photos of kids who aren’t you and aren’t complaining and if you make it so it’s easier to change the website than to deal with you, thy’ll change the website. I suspect their inertia is because they once paid a web developer to create the site, it has never since been updated, they don’t know how to do it, and they don’t want to have to pay someone to find out. Otherwise, why would they have photos of ex-students rather than current students? If so, an offer by you to cover the costs, might solve your problem.	You are entitled to at least see, and probably get a copy of, any document you sign. If you insist, they will have to show you or give you a copy. It may well be that they are supposed to give you a copy even if you do not ask. But if you are going to insist, allow a bit of extra time at such appointments. If they describe the document, even in rather general terms, your signature is probably binding, unless they have significantly misrepresented the document. If they tell you it is consent to be treated and it is actually an agreement to purchase a timeshare, that would be fraud and the document would not be valid, but that would be very unlikely. There might be some provision that you do not like, but such agreements are usually fairly standard, and also usually not very negotiable if you want service at that office. Still, it is better practice to at least look over and get a copy of any document you agree to.	This is called the "waiver trap," and it can be quite harsh indeed. Rule 8 and Rule 12 require a defendant to assert most affirmative defenses almost immediately -- either in their answer or in either a motion to dismiss or a motion for judgment on the pleadings. Failure to assert them does indeed result in a waiver of the defense. For instance, in Hunter v. Serv-Tech, the defendant filed a motion to dismiss based on defects in service of the complaint. The defendants' motion purported to "reserve the right" to challenge personal jurisdiction, as well, but did not actually move for dismissal on that basis. After the service issue was resolved, the defendants actually moved to dismiss based on personal jurisdiction, but the court denied the motion, saying that Rule 12 requires an actual assertion and argument in support of the defense: The Court is aware that the outcome it reaches today is a harsh one, especially in light of the fact that it appears that, absent waiver, this motion might well be granted. But the Court is duty-bound to apply the law as it is written, and as written the Rules enact a policy of requiring all 12(b)(2)-(5) defenses to be made by motion, once, prior to filing an answer. Given this policy, Offshore’s “reservation” language is not sufficient to preclude waiver. So the court acknowledges that the defendant had a winning defense, but it must nonetheless continue to litigate. The rule is applied quite strictly in cases involving Rule 12(b)(2)-(5) defenses. There is quite a bit more wiggle room for other affirmative defenses, i.e., defenses that allow the defendant to escape liability regardless of whether his conduct was wrongful, but it still remains quite dangerous to omit any available defense from your first responsive pleading. See, e.g., Am. Nat. Bank of Jacksonville v. Fed. Deposit Ins. Corp., 710 F.2d 1528, 1537 (11th Cir. 1983) ("In any case, we need not consider these points since SFC waived its right to advance the statute of limitations defense by its failure to assert this affirmative defense in any pleading filed below in compliance with Fed.R.Civ.P. 8(c)."). As a practical matter, then it is not usually sufficient to simply say "I disagree" in response to a claim, unless your defense amounts to either a denial that the facts supporting the claim are true or a denial that the facts as alleged creates a cause of action. If you intend to assert an affirmative defense – such as personal jurisdiction, statute of limitations, failure of consideration, accord and satisfaction, immunity, etc. – you must say so clearly. So if your first responsive pleading is an answer, it is typically sufficient to simply say, "The claim is barred by the statute of limitations." But if your first responsive pleading is a motion to dismiss, you need to both assert and argue your defense; otherwise, you risk waiving it as in Hunter. Note, though, that there are some affirmative defenses that are not waived by failing to assert them immediately. Failure to join a necessary party, for instance, can be asserted at any time up until trial, and subject-matter jurisdiction can be raised at basically any time at all.	Is UPS allowed to take my money and business without intention to fulfill its side of the transaction? No. The company's belated change of mind constitutes breach of contract, and its subsequent refusal to give you a refund completes the prima facie elements of fraud and/or unjust enrichment. The company's acceptance of your package & money and its subsequent act of sending your package to NC strike the applicability of its clause on Refusal of Service (see the link provided in the other answer). The blanket term of "among other reasons" is hardly enforceable at that point. In particular, the existence of a lawsuit between the recipient and the company further weakens any merits of the company's belated change of mind. That is because, by virtue of that lawsuit, the company currently has to deliver to that same recipient other packages anyway. Thus, the company cannot allege that delivering your package "is unsafe or economically or operationally impracticable". Also, since you are the one who paid for the service, the company cannot withdraw on grounds of "the person or entity responsible for payment is not in good standing".	I can answer for the U.S., if that's helpful. The general rule, in the United States, is that covenants not to compete are enforceable as long as they are reasonable. What constitutes "reasonable" varies from state to state. Factors considered generally include: What kind of actual harm will come to the business if you go to a competitor? In other words, is this rote language they include in every contract, or did they put it in yours because you know all the secret formulas and have the customer list memorized? Is it reasonable in time, location, and scope? Something preventing you from taking any job anywhere in the United States for ten years won't be enforceable; something preventing you from taking a job with the exact same title in the same industry in the same town for the next six months might be. The general rule at common law was that covenants not to compete were unenforceable restraints of trade; the fact that they're enforceable at all is later law created by each jurisdiction, and that means it's going to vary based on your specific jurisdiction. If you want to know whether it's okay to take a specific job based on a specific non-compete you signed, you will need to talk to a legal professional licensed in your jurisdiction--and even she may not be able to tell you for sure.	Financial institutions in the US are subject to regulations that restrict what sorts of things non-licensed employees can talk about with clients and advice they can give about structuring accounts and payments in ways that might avoid triggering money laundering alarms. I think this employee was being cautious about getting into a gray area and phrased the reason they couldn't talk about it poorly. The reason they were restricted from giving you an answer could be a legality, but not necessarily because they are giving you legal advice.
Can I be sued for denying a tenant on the basis of income? I am a first-time landlord in Philadelphia, PA, USA looking to rent out my condo. As would be expected, I am looking to rent to tenants who are financially secure and wouldn't have any issue paying the rent. Ideally, I would like the tenants combined income to be at least 2x the monthly rent (3x being preferable). My question is, can I be sued for denying tenants explicitly because of their income? Or do I need to deny them for another reason? Or should I just ghost them? Not sure what the right approach here is, as both of the last two suggestions just seem cruel.	It is illegal in Philadelphia to discriminate on the basis of the source of income, under the Fair Practices Ordinance, e.g. section 8. The Fair Housing ordinance is here, and as you can see there is no prohibition against requiring a certain level of income as a qualification to rent (nor is there any at the state level: here are the prohibited bases for discrimination at the state level).	There are two separate issues here. Firstly, the deposit. Any deposit is required by law to either be placed in an approved deposit scheme provider at the start of any tenancy, or be insured with a provider. Either way, the landlord (or their letting agent) is required to issue the tenant with certain prescribed information within a certain period, as well as meet a few other requirements. Failing to do this can result in the landlord having to return the deposit and pay a fine to the tenant - if the tenant is willing to take him to court. If the landlord has done everything by the book, they don't owe you anything. (If they've paid the deposit into a scheme, then they will not receive any interest, as it's kept by the scheme provider to pay for their services.) Secondly, the renewal fee. These are legal and commonplace. However, you're never obliged to renew your tenancy, as if the fixed term expires and you don't leave, then it automatically becomes a statutory periodic tenancy (often called a "rolling tenancy"). With a periodic tenancy, you can leave by giving one month's notice in writing; or your landlord can request that you leave by issuing a section 21 notice, which gives you two months to depart or face legal action. If you tell the landlord that you would like to change to a periodic tenancy when the current fixed term ends, then no-one has to do anything (though the letting agency may charge you an admin fee). The landlord cannot impose a new tenancy agreement, but they can issue a section 21 notice. Or, as you suggest, you can request a longer fixed term. This provides more security for you and the landlord - though it makes it harder to leave early, as you're potentially liable for the rent for the whole term.	The tenant wouldn't be involved in this at all. The tenant rents from the landlord, and the landlord gives them an account number where the tenant sends the money every month. How would the tenant be involved with you? Actually, if I was the tenant and I was told to pay the rent to some third party, that would be the reddest of all red flags to me. As a landlord, you buy insurance that covers exactly that situation. It's called "rent guarantee insurance". It's cheaper, and the insurance company doesn't pay enormous sums up front.	Bizarrely, it depends on where you live in Kentucky. There is a law, the Uniform Residential Landlord and Tenant Act (KRS 383.500 to 383.705) which states limits on residential leases (otherwise, the matter would be governed by the terms of the contract and common law). The state didn't enact those laws as enforceable in the state, it "made them available" for cities, counties and urban-county governments to adopt unmodified (or not). So it depends in part on whether your locale adopted the law. Assuming it did, in the definitions, (13)"Security deposit" means an escrow payment made to the landlord under the rental agreement for the purpose of securing the landlord against financial loss due to damage to the premises occasioned by the tenant's occupancy other than ordinary wear and tear. (emphasis added) That would mean that they can't take the cost of carpet cleaning, painting etc. out of your security deposit. §383.595 (again, if applicable) states the obligations of the landlord, so he must Maintain in good and safe working order and condition all electrical, plumbing, sanitary, heating, ventilating, air-conditioning, and other facilities and appliances, including elevators, supplied or required to be supplied by him So it depends on whether the URLTA was enacted in your jurisdiction. This page indicates where that is the law, and also urges you to read the lease.	The statute provides that "No lease or other rental agreement shall impose any interest or penalty for failure to pay rent until thirty days after such rent shall have been due." Mass. Gen. Law ch. 186 § 15B(1)(a)(iii). It would seem that if the rent is fully paid before the thirty days are up, there is no longer a "failure to pay rent" and so no late fee to be paid. I have searched and have found no caselaw providing a different interpretation of the issue, but I am not a lawyer and this, of course, is not legal advice.	Your question is not particularly clear, but it sounds like you're describing a situation where: The tenant doesn't pay the rent The landlord files an action to evict the tenant, and The tenant files a request for a jury trial. The act of filing for a jury trial doesn't guarantee that the tenant won't be evicted, but it will likely make the eviction process more time-consuming and expensive for the landlord. I'm assuming the tenant is entitled to a jury trial--otherwise this would be useless as a stalling tactic. In that case, the question you really want answered is, can the landlord force the tenant to waive any right to a jury trial by contract, for example in the lease? In California, the answer is no. The linked document suggests that you may be able to specify some form of ADR, which would avoid the expense of a jury trial, but the California courts won't let you get away with a straight jury trial waiver.	Just think of the subtenant cum owner as two separate people with two separate roles. Tenant = T Subtenant = ST Old owner = OO New Owner = NO The rights of the tenant vis-avis the new owner will be informed by the lease and the local laws. Generally, if the sale happens in the middle of the existing lease, the NO is obligated by the terms, as is the T. NO cannot just kick T out, and T cannot just break the lease. The lease may say what could happen and local laws will apply. Likewise, ST has whatever contract with T that previously existed. Pretend NO and ST are different people. If T owes NO $1000 per month, and ST owes T $400 a month, that continues even though ST and NO are the same person. Depends on what kind of dispute. See above. All contracts continue, subject to whatever the lease with the original owner and the subtenancy agreement say abut modifying or breaking the lease and sublease. Local laws apply. Note, if the subtenancy was "off the books" or was done when not allowed by the original owner, and if it was not in a place that the local law says owners cannot deny subleasing, then tenant might not have any protection. ST, now that he is owner could just move out and stop paying. On the other hand, even if he is the owner, he cannot just say "I am the owner now, so I am moving back in for free" because the original lease gave the tenant use of the whole property. But ST could just drop out because T always owed OO, and now NO, the full rent. Do you mean if rather than sublease, they were both on the original lease? Interesting, but just imagine it as the obligations before the sale = the obligations after the sale. I don't know though. There are some tax implications for an owner occupied rental.	she immediately stated that I need to provide 60 days notice She is wrong. See Minnesota statute 504B.135(a). Absent any agreement that supersedes the statute, the landlord cannot unilaterally stretch the notice period to 60 days. Is it legal for a landlord to say my rent is due 5 days earlier than we had verbally agreed? Is it legal for a landlord to do this right after I tell them that I am planning on moving out? No. The lanlord cannot unilaterally alter the implied contract that exists between you two, including the pattern of you paying rent on the 6th of the month. To prove in court that this was indeed the pattern, it suffices to show the receipts your landlord has the statutory obligation to provide to you immediately upon making each one of your payments. See 504B.118. The landlord is just "making sure" you will not recommend her to other prospective tenants.
Does an HOA have a legal duty to treat all members equally? Suppose several members of a community put up landscaping lighting along their driveway. Some time later a member files a request to place similar lighting along their own driveway, but is denied because of 'bad blood' in the neighborhood. Does the HOA have a legal right to make biased decisions based on the personal feelings of the board, or do they have a legal duty to treat all members equally? Could the denied member have a legal case against the HOA for discrimination (based on personal feelings, not protected status)?	Yes, an HOA has a duty to treat all members equally You have my condolences. Dealing with an HOA board and/or fellow residents can be frustrating and exasperating. Unfortunately, as a practical matter, the high cost of legal advice often mean boards can ignore the law. In Pennsylvania, as everywhere, the Board of an HOA has a fiduciary relation to the owners. Because they are a fiduciary the Board has a legal duty to run the HOA for the benefit of the owners, not themselves or their friends. As the PA statutes puts it, the Board "shall perform their duties...in good faith...in the best interests of the association..." The duty to act "in good faith" is usually interpreted as including a duty to "treat all community members equally..." (For more on "fiduciary," "good faith" and "equal treatment" see here, here and here.) Whether you are being treated equally depends on the particular facts of your situation, and on how exactly PA courts have interpreted PA law. While you might be able to find a good answer on line, chances are you'll need to talk to a PA attorney with experience in condo law. You should also check your condo's governing documents. They may contain specific provisions about how decisions about additions such as lighting are to be handled.	Providing the antenna was installed in accordance with the law it's hard to see what basis they could either void their lease or seek damages. The antenna poses no risk to health (non-ionising RF radiation is harmless) and you have no rights in any view it may be blocking there is no damage. The only thing that I can see is if there was misrepresentation at the time the lease was formed. That is, the developer knew that there was going to be an antenna and specifically said there wouldn't be. This falls flat if a) they never mentioned antennas or b) the decision to install it was made after the lease was formed.	Your rights notwithstanding, the government has the power to do such things under appropriate circumstances. First, you would have to be in violation of some ordinance, for instance in Columbus OH you are a violator if the grass is over 12". This should generate a notice informing you what the issue is and giving a deadline for remedy. If you don't comply by the deadline, they are then empowered to send out guys with tools, and the city will bill you for the work. You could call them and ask what the deal is. They might say "We put the notice on your gate", or "we mailed it to you". From a legal POV, the onus is on them to be sure that you're notified. It would be a good idea to verify that this isn't a scam. [Addendum] Bryan TX kindly provides a video about code enforcement, and gives a link where you can go directly to the section of interest (starting 0:43). Your description of the situation is at variance with what they say is the law (12"; 7 day advance notice whereafter they will correct the violation. They also say no notice is required for second violation within a year; $100 administration fee added to costs; lien will be placed on property if unpaid). I assume that your back yard is publicly visible: they recognize that "when the area observed is plainly visible, from a vantage point where the Code Officer has the right to be there, there is no reasonable expectation of privacy". That could include visible from a neighbor's property if the inspector has permission from the neighbor to be there. Otherwise, there's a simmering 4th Amendment problem (assuming that they didn't get a search warrant).	I take that to mean that section 14 alone should not be construed to give a department the power to sue under sub section (1), nor the ability to be sued under sub section (2). Rather, if some other law, or some other section of that law confers such a power or ability, section 14 indicates how the power should be used, that is, gives the proper procedure. But if no such other law is in effect, section 14 alone won't do. If the law has simply said: civil proceedings under this Act by the Crown may be instituted by (a) the appropriate government department in its own That might have been construed to grant such powers to every "appropriate " department, which apparently was not desired.	A store owner may ban any person from that store that s/he chooses, provided that the ban is not for a reason forbidden by applicable anti-discrimination law, such as banning all people of a particular race or religion. That does not appear to be the case in this situation, from the description. Since this is a franchise, the store has a local owner who is not the chain company. The company will have a franchise contract with the local owner, which will specify in what ways the company can and cannot control the store. They might or might not have the power to require the store owner not to ban you, or not to engage in verbally abusive behavior in the store. In any case, you, or any third party, cannot force them to exercise such power, even if they have it under such a contract. It is very unlikely that law enforcement the authorities will treat the verbal harassment as a crime based on a customer report. You could publicize the situation, as by an online review, which might cause the chain company to take some action, for fear of bad publicity. But be careful. You have already learned that your initial understanding of the situation was significantly incomplete. If any public statements you make are untrue, and harmful to reputation, you could be accused of defamation and sued, perhaps successfully.	An example of where this is not allowed is Seattle, WA. Municipal code SMC 12A.06.025 states It is unlawful for any person to intentionally fight with another person in a public place and thereby create a substantial risk of: Injury to a person who is not actively participating in the fight; or Damage to the property of a person who is not actively participating in the fight. B. In any prosecution under subsection A of this Section 12A.06.025, it is an affirmative defense that: The fight was duly licensed or authorized by law; or The person was acting in self-defense. You can see from adjacent sections that "mutual combat" is not legal. I recognize that there is this meme about Seattle, but this is a distortion of an incident when the police turned a blind eye to a fight. We have police issues, no doubt: there is nothing legal about such fights. Of course, for a licensed event, you can "fight". Of course the potential legality depends on how mutual combat is defined. Illinois v. Austin 133 Ill.2d 118 and citations therein, subsequently Illinois v. Thompson, 821 NE 2d 664 define it thus: Mutual combat is a fight or struggle which both parties enter willingly or where two persons, upon a sudden quarrel and in hot blood, mutually fight upon equal terms and where death results from the combat. Similar death-definitions are found in Donaldson v. State, 289 SE 2d 242, Iowa v. Spates, 779 NW 2d 770. The law looks askance of such behavior. For the sake of clarity, a term other than "mutual combat" would be preferable.	This is a fun one. I don't have any particular domain knowledge about this question. So this one is just a guess. My answer is strictly from a practical standpoint. If I were faced with this situation in real life, what would I do? (Technical point: I feel the vagueness of the language, "Is he allowed to" allows me to answer this way.) My assumptions: My assumptions are that: The cost of consulting an attorney on the matter or filing a law suit would likely exceed the combined total cost of the bike and the lock. Usually, the law follows what "feels right" and what makes common sense to the average person. Usually. Not always. But usually. (Legal principles: "Equity follows the law." and "Equity does not aid a party at fault." See this reference.) What I would do: So, I would do the following... (if I were in the U.S.) I would simply cut the bike lock and repossess my bike (unilaterally) if and only if all the following conditions were true in the situation: I could confirm without any doubt that the bike in question is actually my bike and not just another one that looks just like it. I could not find anyone around who looks like they might be the owner of the lock or the other bike. If I could find the owner of either the lock or the bike it is highly likely there was some mistake and the situation could be resolved directly with them. There are no law officers nearby. If so, I would engage them in helping me rectify the matter. If they said it was a "civil matter" and refused to get involved, I would proceed to the next item on this list. I had the tools handy and available to cut or break the lock. If any of the above conditions were false, I would flag down the nearest law officer or call one to the scene to help resolve the issue. Any other approach would seem impractical to me on the basis of my above assumption numbered 1. If I were anywhere outside the U.S., I would involve the local authorities without considering the unilateral repossession option.	Yes The directors of a company have a fiduciary duty to act within the law for the benefit of their shareholders - not to their customers, not to the government, not to the environment and not to the public. A lawsuit against the company will incur financial loss irrespective of if it is won or lost. It is difficult to see how it is in the shareholder's interest for the company to be enabling the funding of a lawsuit against it.
Why is it difficult to import 5-HTP (a form of Tryptophan) into some countries? 5-Hydroxytryptophan(WP) is sold in various places around the world as a dietary supplement that may boost serotonin levels, with possible benefits as a sleep aid, antidepressant, appetite suppressant, and antidepressant. Everyone appears to respond to 5-HTP differently (and there are woefully few published standardized general trials on the amino acid's function), but I've found that my own body clock seems to respond quite positively to 5-HTP, with no noticeable side effects, and that taking 100mg a day for a week or two makes it much easier for my body to realign back to "wake up early in the morning" after my sleep cycle has been knocked around for an extended period. (Sample size of 1. YMMV.) Unfortunately, living in Australia, I've always noticed an extra bit of friction whenever I've ordered 5-HTP online (I've never seen it available for purchase anywhere locally in NSW). Some websites will notify me that "this product cannot be shipped to your country" at checkout time or list that they do not ship 5-HTP to Australia in their store policy. A few websites don't make much noise on the subject, accept my order, and ship it off Some sites will feature large Australian flags, draw attention to the fact that they're using AUD$, and drop similar hints, but won't actually say they ship to Australia. A few rare sites explicitly claim that they ship to AU, and don't make much fuss about it. Why the... weirdness? I understand the FDA banned L-Tryptophan after linking it to the 1989 Eosinophilia-Myalgia Syndrome(WP) outbreak, then relaxed the ban in 2001, allowing the use of L-Tryptophan (and 5-Hydroxytryptophan, aka oxytriptan). What happened over the last 19 years though? Every checkout experience feels like an event horizon, where I know something impactful happened but I can't find or trace the source of the impact. While I obviously have a bias towards understanding the friction I'm experiencing here in Australia, having a worldwide view would also be very interesting too. The only reference I've been able to turn up (mostly due to subject ignorance) is https://www.erowid.org/smarts/tryptophan/tryptophan_law.shtml - an old-looking page (apparently last modified 2015) that notes that 5-HTP is "somewhat controlled" in Australia, but doesn't cite why. Some online stores publish similar-sounding positive noises about 5-HTP's controlled status and availability. Wikipedia has no section on *tryptophan's worldwide availability. I remember reading at some point (I forget exactly where from unfortunately) that Australia generally accepts/allows small quantities of 5-HTP to be imported for personal use, and blocks/turns away larger quantities to prevent resale. I'm curious as to the historical narrative behind why this distinction is made. Fundamentally speaking, though, why is there friction? If possible, actual legal citations and references would be awesome. When I buy 5-HTP, it would be nice to not have to keep making exceptions to my rule about always hunting for whoever has the best going price at any given moment in time. It would be cool if I could online stores concrete references and assuage their fears and concerns.	From the legal perspective, the question is whether the substance is legal in Australia. The legal root of the matter is the Therapeutic Goods Administration. Dosages above 100 mg are on "Schedule 4" meaning they require a prescription. There are also apparently state regulations. In Queensland, there is an amendment to the Drugs Misuse Regulation 1987 to ensure that the substance 5-Hydroxy tryptophan (5-HTP) is captured in Schedule 2 with the exception of preparations that contain 100mg or less of 5-HTP per dosage unit Schedule 2 is "Substances, the safe use of which may require advice from a pharmacist and which should be available from a pharmacy or, where a pharmacy service is not available, from a licensed person". The fact that it is very difficult to verify what the current regulations are may explain the "friction", which may make online purchases difficult. The underlying reason for government regulation is to keep people safe. Politics SE is an appropriate place to debate the balance between safety and usefulness.	Does the said law (or any other law or treaty) prohibit Indians to get the pre-natal gender screening test done outside India (in any country where this is legal)? YES, in theory but I cannot find any relevant case law where this has been considered by the court. Section 23(3) of the Pre-Conception and Pre-natal Diagnostic Techniques (Prohibition of Sex Selection) Act 1994 (PCPNDT) creates the offence for non-medical practitioners etc: Any person who seeks the aid of any [medical practioner etc] or any other person for sex selection or for conducting pre-natal diagnostic techniques on any pregnant women for the purposes other than those specified in sub-section (2) of section 4, he shall, be punishable with imprisonment for a term which may extend to three years and with fine which may extend to fifty thousand rupees for the first offence and for any subsequent offence with imprisonment which may extend to five years and with fine which may extend to one lakh rupees. And section 4(1) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) provides for extra-territorial jurisdiction for any offences committed by: any citizen of India in any place without and beyond India... Normally, criminal justice action would only be considered once the parties returned to India, but note that section 299 of the Code of Criminal Procedure 1973 allows for trials in absentia. However I cannot find any relevant case law to say whether this has actually happened in this type of scenario.	In the U.S., Law enforcement favors going after the distribution of narcotics over the use. Going after the users just means dealers will seek out new customers whereas going after dealers means eliminating the supply chain. And Law Enforcement would much rather have a dealer flip on a manufacturer at that. The bigger the fish they bring in, the more damage they can do to the supply chain. The U.S. has recently been moving towards treating the use of illicit substances as a disease rather than an crime, especially when the use is tied to addiction. To this end, the current trend is to get the users to clinics that can specialize in breaking addiction rather than jailing a user. Prisons and jails do not have a strong track record for this, but they do have programs for substance abuse. The U.S. also favors plea bargins rather than taking every case to trial. 90% of all legal cases are settled out of court with a negotiation between the prosecution and the defense. Usually this acts in a "you scratch my back" arrangement where the offender will plea to a lesser charge and in exchange, help the investigators find that bigger fish. This may be testifying against them or giving them the supplier or even acting as a mole. This also benifits the state as the prosecution doesn't have to pay for all the costs of arguing a case a trial. For example, if the cops bust a user, he will be charged with Possession, but they might drop charges if the user can name the dealer and will testify against him. If the cops bust the dealer, the dealer is charged with Possession (with intent to sell), but if he's low on the totem pole, they can ask him to name the supplier he gets his goods and testify against the supplier and in exchange, they drop the charge to Possession. They will be less inclined to bring this fact up, but Possession is easier to prove in court than Possession (With Intent to Sell) because the former requires finding drugs on the person and his property. The later needs to prove that the drugs were not for personal use but instead for distribution to others. Almost universally, anyone convicted on mere possession charges probably did something a lot worse. Law enforcement tends to charge as many crimes as possible... as long as they can prove guilt on one, they can put someone away for a while. Al Capone famously went to one of the most notorious prisons in the United States for Tax Evasion (a very white collared crime that typically results in fines and very minimum jail time. While we're on the subject, the IRS has a 98% conviction rate, and ties with Secret Service (the guys who protect the President) for most successful Federal Law Enforcement Agency, to give you an idea of where the priorities lie in the United States. All Federal Law Enforcement is ridiculously good, to the point that bringing charges against anyone is almost as good as saying they're guilty). Another reason Use of drugs isn't pushed is that, well, producing that evidence is difficult. The common user bust is drinking and driving (since alcohol is legal in the U.S., use based crimes are the top level of enforcement. You legally cannot hold a firearm in the U.S. while drunk, even if you could do so while sober). A brethalizer is built to measure the amount of alcohol is in one's system and if it is over the limit for what is safe. Most illicit drug tests don't do this and rather look for chemicals in general and will ping if there's any trace... even if the last use was a month ago. Certain substances linger for a while, especially if they can deposit in hair folicle. You could be six months sober and still ping the test. Other issuses include drugs that contain components of legal substances. Opiods (the big problem drug right now) are manufactured from the Poppy Plant... which also is grown for legal consumable products. There are cases where the Opiod tests pings positive on people who have consumed Poppy-Seed Bagels (perfectlly legal and quite common) for breakfast the day of the test. Other tests aren't reliable and will give a false positive from time to time. Edit: Typically, Possession of a controlled substance assumes you will use it. Reasonable Doubt is harder to make for having the stuff then it is for using it. Someone under the influence could claim they were drugged and law enforcement would have to prove that they weren't to convict (There's actually a known problem where law enforcement agents can get dosed by accident while handling contraband evidence. There was an episode of CSI: Miami where one character had this happen to her... and they realized where the drugs were hidden in a warehouse she served a warrant on but didn't find any evidence. DVD extras featured a police consultant who explained that the whole sequence was thought up because it happened to her for real.). Having the stuff in your possession is much more difficult as they have to show you had it (someone slipping it into your pocket without your knowledge is your job to prove). In the U.S., Prosecution Discretion means that the Prosecutor can choose not to press the case for any number of reasons, they don't have the resources to fight it, to they don't think they can win with the evidence they have, to political motives (they don't agree with the law... this can be risky depending on the nature of the crime). Typically a simple possession charge where the amount is clearly small enough that it's only for personal use and no other crimes are charged wouldn't be worth the amount of resources to fully prosecute. TO give an example, while Marijuana is legal in the State of Colorado, it's still illegal under Federal Law, so smoking for recreational use in Colorado is still a crime, but not one enforced by the State of Colorado but the Department of Justice (U.S. Federal Law enforcement department... usually). Remember the Feds generally deal with bigger crimes than someone getting high under the bleachers while listening to Jimmy Hendrix, so it only really comes up if you did something bigger (kidnapping a girl, driving over state lines into Colorado, go to a school to get high under the bleachers while listening to Hendrix would get you a Federal Possession charge... but the real concern is the Kidnapping, not controlled drug use). And most crimes that occur in entirely one state, Feds are content to let those states deal with the problem and rarely get involved.	According to the information I was able to find, every zone, country, or even states, have their own taxation rules for sales made there. Correct. Well, in no way it's possible that small companies or individuals that sell products internationally deal with tax rules for each buyer, that would be a non-sense, and paying such taxes worldwide would be a nightmare not worth having a small business at all. You are required to comply with the law. If it is complicated, or difficult or expensive to do so then, it's complicated, difficult and expensive and you still have to do it. The answer is obvious: if it's not worth having a small business, don't have a small business. The main question, if someone buys a license from my web-site, is it considered a sale in the buyer's country/state which requires me to collect and pay some remote tax, or it's a purchase in my country/state which requires me to collect HST from that buyer? It depends on the law in both Canada and the destination country. In most cases, the sale will be an export sale from Canada (GST/HST exempt) and an import sale in the destination country - requiring you to comply with GST/HST obligations there. Another question is regarding invoices, I know that Canada requires certain information to be included into an invoice for sales in Canada. If my sales will be considered sales in a buyer's Country with some other rules, does it mean I have to manage tons of invoice templates? Yes. Let's say if my sales in UE exceed 30K EUR it looks like I need to register and pay VAT there. But what if I have less? Then you don't need to register and remit tax. Nor are you allowed to collect it from your customers. By the way, I have no idea what country in the Eurozone goes by the initials UE. In most jurisdictions, you need to register either when you reach the threshold in fact or reasonably expect to reach the threshold. Also in most, you can usually register even if you are below the threshold. For example, these are the rules for Australia. Anyone, please advice. Hire an accountant versed in international digital services. They will be able to give you the advice you need. They will also be able to recommend sales/payment platforms that can handle most of this for you (for a fee, of course).	In the US, it depends on why you are doing this, and how you go about performing the operation. There are approved devices and procedures, and there is the other stuff. In an emergency that is life-threatening or threatens severe debilitation, it is permitted for a physician to try an extreme measure – if the state has a "Right to Try" law. Otherwise, a review and official approval by the relevant IRB is required. The devices are regulated by the FDA, but the FDA does not regulate the practice of medicine, so the feds don't have a say in whether a procedure is allowed. Nevertheless, use of unapproved devices can be taken to be evidence of failing to meet the required standard of care, in the case of a malpractice suit or punitive action by the state regulatory board. There is no specific law prohibiting removing lots of organs and replacing them with prostheses, though arguable what happened was that the brain was removed (it's not that a replacement shell was built around the person). Ordinarily, intentionally "killing" a person is illegal (except in case of sanctioned execution or self-defense). There is zero case law that would tell us whether removing a brain from a body "kills" the person. Most likely, there would be a prosecution for unlawfully causing a death, and either the legislature would tune up the law w.r.t. the definition of "causing death", or the courts would do so.	Your terms and conditions must comply with the laws in: Your jurisdiction (California) Your customer's jurisdiction (each of the US states, Canadian provinces and ultimately countries and sub-jurisdictions in Europe) If they do they will generally be enforceable; if they don't then they will not be enforceable and you may be exposing yourself to civil and criminal sanctions. While not immediately relevant to you, Australian Consumer Law has such sanctions to goods sold into Australia from anywhere in the world; I am not familiar with other jurisdictions. With respect to your comment that you will not accept returns or refunds, this would expose you to potential fines in Australia of $220,000 for an individual or $1,100,000 for a corporation - under Australian Consumer Law returns and refunds are a consumer right. I strongly suspect that most of the jurisdictions you are selling into would take a similar position. A general "catch-all" like "to the extent permitted by law" may reduce the risk of being prosecuted but it would not eliminate it entirely. Again, in Australia, the provision is that you must not engage in deceptive and misleading conduct - merely suggesting that you will not give a refund even with the limitation above - may still be deemed "deceptive and misleading" if the court feels that a reasonable consumer might assume that they are not entitled to a refund. You need professional legal advice on this.	Article 8 is pretty clear. The fact that it is recommended to extend the draft to women indicates that there is a conflict needing resolution. A relevant case before the European Court of Human Rights ruled on this and found the law to violate articles 14 and 8 of the ECHR. They identify an exoneration from the tax under the Military-Service Exemption Tax Act sect. 4. Reading the judgment could be helpful (maybe you know the case). What I get from it is that there are a bunch of situation-specific details that could be applied (e.g. you have to first complain formally in-country before going to ECHR), and issues of disability level and the distinction between disability and illness. This gives a model for anyone to attempt to resist the tax, but only a change in the law will get rid of it.	Why would the FDA limit actionable material that may enhance treatment? Because the FDA has a bunch of regulations that say if you are going to sell a medical test you first have to prove that it is safe, accurate, and effective. The genome scan companies first had to prove that their genome scans were accurate and had sufficient quality controls built in. In addition, the typical results from a genome scan involve a lot of ambiguity, and probabilistic measurements of relative risk, so there was a huge question of whether the automated reports produced by these companies would actually be accurate, intelligible, and not promise too much or too little to the consumer. The company, Sure Genomics, in the article you linked too, apparently avoids this issue by having a physician review the report, and consult with the consumer. Other companies tried to completely automate the process and didn't include the physician consultation. As least one company, 23andMe, has, at least partially, worked out it's issues with the FDA and can provide medical reports on some conditions.
What legal action can you take if someone calls you a sex offender with no proof? Just went through a nasty custody battle and won sole custody and he has taken it upon himself to call my fiance a sexual abusive person to our 2 yr old child. He has blasted it on social media and even though he is blocked he keeps finding ways to try and accuse him. Is there anything we can do, we are so tired of dealing with this...	This is defamation, a civil matter, where you may sue the person who makes these statements. If you sue them, the question is whether accusing a person of sexually abusing a 2 year old would lower the person in the eyes of others, and the answer is "Yes, you don't even have to prove that there was actual harm" (this is know as per se defamation): it is both accusation of a crime and accusation of reprehensible moral conduct. Making the statement in public is all it takes – "public" means "someone other than the object of the accusation". The only defense is proving that the statement is true. Your attorney can advise you how much money you might awarded in a successful suit, also any downside to suing the ex. If you are playing defamation whack-a-mole, this probably involves getting an injunction against doing this again.	In principle, a verbal contract is just as binding as a written contract. The catch is that it can be difficult to prove what was said. Unless you have witnesses, it would just be your word against his. As DStanley says in the comments, if you have proof that you paid half -- canceled checks or receipts or whatever -- that would be evidence that there was some sort of agreement. Whether your daughter is allowed to drive the car on a specific day depends not just on who owns the car but who has legal custody of your daughter. If a friend of hers said that it is okay with him for her to drive his car to a wild party where there will be drugs and an orgy, the fact that he has full title to the car does not mean that her parents have no right to tell her she can't go! You didn't say what the custody arrangements are, but if you have full custody or shared custody, this would give you certain rights to tell her what she is and is not allowed to do.	There is no cognizable grounds for a criminal prosecution in those circumstances. There are also no cognizable grounds for Bob to deny paternity, or to bring a civil action against Alice. Bob will be obligated to pay child support and to have all of the responsibilities of an unmarried co-parent with Alice.	The simplest solution is to hire an attorney to do this for you. If you want to do it the hard way, you need to try to figure out why your motions were denied. For example, did you file proper motions, or did you just write on a piece of paper "I need all of Walmart's records"? Why do you think that a court will / should supply you with an Open Record (of what)? A real lawsuit is not like Judge Judy where you tell your story and hope the judge has sympathy on your plight. Did the judge say / write anything about why he is denying your requests?	Any google review would be hearsay. That means, it would be proof that someone posted a review, and what was written in the review, but it wouldn't be proof that any facts claimed in the review were true. As it is proof of posting, anyone who feels slandered could sue for slander and be successful (depending on circumstances). But trying to claim that the contents of a review is a true fact will fail. You can of course try to contact the person writing a review, and they might be willing to appear in court as a witness. That would make it a statement by a witness which would be taken seriously, and not just hearsay. Since lying in a court as a witness is a serious matter, someone posting a false review will very likely not be willing to appear in court for you.	Is it true that there has never been a single case It is tough to prove a negative. I am not going to completely parse the quote but please notice that the quote states "we couldn't find" and concludes that "it doesn't happen." Given these two pieces of information I do not conclude that there has never been a single case. Rather I conclude that the speaker in your quote could not find a case therefore he concluded that there has never been a single case. It's largely impossible to determine that there has never been a single such case. We can search published opinions but that barely scratches the surface of lawsuits that are filed. It is entirely possible that someone filed a suit which was quickly dismissed. The Act provides a defense, it does not bar lawsuits. Someone might get sick from food and not know where the food came from so they sue the provider. If this happens the provider may raise the Emerson Act as a defense and escape liability to the extent applicable. But again, we will never know because it's impossible to examine every lawsuit filed in this country.	Actually, he has been libelling you which is defamation in writing - slander is verbal defamation. Notwithstanding, if what he has done has or is likely to cause damage to your reputation and is a statement of fact that is not true then it is actionable. Neither name calling nor his opinion that you "are the worst person in the world" are statements of fact. Saying you left rotting food and that you threw garbage on the lawn are. You could sue for damages or seek an injunction requiring him to withdraw his statements and apologise, however, a better (and cheaper) first step would be to send a cease and desist letter. You can find templates online or pay a lawyer to send one. The latter is likely to scare the s@&t out of him and may be worth the money just for the satisfaction.	There are cases out there like Unnamed Petitioners v. Connors, State v. Unnamed Defendant, Williams v. Unnamed Defendant; there have been indictments of John Doe who was only identified via a DNA profile. Not knowing the actual name of a person wouldn't pose a problem per se, and it seems that when the name is not known, John or Jane Doe is generally filled in. There was in instance a year ago in the UK where rioters who refused to identify themselves, and prosecution decided to drop the case.
Who is responsible for the bull's damage? Bob owns and lives on a piece of land adjoining another, vacant one owned by Alice. There is a sheep fence between them which Bob has installed at his own expense (even though he legally could demand Alice to contribute). There is Rob who owns some cattle and Alice allows him to graze them on her land, despite that they know the fence won't necessarily keep the cattle in. One day one Rob's bull breaks the fence and makes his way onto Bob's land, causing some other minor damage too. Who is responsible for the fence and other damage caused by the bull? Alice? Rob? Both? Would the answer change if Rob was a close relative to Alice e.g. her adult son?	Rob is responsible. No Bull! Around the world, the law of wandering cattle depends on the details. New Zealand is no different. This case is covered by s 26 of the Impounding Act of 1955, Damages for Trespass. As you said, S 26(1)(d) says Bob is entitled to damages whenever his "land (whether fenced or unfenced) is situated in a city." This is different to the rest of the country, where animals must be fenced out. S 26(2) of the Impounding Act says the damage is owed by Rob, as the owner of the stock: (2) In any case where damages are payable under this section the amount of any damage shall be recoverable by action from the owner of the stock. It may be that Rob and Alice have some arrangement that Alice will indemnify Rob against any trespass damages. But that agreement does not change the underlying law; it only allows him to recoup his loses (by suing his mother, if necessary!). Added: Something fun to read Law professor Robert Ellickson studied how people actually resolve disputes over wandering cattle in Shasta county in northern California. There's a readable summary of what he found here. (The title of his book, "Order without law," sums up his main finding -- there are rules that are enforced, but those rules have little to do with the formal law or law enforcement.)	There are none. Damages against B’s clinic? A does not have a contract with B’s clinic. No duties nor rights without a contract. Damages against B? A does not have a contract with B. If there was a contract, we need details about it. Tort, § 823 Ⅰ BGB? No. B was neither negligent nor did he/she deliberately incur damage. Report B as criminal? A and B had consensual sexual intercourse. This consent (necessarily) comprises the risk of transmission. You cannot give “consent to facts” though. Yet here B had no knowledge of his/her contagiousness. He/she definitely did not deliberately infect A. Negligence is out of question, because there is no general expectation to get regularly tested before having sex with anyone.	Let's say the trustee runs into a situation where the beneficiary demands some action, and the trustee thinks this action is a really, really bad idea. Then the trustee can either say "no". Or the trustee can say "yes" and be liable (so if the action is a really bad idea then the trustee won't do this). The trustee can NOT say "yes if you sign this paper that I'm not liable for the result of this action", because the job of the trustee is to protect the beneficiary and he wouldn't be doing that.	Barring any specific statute the relevant law is the tort of negligence. To succeed Alice must prove Bob: had a duty to Alice, breached that duty by failing to conform to the required standard of conduct (generally the standard of a reasonable person), the negligent conduct was, in law, the cause of the harm to Alice, and Alice was, in fact, harmed or damaged. She will probably succeed on 1, 3 and 4 where she will struggle is with 2. It seems that Bob did everything a reasonable person could do to avoid the accident. The only possible hope is that not knowing that bridges freeze first might be something a qualified NZ driver should know and that he breached his duty by not knowing if that is something the judge considers reasonable. The traffic warning is irrelevant and untested (and untestable) hearsay and should be excluded from evidence.	You are 500km away and you neither intend to do her harm, nor are you personally doing her harm. You are not an accomplice by any means. You may, appropriately, feel a moral obligation to do as much as you can to help, but not doing everything that you wish you could does not make you an accomplice.	The State of California is not responsible for injuries committed by private citizens Sorry to hear about your friend. Jamal may have a case (although the scope is narrow and timeframes are strict and tight) if someone employed by the state didn't do what they should have done. There is a whole raft of rules and regulations surrounding child welfare and Jamal would need to demonstrate exactly what they did that they shouldn't have done or what they should have done that they didn't do to have any basis for a claim. You will note that there is an obligation to make assessments -if they didn't make an assessment, they might be liable; if they made the wrong assessment, they aren't. Contested child welfare cases are difficult - caseworkers and social worlkers are presented with a lot of contradictory information and outright lies and the law accepts that if they make a good faith attempt to do their job, they haven't done anything wrong even if they make the wrong call. As for the court "assuming" anything, that is simply not true. The court would have heard the evidence (contested and contradictory no doubt) and made a judgement based on that evidence. It may have been the objectively wrong judgement but it was a perfectly legal one. In any event, you can't sue the court for a wrong judgement, you can only appeal it to a higher court subject to the time limits and your ability to pay. As a practical matter, child protection services are generally chronically underfunded, understaffed and overworked as are the courts that deal with such cases. A typical caseworker might have to deal with 50-100 cases similar to your friend every week - that gives them 5-15 minutes to (partially) read the file and try to decide what's best for the child. Sad to say, your friend is one of the lucky ones - came out the other end with a good relationship with one of his parents, isn't dead, isn't a drug addict and isn't homeless. And no, you can't sue the state for things being the way they are: that's what the voters want because if it isn't they'd elect politicians who would change it.	You are describing a liability suit. My sense is that based on the facts you describe you will face two serious challenges to making a successful case. Damages and liability. In order to win a liability case, you must first establish that you have been damaged in some way. According to your facts, your damages are at best, the replacement value of a used controller. I'm guessing that's what, $20 or so? That doesn't cover the cost of an attorney's time to even begin to hear your version of the facts, much less give you advice or pursue a case for you. After you establish damages, you must prove the company is responsible or has some share of liability for causing your damages. Again, I think this is going to be an obstacle for you. Not placing a warning that the game will affect you by causing you to throw your controller and be mean to your mom would be unprecedented if you were to prevail. AFAIK.	None of this affects a claim of self-defense I've described elsewhere the things that do affect a self-defense claim in Wisconsin. These do not affect it. Protesters I'm not sure what you mean by this: the existence of protesters has nothing to do with a claim of self-defense. The standard for lethal self-defense is much higher than could be satisfied by simply being near an angry crowd. Specific actions of protesters could affect it, but you'd need to detail which actions you're referring to. Rittenhouse indicating intent to protect property from protests This might affect the claim if it were his property (which it was not). Section 939.48(1m)(ar) of Wisconsin law provides for a castle doctrine if, basically, the person has unlawfully broken into or is currently unlawfully breaking into the defendant's home, vehicle, or place of business. Since it was not his property, this defense doesn't apply.
Is there a limit to the number of trials on a criminal charge permitted due to hung juries? In a jury trial for a criminal charge, SCOTUS recently ruled that a guilty verdict must be unanimous. In (almost) every state a verdict to acquit a criminal defendant must also be unanimous. If a jury cannot reach a unanimous verdict (a.k.a. a hung jury) then the judge must declare a mistrial and the prosecutor can demand a new trial of the same defendant on the same charge. Are there any legal constraints on the number of times that a defendant can be retried following mistrials due to hung juries? Or is the only practical constraint the willingness of the prosecutor to expend government resources (and perhaps political capital) pursuing a conviction?	Are there any legal constraints on the number of times that a defendant can be retried following mistrials due to hung juries? No. A fairly recent case in Louisiana, for example, involved someone who had been tried perhaps half a dozen times resulting in a mix of hung juries and reversals of convictions on appeal. Or is the only practical constraint the willingness of the prosecutor to expend government resources (and perhaps political capital) pursuing a conviction? Yes. This is the only practical limitation.	How many indictments does it take for Donald Trump to be imprisoned? An unlimited amount. Imprisonment is usually authorized as a result of a conviction rather than from an indictment. Pretrial detention following an indictment but prior to a conviction is permitted, but discretionary in the judgment of the judge. Also, there is a right to post a judicially determined reasonable bond to obtain release from pretrial detention after one is indicted and before one is convicted in the vast majority of cases (including the ones that President Trump is facing). Can a person who is indicted, before running for president, become president? Yes. Indeed, the majority view of legal scholars (it is has never been tested in a real case) is that someone who is convicted and serving prison sentence can still become President if that is who the voters choose. What's the purpose of indicting Mr. Trump if indictments are only an accusation? An indictment is a pre-requisite to trying someone for a felony in federal court. To convict someone of a crime one needs to first indict them, then have a jury trial, and then have a jury unanimously vote to convict a person, before they can be convicted of a crime and sentenced for it. Even after conviction, there is a statutory (but not a constitutional) right to a direct appeal of that conviction to an appellate court. Also, an indictment is more than a mere accusation. An indictment in a determination of a grand jury that probable cause exists to believe that the person indicted committed the crime charged. In the federal court system grand juries are composed of 16 to 23 members and 12 members of the grand jury must concur in a decision to indict a defendant on a charge for there to be an indictment on that charge. This prevents people from enduring criminal prosecutions on charges that a majority of a grand jury finds are so baseless that there is not sufficient evidence to establish probable cause that the defendant committed that crime. The grand jury must base its decision to indict or not on actual evidence in support of the charges in the form of sworn witness testimony and exhibits, not just the allegations of the prosecutor. As a practical matter, the standards of professionalism in federal criminal prosecutions is so high that almost all charges sought by federal prosecutors from grand juries result in indictments on those charges (federal grand juries refuse to indict approximately one in 16,000 times). But, in state courts that use grand juries, which can't pick and choose only the best cases to prosecute, grand juries routinely refuse to indict defendants on a substantial share of charges brought to them by prosecutors (on the order of one in 20). One source notes: Statistical figures showing a higher prevalence of grand jury reluctance to follow the government in ages past are almost nonexistent. However, a table of felony arrests in New York County between 1900 and 1907 found on page 111 of the 1926 book The Prisoner at the Bar by Arthur Train provides some rare illumination. In those seven years, some 5,214 out of 57,241 people were arrested by the police on felony charges whom New York state grand jurors decided not to indict. Grand juries are especially likely to decline to indict defendants in cases involving celebrities, politicians, law enforcement officers, and other high profile cases with political implications. See also Kaeleigh Wiliams, "Grand Juries Should Not Hear Police Misconduct Cases: Grand Juries will Indict Anything, but a Police Officer" SLU Law Journal Online 79 (2021).	Yes, there are cases where refusing to respond to the question would be legal. The juror could plead the fifth – so long as he hasn't spilled the beans about what he is trying to protect – which provides for the protection from compelled self-incrimination (any incriminating statement that could be used against you in a criminal charge – civil liability doesn't count here). Anything that is said in voir dire is on the record and under oath. You are effectively witnessing against yourself. As stated on NOLO: Witnesses can assert the privilege against self-incrimination in civil proceedings as well as criminal ones, despite the seemingly limiting language of the Fifth Amendment. They can assert it in state or federal court, in a wide variety of proceedings (including trials, depositions, administrative law proceedings, and investigatory proceedings like grand jury hearings). . . . If, by answering, the witness could provide evidence that might aid the government in prosecuting him, then he has the right to refuse. There has to be evidence, though, that testimony would subject you to criminal charges. "What is your hair color?" obviously cannot subject you to criminal charges. "Have you ever driven while intoxicated?" Would only be incriminating while the Statute of Limitations has not passed. After that point, you have not 5th amendment protections for having driven under the influence because it will no longer subject you to criminal charges. Additionally, there are cases in which you could refuse to answer but the court could still compel you to answer. For instance, sometimes questions in voir dire get very personal. If jurors believe a question is too personal, they can try to refuse to answer on those grounds, let the judge know, and the judge would make the decision. If the judge decides they must answer, and they continued to refuse, the judge could hold them in contempt. On a slightly more practical note, if you are objecting to questions, it will impact whether the attorneys on either side will allow you to stay on as a juror. After an objection to a specific question, the attorney may just decide to nix you.	Unless you are an ambassador or one of the US states, SCOTUS doesn't have original jurisdiction over your lawsuit, so they can't hear it either. If you've named all the judges of all the courts that do have jurisdiction, then one of them will handle it anyway, under the doctrine of necessity noted before. For cases that do fall within the Supreme Court's original jurisdiction, a jury trial is theoretically possible, but it appears it has not occurred since the 1790s, and only one has surviving records: Georgia v. Brailsford in 1794. See "Special Juries in the Supreme Court" by Lochlan F. Shelfer, Yale Law Journal 123:1, 2013-2014. Otherwise, non-jury original jurisdiction cases are usually delegated to a special master, a sort of "contract judge" who hears all the evidence and recommends a judgment that the full court typically rubber-stamps.	The Fifth Amendment, in pertinent part, reads: "nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb;" which suggests that Crime B is still fair game under double jeopardy. However, if B is a lesser included offense under Blockburger, i.e. A is Aggravated Robbery and B is Robbery, then a prosecution could be barred by Double Jeopardy. Barring that, and jurisdiction specific law, the State isn't barred by the Double Jeopardy clause of the 5th (and 14th) amendment. That does not foreclose Person C from finding an ethical, equitable, statutory remedy or controlling case enforcing a plea bargain. As far as I can tell, commutation is the equivalent of a conviction while a pardon is equivalent to an acquittal. I also imagine if the prosecution isn't barred and tried C for B, the Executive may just pardon/commute C again. Edit to add: Under Santobello, it would appear C may have an additional remedy enforcing a plea bargain. Santobello didn't involve a case dismissed in a plea bargain, nor commutation or pardon. A court might find that commutation or pardon are essentially a breach of the agreement.	If the prosecutor (P) knows or strongly believes based on this new evidence that A is innocent, ethically P should start proceeding to have A's conviction reversed or reviewed. But in far too many cases P does nothing of the sort. If P simply files a charge against B and proceeds to try B for the crime, P leaves it open to B's Lawyer to ask "Didn't you already convict A for this crime? what about that?" as part of a defense, which might well embarrass P and lose the case. So P may well choose to file charges against B claiming that A & B acted together as accomplices, even if this requires misstating the evidence, or suppressing part of it. Or, P may simply ignore the new evidence, leaving A in prison and B free. This is unjust, but requires no effort on the part of P, and may seem less likely to raise embarrassing questions about why P got the case against A wrong. P can always claim that s/he did not believe the new evidence. That might even be true, there is such a tendency to believe what we wish to believe. The relative frequency of these responses on the part of those in the position of P here is really not possible to asses. The last two responses involve P suppressing or at least burying relevant evidence, and unless it is brought to the attention of others who publicize it enough that action is taken, it will not be generally known and cannot be tabulated in any statistics. P's office will certainly not respond to any survey which asks "How many times this year did you suppress the true facts to leave in place an unjust conviction you had previously obtained?"	In the US, a person is generally protected from being tried for the same offense twice, but they are not necessarily absolutely "protected". If a jury convicts a person but the judge enters a directed verdict of not guilty, the prosecution can appeal that action (Wilson v. US, 420 U.S. 332). The reason is that the acquittal could be disposed of on appeal without subjecting the person to a second trial. In contrast, in Fong Foo v. US, 369 U.S. 141 the trial judge ordered the jury to enter a verdict of acquittal. The appeals court rejected the judges basis for ordering an acquittal: but Fong Foo was "protected" because there could not be a second trial (double jeopardy), and it does not follow that the jury would have convicted but for the judge's order. The question reduces to the limited circumstances under which the prosecution can appeal a verdict. For instance, the prosecution can appeal a tre-trial motion to dismiss, and since there was no trial, there is no second jeopardy. Within a single jurisdiction, the only circumstance allowing a second trial involves bribery of a judge (Aleman v. Judges of the Circuit Court of Cook County, 138 F.3d 302), where the basis for allowing a second trial is that defendant was not in jeopardy with the first trial. New evidence does not override a defendant's protection against a second trial, whether it is new DNA evidence or a confession. It does not matter if this evidence arises seconds after the final verdict is entered, or months after. Or even before, but the prosecution was unaware.	This is known as the rule of lenity. A common formulation of the rule of lenity is as follows: If a federal criminal statute is grievously ambiguous, then the statute should be interpreted in the criminal defendant's favor. Importantly, the rule of lenity does not apply when a law merely contains some ambiguity or is difficult to decipher. As this Court has often said, the rule of lenity applies only when “ ‘after seizing everything from which aid can be derived,’ ” the statute is still grievously ambiguous. The rule “comes into operation at the end of the process of construing what Congress has expressed, not at the beginning as an overriding consideration of being lenient to wrongdoers.” Kavanaugh J., concurring, in Wooden v. United States, 595 U.S. ___ (2022), citing Ocasio v. United States, 578 U.S. 282, 295, n. 8 (2016), internal citations removed.
Liability for pushing trespassing stock out on the street? Bob's land (in an urban area) has been trespassed by Rob's bull which has already caused some damage. Bob has repeatedly asked Rob to keep the bull out, but Rob has not been caring enough. Bob has also informed the local animal control authorities but they are taking time to react. The fencing around Bob's property is such that if the bull is pushed out on the street (as opposed to back to Rob's property), he is much less likely to come back. Can Bob push the bull out on the street? Would Bob be liable if the bull causes any trouble there? I have found that "any person may seize the stock" if "Stock straying or wandering on roads". But can any person (apart from the stock owners of course) do the opposite — push them out?	It depends on whether "person" means "owner" If Bob is liable, it's not under the Impounding Act of 1955. In that Act, the occupier of land is allowed, but not required to impound trespassing animals. This is made clear in s 21 of the Act, which says "the occupier...may seize and impound any stock trespassing on the land." A quick search finds no sections of the Act requiring an occupier to impound trespassing cattle. So it seems Bob is free to send the cattle on their way, at least under the Impounding Act. However, liability for cattle and cars is also covered by the "Animals Law Reform Act of 1989." The two subsections of "Section 5" of that Act appear to broaden the class of people who could be held liable for damage “caused by an animal straying onto a highway.” Neither subsection explicitly mentions the owner. Instead, both talk about the "person" who is liable. The first, s 5(1) says the part of the common law that “excludes or restricts” “the duty that a person might owe to others to take reasonable care” to prevent damage no longer applies in New Zealand. The second, s 5(2), says a court must determine "whether a person is liable...for damage caused by an animal straying onto a particular highway..." Given that Impounding Act explicitly says "owner" not "person," common sense suggests the use of the word "person" rather than "owner" in the Animals Law Act of 1989 means that Act allows others besides the owner to be held liable for damages. Whether New Zealand courts agree, and whether they have interpreted the “Animal Laws Act” in a way that would include Bob is a matter of fact that can only be answered by someone who knows New Zealand law. Added: Something fun to read Law professor Robert Ellickson studied how people actually resolve disputes over wandering cattle in Shasta county in northern California. There's a readable summary of what he found here. (The title of his book, "Order without law," sums up his main finding -- there are rules that are enforced, but those rules have little to do with the formal law or law enforcement.)	You face two legal perils when you use a firearm against a wild animal: Most wild animals are protected or regulated as game by state and/or federal law. Unnecessarily discharging a firearm is forbidden in many jurisdictions. With respect to both charges, self defense is almost always a justification (assuming the possession of the weapon used was lawful). The specifics vary a little by jurisdiction, but this Utah rule is pretty typical: R657-63-3. Self Defense. (1) A person is legally justified in killing or seriously injuring a threatening wild animal when the person reasonably believes such action is necessary to protect them self, another person, or a domestic animal against an imminent attack by the wild animal that will likely result in severe bodily injury or death to the victim. (2) In determining imminence or reasonableness under Subsection (1), the trier of fact may consider, but is not limited to, any of the following factors: (a) the nature of the danger; (b) the immediacy of the danger; (c) the probability that the threatening wild animal will attack; (d) the probability that the attack will result in death or serious bodily injury; (e) the ability to safely retreat; (f) the fault of the person in creating the encounter; and (g) any previous pattern of aggressive or threatening behavior by the individual wild animal which was known to the person claiming self defense. (3)(a) A person shall notify the division within 12 hours after killing or wounding a wild animal under Subsection (1). (b) No wild animal killed pursuant to Subsection (1) or the parts thereof may be removed from the site, repositioned, retained, sold, or transferred without written authorization from the division. (4)(a) A person is not legally justified in killing or seriously injuring a threatening wild animal under the circumstances specified in Subsection (1) if the person: (i) has the ability to safely retreat from the threatening animal and fails to do so, except when the animal enters a home, tent, camper, or other permanent or temporary living structure occupied at the time by the person or another person; or (ii) intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly provokes or attracts the wild animal into a situation in which it is probable it will threaten the person, another person, or a domestic animal. Federal law is a little more terse: The Endangered Species Act includes the following: Notwithstanding any other provision of this Act, no civil penalty shall be imposed if it can be shown by a preponderance of the evidence that the defendant committed an act based on a good faith belief that he was acting to protect himself or herself, a member of his or her family, or any other individual from bodily harm, from any endangered or threatened species. Defense of property One can be fined for killing threatened or endangered animals in defense of property or livestock (see, for example, Christy v. Hodel). These instructions from the Missouri Department of Conservation are typical: If wildlife is damaging your property, you ... may shoot or trap most damage-causing wildlife out of season and without a permit to prevent further damage. Note: Wildlife you may not shoot or trap under this provision are migratory birds, white-tailed deer, mule deer, elk, turkeys, black bears, mountain lions, and any endangered species. For conflicts with these species, contact your local county conservation agent or nearest Department office. Control action may be taken only on your property. Wildlife you take under this provision may not be used in any way, and you must report it to the Department within 24 hours, then dispose of it in accordance with Department instructions. Check with local city or county authorities regarding the use of traps and firearms in local jurisdictions.	There's the question whether something is lost property or abandoned property. You'd be allowed to keep abandoned property, but keeping lost property without looking for the owner is in many places considered theft. A car on your land is quite likely abandoned by the last driver (people don't usually lose cars). But the question is whether it is abandoned by the owner; if the car looks like it has some value then it is unlikely to be abandoned by the owner and more likely that it has been stolen. I'd report the car to the police; then it's up to them to find the owner or not. If they can find him, and the car was not abandoned, but actually lost (unlikely) or stolen (more likely), you have the satisfaction of being an honest person helping either a very stupid car owner or a crime victim to get their property back. If they can't find him, usually the property will then belong to the finder.	An analogy to towing companies is tempting but misplaced, since towing is a statutorily-authorized and regulated activity (e.g. RCW 46.55). You therefore cannot just charge an arbitrary storage fee for uncollected equipment, and it is highly unlikely that there is any provision in the contract which authorizes you to charge for storage. The question is why you think you think they are responsible for picking up the excavator – presumably there is a clause in the contract that says that they will pick it up. Assuming that the contract doesn't say much, then your recourse would reside in the fact of their equipment trespassing on your property. You would need to officially withdraw permission for their equipment to be on your property (since you gave it in the first place). They would have a reasonable time to retrieve their goods, and if they don't do so, you would have a basis for suing them for damages. Also, the worst thing you could do is forcibly keeping their key until they pay you a storage fee: you'd need a court-ordered award, to get anything from them. The Connecticut towing law is here. Note that in order to call a towing company to get the equipment towed (if that's even possible), there has to be "conspicuous signage" warning of the possibility of towing "on such private commercial property"; but an overriding consideration is that you may tow if the vehicle is left for forty-eight or more hours. Two points to be noted are that although the law refers to "An owner or lessee of private property", the signage requirement implies that the property has to be commercial, not residential (this limitation to "private commercial property" is repeated in the statute, indicating a legislative intent to restrict the legal towing permission to commercial property). The law refers to "motor vehicles", but it is not clear whether an excavator counts as a "motor vehicle" (defined in para 54 of the definitions section). Although an excavator is a "vehicle propelled or drawn by any nonmuscular power", exceptions are carved out for agricultural tractors, farm implements, and "and any other vehicle not suitable for operation on a highway", which I think reasonably means that an excavator is not a motor vehicle. So since the towing statute does not authorize towing of something that is not a motor vehicle, that would not seem to be an option in this case (even if there were signage, and this is commercial property). And calling a towing company would only get the item removed from your property, but would not authorize you to collect a storage fee (the towing company can only do so after the police have been notified, which they must do withing 2 hours).	Interesting question! I believe all of the examples can be addressed by the following rules: A vehicle on a roadway has the right-of-way over a vehicle not on a roadway. Therefore, the vehicle leaving a parking lot always yields to a vehicle in a parallel road. Absent another rule, the vehicle on the right always has the right-of-way. So if two vehicles are leaving adjacent parking lots, the left one waits for the right one to go if there is any potential conflict. Of course, not enough people know these rules, so in practice if you can't get the vehicle with the legal right-of-way to take it I teach drivers to be as decisive and cautious as possible: I.e., take the right-of-way, but not so fast that you can't avoid the other vehicle if it decides to go after all, because legally you will be at fault in a collision. (Though it's anyone's guess how police and insurers would settle the tricky scenarios you illustrate.)	It depends on the jurisdiction (naturally). The answer for Washington is "No, not exactly". RCW 9a.83.030 states that "The attorney general or county prosecuting attorney may file a civil action for the forfeiture of proceeds". The police can seize real property, but must file a lis pendens regarding the property. The bar that has to be cleared for forfeiture is "probable cause". The Institute for Justice has an extensive analysis of civil forfeiture, especially with a state by state summary (they aren't positionally neutral on forfeiture, but they are legally respectable). Then after a inevitable judgment (90 days if the judgment is sooner), the property is transferred. Notice is to be "served within fifteen days after the seizure on the owner of the property seized and the person in charge thereof and any person who has a known right or interest therein, including a community property interest", so they would notify Bob (assuming they know Bob is the real owner). Or, if Bob learns of the seizure that "If a person notifies the seizing law enforcement agency in writing of the person's claim of ownership or right to possession of property within forty-five days of the seizure in the case of personal property and ninety days in the case of real property, the person or persons shall be afforded a reasonable opportunity to be heard as to the claim or right". It is possible that Bob's property could be taken (nothing prevents it), especially if Bob's hands are unclean.	So my answer depends heavily on a clarification. Are the Police Suspicious or do they have a warrant? This is a big difference in the two behaviors as the former is not a thing, from a strictly legal perspective, and the police should not be harrassing Bob, who doesn't want to talk to them, when they should be making calls to get a warrant (If the police think Bob is being disorderly, they will arrest him and Bob should zip it, get an attorney down to the station, and let the Lawyer yell at the cops... and the judge... and the prosecutor and whoever else... If it's the latter case, they don't need to ask Bob to have Bob come outside... they can kick in the door and arrest Bob or remove him as part of executing the warrant. That's why you have them. In the situation as described, it reads like there was some crime in the area and the police think Bob may have some knowledge about it (he need not have done it, they could be looking for a witness). Bob does not have to say anything to the cops as per his rights against self-incrimination, so Bob tells them he does not wish to speak to them, possibly in an irksome manner and the Police won't take no for an answer. Perhaps they really think Bob might be the criminal... this doesn't necessary mean they have evidence to arrest Bob on. Perhaps Bob was identified by a guy off of security camera footage... maybe it was Bob, or maybe it was Bob's evil twin he never knew about and Bob's been home all night Keeping Up With The Kardassians (anyone knows Bob knows he can't stand going a week without knowing what Kim and Kanye are doing). Either way, it could be enough for a search warrant but just wanting to talk without a warrant, Bob can refuse and they need to respect that. Again, it's probably a bad faith arrest, but the street is not the place to have that fight... save it for the courts.	I'd take the city council's advice and realize that you could be charged with a crime. Their job is to know the local laws and put them into place, as well as know how those laws relate to state law. As for state law, the Revised Statutes of Missouri, RSMo Section 574.115 Making a terrorist threat says: 574.115. Making a terrorist threat, first degree — penalty. — 1. A person commits the offense of making a terrorist threat in the first degree if such person, with the purpose of frightening ten or more people or causing the evacuation, quarantine or closure of any portion of a building, inhabitable structure, place of assembly or facility of transportation, knowingly: (1) Communicates an express or implied threat to cause an incident or condition involving danger to life; or (2) Communicates a false report of an incident or condition involving danger to life; or (3) Causes a false belief or fear that an incident has occurred or that a condition exists involving danger to life. 2. The offense of making a terrorist threat in the first degree is a class D felony. 3. No offense is committed under this section by a person acting in good faith with the purpose to prevent harm. A fake gun turret on a porch in the public view that tracks people who walk by could be interpreted as making a terrorist threat because it (3) Causes a false belief or fear that an incident has occurred or that a condition exists involving danger to life. And, it's probably safe to assume your turret has the "the purpose of frightening ten or more people." The fact that the gun turret is on private property doesn't mean much; it is in view of the public and your intent is for it to be seen by the public and you want to invoke fear in the public members who walk by. And it's not going to be seen by the council as some sort of security; threats are not security. If you did put up such a turret, and the state didn't take action under 574.115, and there is no local law on the books that applies, the council can easy put one in place at their regular council meeting with a simple motion and vote. Since you already asked the council, they may already be considering such a law. And, depending on the county, the council could invoke a law addressing threats to the public that has more severe penalties that the state law, because Missouri is a home rule (Wikipedia) state.
Are policies automatically void if the politicians who enacted them were serving unlawfully? Suppose that country X has law Y. A politician introduces bill Z, which is then voted on by the legislature. The legislature approves the bill by a 51 to 50 vote, and it becomes law, replacing and repealing law Y. Some time later, it comes to light that one of the legislators who voted for bill Z was never eligible for their position in the first place - for example, because it turns out they are not actually a citizen of country X. Legally, would law Z then become void and would law Y be considered the law of the land? I'm curious whether there is a clear legal answer to how this scenario would be handled in various jurisdictions.	In the United States, the answer depends on who is unlawfully in power. In the hypothetical you presented, the answer is probably that the law would remain valid, as Congress generally has the sole authority to pass judgment on whether to admit the elected person. A third party would not have the ability to challenge the law based on the qualifications of a lawmaker. But if we were dealing with an administrative official promulgating regulations, those rules would generally be void if that official were unlawfully appointed. That was the case in Nat'l Labor Relations Bd. v. Canning, 573 U.S. 513 (2014), where a cola distributor challenged a labor regulation, saying that the members of the NLRB who enacted it were improperly appointed. The Court agreed that the appointments were improper, so the regulations were nullified. A judicial decision coming out under these circumstances would also be nullified if one of the judges weren't really a judge. That happened just last year, in Yovino v. Rizo. In that case, ten judges from the Ninth Circuit heard a case, and the vote split 6-4. But the author of the majority opinion died before the decision was published, which is when it become effective. The Supreme Court held that because there were therefore only five votes for that decision, it was not a majority opinion, and therefore not binding on future Ninth Circuit panels.	I will only address this part of the question: Who would be able to authoritatively decide the constitutionality of such a question, with all Supreme Court justices having clear conflict of interest on the matter? The Supreme Court could still hear such a case, as the justices make their own decisions about when to recuse themselves. In particular, they might decide to hear the case based on the "Rule of Necessity", which says roughly that a biased judge is better than none at all: a judge can hear a case, even in the presence of a conflict of interest, if there is no other way for it to be heard. See United States v. Will, 449 U.S. 200 (1980), in which the Supreme Court ruled 8-0 that federal courts could try a case related to the salaries of federal judges. Another possibility is that the case could be brought in a lower federal court, say District Court. There is a question here: the Supreme Court has original jurisdiction in "all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls" (US Constitution, Article III, Section 2), and I do not know whether Supreme Court justices are "public Ministers". However, if a lower court did have jurisdiction, it could rule on the constitutionality of the question, since a District Court judge would not have a significant conflict of interest. The relevant Circuit Court of Appeals could presumably hear an appeal. If the Circuit Court's ruling was appealed to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court felt that they all had conflicts of interest (and decided not to invoke the Rule of Necessity), then they could simply not vote to grant certiorari, in which case the Circuit Court's ruling would stand.	Any country is free to decide what actions are considered to be crimes, and what crimes are prosecuted depending on whether you perform the action in the country, outside the country, and depending on whether you are a citizen, a resident, both, or neither. They can also decide what are accepted defences in court and which are not. Any other country is free to decide under which circumstances they will ever extradite someone to that first country. Now you have to check the laws of the individual countries.	Yes, it Could A state can repeal or modify its laws against any particular crime, or just decline, as a matter of policy, to enforce such laws. It is in my view quite unlikely that a state would do this in the case of murder, but legally it could. Such action by a state would not affect the federal murder statute is at 18 USC 1111. But that only applies under a rather limited set of situations. According to "When is murder a federal offense?" it applies when: The murder is of a federal judge or a federal law enforcement official (for example, an agent of the FBI, TSA, or ATF),1 the killing is of an immediate family member of a federal law enforcement official. the murder is of an elected or appointed federal official (for example, the President, a Supreme Court Justice, a member of Congress, or the murder of a federal judge) the killing is committed during a bank robbery [or other Federal crime]. the killing takes place aboard a ship at sea (for example, on a vessel that is engaged in interstate commerce per the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution). the murder was designed to influence a court case. the killing takes place on federal property (for example, on national parks or a Native American reservation). The vast majority of murder cases do not come under the current Federal law.	Yes, in most jurisdictions citizenship or residency is not a pre-requisite for standing. However, be aware that there are plenty of jurisdictions where the practical effect of being non-native gives you effectively no chance of winning. "Fair" in some countries means their citizens always beat foreigners.	I am not sure what you mean by "accept". A citizen need not agree that any particular law is desirable, or good policy, or even rational. What a citizen must do is comply with all laws, or risk proceedings to enforce them, criminal or civil depending on the law in question and the specific circumstances. More exactly all valid laws must be complied with. In the US and many other places there are mechanisms for challenge laws as invalid. It is not generally a defense against an accusation of breaking a law that the law is not rational.	No Always assuming that the government has operated within the limits of its powers or, at least, that if they have exceeded those powers the excess was in good faith. First, there is the issue of sovereign immunity. Basically, a government can be held liable only when it consents to be held liable. Most governments never waive this with respect to their lawmaking powers because they have to be able to make laws in what they see as the public interest without fear of litigation. See, for example, cases on plain paper packaging of cigarettes. Second, most governments have the power to regulate commerce and to deal with public emergencies. There is an issue which comes up in Federations about which government has the power but even if a law is invalid, it does not follow that compensation is payable. It certainly isn’t if the law is valid.	Legally you face no problem. The section 66A of the Indian IT Act, which used to be previously misused for penalizing anyone who dared insult a politician, has been struck down as unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of India. But the police could still detain you for 48 hours (legally) without giving any grounds; they are required to do that, but the police are seldom held accountable. The supporters of the said politician can vandalize your home and office without fear of legal action. I am not a lawyer. Whatever is posted above is my opinion and data that I believe to be true to the best of my knowledge and resources available to me. Please contact a lawyer for professional advice.
What does "Prima facie case is not to be confused with prima facie title" mean? I do not know much about the law. I know prima facie means, but do not understand what it means in this sentence, which comes from an Indian court case: "Prima facie case is not to be confused with prima facie title". What is a prima facie title? I have googled it but have not found a relevant answer.	Here is the full sentence: "Prima facie case is not to be confused with prima facie title which has to be established, on evidence at the trial." As you probably know, prima facie means "on its face." A prima facie case is a case in which one party has presented enough evidence to support a verdict in its favor. A title is a document that serves as proof of ownership. A prima facie title, is when one doesn't have a title, but has other things that usually indicate one is the owner. Having these things shows, on their face, that you are the owner of the property. For example, if you don't have a title, but you have receipts showing you've paid the taxes on the land these may be taken as evidence that you own the property. The sentence you quote comes from a long running (over 12 year!) dispute involving the sale of a house in India. This particular decision involved a request for a temporary injunction. This sentence is in a paragraph discussing the conditions under which a court can grant an injunction. It appears to be quoted fairly often in other cases. In this sentence, the court makes two points. First, in order to get an injunction, the plaintiff must make a prima facie case that there is a dispute here that needs to be resolved in court. Without such a dispute, there is no reason to enjoin (stop) the defendant from acting until after the court decides. Second, the prima facie case that must be made to get an injunction is not the same as the prima facie title, which must be proved in court.	None of the things listed are statutes. They are all parts of or compilations of parts of statutes. A 'statute' is a document issued by an official body, such as Congress, which contains a law or command. 'USC' refers to the United States Code, which is a compilation of statutory law. It is not the law. It is prima facie evidence of the law, but may be proven to be wrong. The 'statute' is the Act passed by Congress. These can be found in the United States Statutes at Large. For example, the Labor Management Relations Act 1947 (Public Law 80–101, 61 Stat 136, also known as the Taft–Hartley Act) is a statute, passed by Congress on 23 June 1947. It is codified at (i.e. a reasonably reliable copy of the provisions of the Act, taking into account subsequent amendments, can be found at) 29 USC s 401-531. But 29 USC is not a statute in any sense of the word. To use a particularly 'meta' example: 1 USC 204(a) codifies the rule that the USC is prima facie evidence of the state of the law of the United States, but the statute which made this rule is Public Law 80-278, 61 Stat 633 ('An Act to codify and enact into positive law, title 1 of the United States Code, entitled "General Provisions"'), which consists of a slab of text copied out of the United States Code as it then stood. So Congress does sometimes enact parts of the Code; but the Code itself is not a statute.	The Probate Estate v. Non-Probate Transfers First off, keep in mind that only the "probate estate" is probated at all. Assets held in joint tenancy with right of survivorship, assets held in trust, and assets with a death beneficiary, for example, pass by non-probate transfer. Some states also have a rebuttable presumption that all tangible personal property which is not part of a business owned by someone in a married couple that is not subject to a certificate of title is owned in joint tenancy by right of survivorship in favor of a surviving spouse. The probate estate consists only of property held in the name of the decedent with no beneficiary designation and no joint tenants (although there could be tenant-in-common co-owners or co-owners as part of a general partnership). The Primary Domicile Probate The primary probate is generally conducted in the state and county in which the decedent was domiciled at death. Intangible property, including interests in entities, and the legal rights of the decedent are generally deemed to be located at that domicile for probate purposes. The common law choice of law rule is to have moveable property also governed by the law of the state of domicile. While it doesn't have constitutional standing, it is widely adopted. The unsecured claims (i.e. claims not secured by collateral) of third-parties against the decedent are deemed located at the decedent's domicile at death. A will contest is almost always conducted solely in the primary domicile state, and that resolution has collateral estoppel and arguably full faith and credit clause binding effect in other ancillary probate cases. Almost every state, however, recognizes the validity of a will that was valid where executed at the time it was executed. Estate plans of individuals with property in many states that would be subject to many ancillary probate proceedings are routinely devised so that the property subject to ancillary probate is either not subject to probate at all, because it is in a revocable trust or joint tenancy with right of survivorship or has transfer on death beneficiary, or it at least in an entity whose shares are handled in the primary probate rather than in an ancillary probate, when the decedent was represented by counsel (and it verges on malpractice not to recommend that this be done if estate planning counsel is aware of the facts). Of course, not everyone hires a lawyer to do their estate plan before they die (even if they meant to do so), so ancillary probates still happen. Ancillary Probate Proceedings When there is real property in the estate owned outright by the decedent, and not subject to a joint tenancy or other non-probate transfer (such as a transfer on death deed) and not owned via a trust or entity, then an ancillary probate must be opened up in that state to probate that parcel of real property. One if left in an ancillary probate dealing with real property and debts for which that property is collateral in the ancillary probate. But the ancillary probate is largely a formality and mostly defers to the rulings of the court in the primary probate case. Sometimes closely held business which is a sole proprietorship or general partnership (as opposed to an entity), with a state or local specific license, must be the subject of an ancillary probate. But more often, the closely held business is an entity with a license and tangible personal property held in the entity. In those cases, the stock or membership interest is intangible property that can be probated at the domicile of the decedent, rather than in an ancillary probate where the business is located. In other words, let's say a person lives in Maine, but has property in 20 different states. Various houses, boats, bank accounts, brokerage accounts, you name it. Does the will have to then be probated in every one of the states in which the various property resides? The bank accounts, brokerage accounts, and most of the etc. that are part of the probate estate would be probated in Maine. The houses outside of Maine and possible the cars and boats and sole proprietorship inventory, equipment and license transfers outside of Maine would be resolved in ancillary probate proceedings. Conflicts Of Law Between Primary And Ancillary Probate Laws What happens if the probate laws of the states conflict? The procedural rules of the forum state govern the ancillary probate, rather than those of the primary probate case. Every state adopted the general rule that the directions of a will are valid and enforceable subject to only a handful of exceptions, and in most cases, intestacy rules when there is no surviving spouse are likewise identical. Almost all states would honor a will admitted to probate in the primary probate state (and are arguably required to do so under the full faith and credit clause), even if it would not have been admitted to probate in the ancillary probate state. While it is theoretically possible to have a conflict of law regarding general partnership property, inheritance of general partnership property is largely governed by the Uniform Partnership Act and this model state law is, in fact, a law that has been adopted in every U.S. state and is uniform on this point in every U.S. state. The main circumstances in which there could be conflicts between the state probate laws are: quirky intestate situations (differences between per stirpes and per capita at each generation, or differences between treatment of half-blood or multiple line of descent heirs), exemptions from creditors (e.g. homestead rights, tenancy-by-entirety rights, special legacy property rules in some Southern states), details of slayer statutes (e.g. does negligent homicide count?), divorce revocation laws (not every state revokes will provisions in favor a divorced spouse), community property rights in property, mandatory inheritance rights of disinherited spouses (dower, curtsy and force share laws, some states treat this as a creditor's claim, others don't), and provisions for what happens when a specific devise fails because an asset no longer exists if the will doesn't specifically state what happens. It is fairly rare for this to come up in practice, however, since normally the ancillary probate forum state court defers to the primary state appointed executor's requests, and it is quite rare for that to be disputed by other parties to the estate in the ancillary proceeding. It happens, I've been there, but it is very uncommon. In those cases, there is little formal guidance. The forum state's law is presumed to apply, but that presumption can be overcome by showing that some other state has the most significant connection to the legal issue over which there is a conflict. The analysis is handled by the forum state court on a case by case basis in the rare cases where it comes up. The primary probate court can also sometimes make an end run around ancillary probate court rulings applying substantive ancillary probate forum probate laws to property in the ancillary probate state by ordering a compensatory adjustment in how property in its jurisdiction is distributed to conform to the laws of its state. A recent case from New Hampshire discussed how choice of law works in probate cases: We first address whether the New Hampshire probate division erred in applying Massachusetts’ pretermitted heir statute, rather than New Hampshire's RSA 551:10, to the testator's will. On appeal, the petitioner argues that, despite the language of Article Ninth in his mother's will, RSA 551:10 applies because his mother was domiciled in New Hampshire at the time of her death and her estate consists of only personal property. The respondent argues that “[t]he intent of Marie G. Dow is clear,” (bolding and capitalization omitted), pursuant to Article Ninth of her will, that Massachusetts law should apply and asserts that New Hampshire “give[s] effect” to choice-of-law provisions in wills. We agree with the petitioner. The probate division's findings that the testator's estate consists of only personal property and that she was domiciled in New Hampshire at the time of her death are not challenged on appeal and need not be disturbed. We review the probate division's application of law to undisputed facts de novo. Under New Hampshire law, personal property of a testator generally passes according to the law of the state of domicile. Compare Eyre, 37 N.H. at 120 (“The general principle of the common law is, that the right and disposition of movables is to be governed by the law of the domicil of the owner.”), with Mass. Gen. Laws Ann. ch. 199, § 1 (West 2012) (stating that Massachusetts, when administering the will of a non-inhabitant of the Commonwealth, will dispose of the estate “according to his last will, if any; otherwise ... his personal property shall be distributed and disposed of according to the laws of the state or country of which he was an inhabitant”). Our law comports with Section 263(1) of the Restatement (Second) Conflicts of Laws, which provides: Whether a will transfers an interest in movables and the nature of the interest transferred are determined by the law that would be applied by the courts of the state where the testator was domiciled at the time of his death. Restatement (Second) Conflicts of Laws § 263(1), at 121 (1971). Compare id. (pertaining to transfers of personal property by will), with id. § 239(1), at 48 (“Whether a will transfers an interest in land and the nature of the interest transferred are determined by the law that would be applied by the courts of the situs.”). Because the testator's will disposes of only personal property, i.e., “movables,” the nature of the interests in this property will be determined by the laws of New Hampshire — where she was domiciled at death. Restatement (Second) Conflicts of Laws, supra § 263(1), at 121. The law in New Hampshire is clear, and we are not persuaded that there is a reason to deviate from it in the instant case. The respondent relies upon our decisions in In re Farnsworth's Estate, 109 N.H. 15, 241 A.2d 204 (1968), and Royce v. Estate of Denby's, 117 N.H. 893, 379 A.2d 1256 (1977), in support of her position that Massachusetts’ pretermitted heir statute applies to the will because New Hampshire law honors the testator's intent, as expressed in Article Ninth of Marie G. Dow's will, to have her estate “administered and enforced according to the laws of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.” This reliance is misplaced. The respondent emphasizes that the court, in In re Farnsworth Estate, “gave effect to the choice of law provision in [the testator's] will.” However, our review in that case was limited to the testator's designation of New York law as the law to apply to her testamentary trusts. In In re Farnsworth's Estate, the testator was a domiciliary of New Hampshire at the time of her death though her will was “drawn and executed in New York City.” The testator's will stated that it shall be administered in the State of New York and shall be construed and regulated by the laws of the State of New York.” We noted that the administration and validity of a “ ‘trust of movables ... created by will’ ” is generally governed by the law of the state of the testator's domicile at death, but explained that there are “ ‘two situations in which the law of another state may be applied to the administration of the trust. The first is where the testator has designated the law of another state as the governing law. The second is where the testator has fixed the administration of the trust in a state other than that of his domicile at death. We determined that the will “created both of these situations” and, thus, held that “these trusts were intended to be and should be administered in the State of New York.” Here, the testator did not establish a testamentary trust. The fact that the will at issue in In re Farnsworth's Estate disposed of the testator's property via testamentary trusts was essential to our reasoning and our decision in that case. see also In re Lykes' Estate, 113 N.H. 282, 284, 305 A.2d 684 (1973) (holding provision of will that testamentary trust be construed according to laws of Texas was “a valid provision which must be respected by this court” (citing Scott, supra §§ 574-75; Restatement (Second) Conflicts of Laws, supra § 268(1), at 143). The pertinent rules to apply to dispositions of property via will are dependent upon the form of the disposition and the form of the property. See, e.g., Haynes v. Carr, 70 N.H. 463, 463, 480, 49 A. 638 (1900) (“There is a wide distinction between a gift to charity and a gift to a trustee to be by him applied to charity.” (quotation and emphasis omitted)); Eyre, 37 N.H. at 120 (a decedent's personal property passes according to the law of the state of domicile, while real property passes according to the law of the state where it lies). Therefore, in the instant case, In re Farnsworth Estate does not support deviating from New Hampshire law as the law governing the disposition of personal property in Marie G. Dow's will. cf. Robbins v. Johnson, 147 N.H. 44, 45, 780 A.2d 1282 (2001) (“The pretermitted heir statute, on its face, applies to ‘wills,’ not to trusts.”). Similarly, the fact that the testator in Royce became a domiciliary of New Hampshire after she had become incapacitated and never regained capacity before her death was essential to our reasoning and our decision in that case. “The Royce holding was limited to the facts of that case, which are distinguishable from those before us.” In Royce, we recognized that, because the testator had no opportunity due to her incapacity to change her will after her move to New Hampshire, it was inequitable to apply the New Hampshire rule that the law of the domicile controls the succession to personal property when the testator had no opportunity to respond to New Hampshire law. Here, the testator had an opportunity to change her will after relocating to New Hampshire approximately a year before her death.3 Therefore, Royce does not support deviating from New Hampshire law as the law governing the disposition of personal property in Marie G. Dow's will. We note that our prior case law, contemplating the applicability of New Hampshire's pretermitted heir statute where the facts implicated more than one jurisdiction, has not expressly dealt with a provision like that of Article Ninth in Marie G. Dow's will, expressing her intent to have her estate “administered and enforced according to the laws” of another state — the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. See, e.g., In re Estate of Rubert, 139 N.H. at 276, 651 A.2d 937 (applying Virginia law to determine whether the plaintiff was a pretermitted heir entitled to an intestate share of the testator's personal property where the testator was domiciled in Virginia). While it is true that we attempt to give maximum effect to a testator's intent, our law does not support the application here of another state's pretermitted heir statute independent of the governing law of the testator's domicile at death with respect to dispositions of personal property. Section 264 of the Restatement (Second) Conflicts of Laws supports a testator's ability, in bequeathing interests in personal property, to select the rules of construction of another state for use in construing the language of her will. See Restatement (Second) Conflicts of Laws, supra § 264(1), at 125 (“A will insofar as it bequeaths an interest in movables is construed in accordance with the local law of the state designated for this purpose in the will.”); id. § 264 cmt. e at 126-27 (“The forum will give effect to a provision in the will that it should be construed in accordance with the rules of construction of a particular state.”). We have not expressly adopted this section of the Restatement, and we need not consider doing so here because even assuming without deciding that Article Ninth designated Massachusetts’ rules of construction for application to the will, neither Massachusetts’ nor New Hampshire's pretermitted heir statute constitutes a rule of construction. As will be discussed in section III, not only is RSA 551:10 not a rule of construction, it is a conclusive rule of law. We, therefore, hold that New Hampshire's pretermitted heir statute applies to Marie G. Dow's will because she was a domiciliary of New Hampshire at the time of her death and her will disposes of only personal property. Accordingly, the probate division erred in applying Massachusetts law to determine that the petitioner is not a pretermitted heir. In re Est. of Dow, 2019-0752, 2021 WL 199619, at *2–5 (N.H. Jan. 20, 2021) (caselaw citations omitted). The Role Of Federal Courts Notwithstanding the fact that parties to probate cases are frequently diverse in citizenship, there is an obscure court created doctrine that provides that probate cases are a matter of state rather than federal court jurisdiction. (The "well pleaded complaint rule" largely prevents federal question jurisdiction from applying.) Part of the legal justification for this is that probate cases are in rem proceedings that primarily adjudicate rights in a particular collection of property (everything owned by the decedent) rather than primarily providing in personam relief between citizens of different states or countries, the way that a lawsuit for breach of contract or a tort or an injunction might. So, unless title to the real property arises under the conflicting claims of two different states (which almost never happens for obvious reasons in the modern era of accurate surveying of state boundaries), diversity jurisdiction is not implicated.	What does this paragraph mean? Line by line. I give my Residuary Estate This is a gift, effective when the person writing the Will dies, of everything that is left over after all debts and taxes are paid and after any other gifts already in the Will (e.g. leaving a car or a house or a Monet to someone in particular) have been given. to the said [Full Name] absolutely I'm going give [Full Name] a name so that it is easier to follow this explanation. [Full Name]'s name for purposes of this answer is "Luna". This says to give all that stuff to Luna when the person who wrote the Will dies, if Luna is still alive for whatever the required amount of time is after the person who wrote the Will dies. The required survival time period is either in the boilerplate provisions of the Will, or in the relevant statute if the Will is silent on the question. The Will says "absolutely" because historically, someone who received gifts of property in deed or wills in England only got to keep it for their lifetime, unless it clearly specified otherwise, after which someone else would get it. But in this case, if Luna survives this long, Luna gets all of this stuff with no strings attached. and if [Name] shall fail to obtain a vested interest leaving issue who survive me then such issue shall take by substitution If Luna dies before the person who wrote the Will does, or doesn't stay alive for the required number of days afterwards, then Luna isn't entitled to this stuff. Luna's descendants get it instead (i.e. Luna's descendants "take by substitution" what Luna would have gotten if Luna had lived, instead of Luna's probate estate getting the stuff). and if there shall be more than one of such issue they shall take in equal shares per stirpes but so that no issue shall take whose parent is alive and so capable of taking. If Luna predeceases and has exactly one living descendant who is alive when the person who wrote the Will dies, and that living descendant lives the required number of days after the person who wrote the Will dies, then the sole living descendant of Luna gets all of the stuff that is left over when the person who wrote the Will dies. If Luna has more than one living descendant, the stuff that is left over when the person who wrote the Will dies, then Luna's descendants gets broken up the way described below, which is called per stirpes: Create one share for each child of Luna who is alive and survives Luna by the required amount of time. If Luna has only one living child, that child gets everything even if Luna's child has children of their own. Create one share for each child of Luna who didn't live for long enough after the person who wrote the Will's death, if the predeceased child has descendants who are alive and remain alive after the person who wrote the Will dies by the required amount of time. This share is then broken up into one sub-share for each child of the predeceased child who is alive when the person who wrote the Will dies and is still alive after the person who wrote the Will dies by the required amount of time, and one sub-share for each predeceased child of the predeceased child who has living descendants who remain alive for the requisite number of days. Continue this process until 100% of the the residuary estate has been assigned to someone and give them their share of it once the estate is settled. If someone lives past the minimum number of days to outlive the person who wrote the Will, and then dies, that person's share goes that person's probate estate. For visual learners, a per stirpes distributions of assets looks like this: A per stirpes distribution to descendants is the plain vanilla ordinary way to giving stuff to the descendants of a dead person when you don't know in advance who will outlive you. What if Luna predeceases with no living descendants? Usually, this paragraph of a Will will be followed by another paragraph called the "ultimate contingent beneficiary" which says who gets the stuff that's left over in the residuary estate if Luna predeceases the person who wrote the Will and has no living descendants. Often, the ultimate contingent beneficiary will be one or more distant relatives, a list of friends, or a charity. If there is no ultimately contingent beneficiary in the Will, but Luna and all of Luna's descendants predecease the person who wrote the Will, then it goes to the next of kin (a.k.a. "heirs at law") of the person who wrote the Will, if there are any relatives of the person who wrote the Will who are close enough to qualify to inherit under English inheritances law. If there is no one closely enough related to the person who wrote the Will to qualify under English inheritance law, then the stuff "escheats" (i.e. is inherited by default) by the King (or Queen) of England, as the case may be. There are some circumstances when the Will can be ignored. Everything above explains what this language in the Will means. This isn't always what happens, however. There are several exceptions to the general rule that property goes to the people that the Will says it goes to. I won't list them all here, but it is important when a Will is being written to understand that this is the case. For example, if the person who wrote the Will leaves nothing in the Will to their spouse of thirty years as of the death of the person who wrote the Will, who has no assets of their own, then the Court will partially ignore what the Will says and give some of the residuary estate to the surviving spouse. Also, the Will only controls assets that are in the "probate estate". Some assets pass at death in what are called "non-probate transfers" that are not controlled by what the Will says. And, finally, of course, if the Will was written when the person signing the Will was of unsound mind, the Will can be invalidated in a "Will contest" in the appropriate court if the person contesting the Will's validity can prove that the person signing it was of unsound mind at the time. This is mediocre legal writing This paragraph gets the job done, but it is not very well written by modern legal Will drafting standards. It is adequate and probably meets the standard of care for a lawyer who hasn't committed malpractice. Lawyers in England have been writing paragraphs like this one for three or four hundred years. But it is not "best practices" legal writing in a Will. Good modern legal drafting for a Will would be much easier for a non-lawyer to understand, in addition to being clear and unambiguous.	The core principle of stare decisis is that the law should not depend on what judge you got; two cases with the same facts should have the same outcome. In the common-law tradition, there weren't really written statutes; there was only "what's been done in the past," and so the only reference you'd have to what the law should be in some situation is past court decisions. If judges didn't have some constraints to rule similarly to before, there really wouldn't be any legal standards (because there was no written law to go back to; in civil-law countries, there always has been a written law, so precedent isn't so important). Stare decisis doesn't actually directly stop a judge from entering a decision that goes against binding precedent. However, judges are expected to obey precedent, and for the most part do what they're supposed to do. If they don't, the case will likely be reversed on appeal. Binding precedent only applies within the area a court serves; a court doesn't have to listen to precedent from a different court that has nothing to do with the case. The rule is that precedent from any court up the appeals chain is binding; federal district courts are bound by their circuit court and SCOTUS, state courts are bound by higher state courts and SCOTUS (but not other federal courts, as the case can't be appealed to them). A court can sometimes overrule its own precedent, but the cases where it can do that are rare (and so applying a higher court's precedent can also be viewed as "if you appeal to them they'll say X, so we're saying X.")	Numbering is for the sake of clarity, and is not intrinsically required. If you refer to a section, you need a way to say which section you mean, and a vague description like "up there where I talked about copying" is insufficient. You can refer to a section by a title, if you need to refer to sections within the contract, as long as your titles match what you refer to them as (and you don't have two sections called "Your Rights").	The appeals court has found that the county court judge made a decision that was consistent with the evidence that was presented at trial. As such, the decision is sound. It appears that the defendant tried to present additional/different evidence or different arguments about the law in the appeal than they did at trial - this is not permitted. As to responsibility, the defendant and their legal team were responsible for deciding how to run their case and what evidence to present and what arguments to run. What evidence to present and how to present it and what submissions to make on the law is a tactical decision for each party. You can get it wrong. That doesn't let you try again on appeal. If your barrister has been negligent, and that directly caused you to lose, you can sue your barrister. In terms of interpreting a particular paragraph of a judgement, the appeals court may or may not make comment on a particular paragraph but the reasons, while important, are not really subject to interpretation other than that. A judgement will give orders, these should be very precise and not open to interpretation - things like "the defendant will pay X to the plaintiff" or "the case is dismissed" etc.	First, civil law has, confusingly, two meanings. It can denote the legal systems used in most of Europe, as opposed to the common-law systems arising in England and spreading to most of the former British empire. In the US, and in other common-law jurisdictions, civil law is pretty much everything other than criminal law. Given the tagging of the question, this seems to be the sense that you have in mind. What is tort law and how does it differ from civil law? Is there any difference or overlap between the two? Does one more broadly encompass the other? Tort law is a subset of civil law. Are torts defined in statute? Some are; some aren't. There is a common-law doctrine of torts. These torts have been defined by the courts through judicial precedent rather than by the legislature through statute law. They are therefore known as "common law torts." Some jurisdictions have abolished these torts and replaced them with torts defined by statute. or do they exist alongside statute in some way more fundamentally and less ephemerally than statutes exist? Statutorily defined torts are rather less ephemeral than common-law torts, not more. What is a “common law tort “? See above.
When and why are jury trials preferred to bench trials of criminal charges? A jury trial consists of a judge, who is the arbiter of law, and a jury, which is the "fact-finder." A bench trial consists only of a judge, who determines questions of both law and fact to render a verdict. In the U.S. there are some hurdles to obtaining a bench trial in criminal cases. For example, under Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure (FRCP 23a) criminal trials must be by jury unless the defendant, prosecutor, and judge all agree to a bench trial. Many states do, however, allow a criminal defendant to unilaterally opt for a bench trial. Disregarding any obstacles resulting from those rules of criminal procedure: When a criminal defendant has an option to choose between a jury or a bench trial, when and why does one opt for the latter vs. the former?	In the overwhelming majority of criminal trials for felonies, and a very large share of misdemeanor and traffic trials, criminal defendants, following the advise of their criminal defense attorneys – who have a good knowledge of the system – overwhelmingly choose jury trials. (Even though criminal defense attorneys may personally have reasons to prefer bench trials which take less preparation as criminal defense attorneys are usually spread very thin with many clients and limited resources.) This is primarily for one very good reason. A jury is six times more likely to acquit than a judge and, unlike a judge, can also deadlock (resulting in a mistrial followed by a retrial or more lenient plea bargain in most cases), if the facts are at all susceptible to more than one interpretation. Judges and juries agree on the verdict in roughly 78% of criminal jury trials where a verdict is entered, but judges are much less likely to acquit defendants than juries do, (3% v. 19%+) (see the sources cited in this previous Law.SE answer). The National Center for State Courts conducted a survey of hung jury rates using felony case data from all federal courts and 30 state courts in 75 of the most populous counties. The NCSC project found that state courts in large urban areas had an average hung jury rate of 6.2%, with substantial variation across courts, ranging from a low of 0.1% in Pierce County, Washington to a high of 14.8% in Los Angeles County, California. Federal hung jury rates were found to be particularly low, averaging about 2% of all federal jury trials: federal civil trials had lower rates than federal criminal trials. (Source.) On average a criminal defendant is eight times more likely to avoid a criminal conviction in a state court criminal case in a trial before a jury than in a bench trial. In federal court, there is a 38% chance of bench trial acquittal (12% of all federal criminal trials are bench trials while 88% are jury trials), some of which are for misdemeanors and traffic cases, and a 14% chance of jury trial acquittal. But only 2% of federal criminal cases go to trial (roughly 99.6% of cases presented to federal grand juries result in indictments) with the remainder plea bargained (90% of cases charged) or dismissed (8% of cases charged, sometimes due to a state court conviction), and only about 2% of all U.S. criminal cases are filed in federal court. So, federal criminal bench trials are very rare and atypical. Secondarily, there is lots of highly prejudicial and legally irrelevant information (e.g., the criminal history of the defendant, or evidence excluded for 4th Amendment violations) that a jury will not know, but a judge will know. Jurors almost never disregard evidence that they are told to disregard, and often give it undue weight, and judges aren't any better. The real question should be: Who chooses a bench trial and why, notwithstanding these facts? Some situations in which someone might consider a bench trial rather than a jury trial include: A bench trial can be easier for a pro se defendant, which is one not represented by counsel either because the defendant is not indigent and hence not entitled to counsel, or because the proceeding is one in which there is no right to counsel (usually traffic cases). In these, usually low stakes, matters the cost of counsel does not justify the expenditure and it can be easier to do a bench trial as a pro se party than a jury trial. The vast majority of criminal or quasi-criminal bench trials are in low stakes cases (which are segregated into separate courts in state court and mixed in with more serious cases in federal court) where this is a primary consideration. A bench trial can be desirable for someone who needs a quicker trial date (e.g., someone who lives somewhere seasonally and needs to get home), especially in a low stakes case where the sentence is likely to be a fine or a sentence to "time served" if there is a sentence. A bench trial can be desirable when the guilt-innocence determination is largely a foregone conclusion but the defendant would still like to at least try to be acquitted, as a way to more fully tell a story of how the incident was understandable even if not a legal justification for conduct, to prepare the judge for sentencing with a more full picture of what happened than a guilty plea would provide. For example, it might be a strategy that someone who assaults (ambush style) someone who raped his sister might take, even though a tape recorded confession and video tape of the incident makes the likelihood of acquittal small (unless the defendant thinks that "jury nullification", i.e. ruling in his favor notwithstanding the law, is likely). Another example would be to provide a forum in a drug possession case to show that someone in possession of a large quantity of controlled substances was really a "mule" and not a big time dealer. This kind of consideration drives a fair number of bench trials in federal criminal cases. A bench trial can be desirable for a defendant who thinks that a judge will be favorably inclined towards him (e.g., some law enforcement officers or public officials). A bench trial can be desirable for a defendant when a jury is likely to be biased against him (e.g., a Muslim defendant at a time when anti-Muslim sentiment is strong due to some recent news event, or a defendant in a community with lots of racist potential jurors who is before a black judge). A bench trial can be desirable for a defendant whose primary defense requires above average sophistication to understand (e.g., a defendant in some complicated regulatory or white collar case). Bench trials are more attractive in cases where the criminal defendant is a first time offender, has no arrest record, and is not relying on suppressing any evidence at trial, so that the availability of more information to the judge than the jury is not a problem. A summary of jury trials in Colorado, which is typical, shows the revealed preference for jury trials. In 2016, defendants elected jury trials in 67% of traffic cases, 69% of misdemeanor cases, 97% of state court felony cases, and 59% of federal criminal cases (which are a mix of misdemeanors and felonies).	This determination is largely a facts and circumstances specific test to be evaluated with little additional legal guidance by the judge or jury faced with evaluating the question (usually a judge in the way that the issue usually presents itself). Like many fairly vague legal standards, it leaves open the possibility that there will be inconsistent rulings on this question in circumstances presenting similar facts.	canada There are some degrees of anonymity available: The court can refer to jurors simply by their number ("Juror 5") when calling them to be seated at the outset of trial The court can order that no information that could identify a juror be published While the jury-selection cards are part of the court file, the court can order that they be sealed During the course of trial, jurors are to be referred to by their number In Canada there is no procedure available to have the jury be screened off from public view. The rationales for not having juries be completely unknown to the parties are: the open court principle it's a right of the defendant in a criminal case to be able to potentially challenge their conviction based on exceptional problems with the jury or its selection; a screened-off jury would prevent this practically, the defence and prosecution will have become aware of the jury through jury selection, including the ability to challenge their selection for cause there is a presumption that the ability to see directly and unmediated the demeanor of the witnesses is an important aspect of judging credibility; not everything would be seen via video There is likely much flexibility available for a court to allow a screened-off jury in a civil matter, but civil jury trials in Canada are not a right, and no court has seen it worth to experiment with such a thing.	Given that a murder and an involuntary manslaughter are two different offenses, could a jury be asked to adjudicate on both counts? This happens routinely. Could it find the defendant guilty of both? Only for certain offenses. See lesser included offense. Could the DA even accuse the defendant of both during the same trial? Yes, which is how juries are asked to adjudicate multiple offenses as noted above. What about in different trials? All the crimes associated with a given act have to be tried at once. If you've been acquitted of murder in connection with one act, you can't subsequently be tried for involuntary manslaughter for the same act, nor vice versa. And what about murder and attempted murder? I don't think it's possible to be tried for an attempt when the crime has been successful; certainly, the opposite is true. But again, if the charges are based on the same act (i.e., we know you tried to kill the victim, and we know someone succeeded, but we don't know whether it was you) then the charges would have to be tried at the same time.	The concept is known as lesser included offense. The prosecution believed that they have a chance to prove murder, so they charged murder, but they understood that the judge and jury might not convict on murder. So they said in effect, "and if you won't find him guilty of murder, at least convict for manslaughter."	In the US, a person is generally protected from being tried for the same offense twice, but they are not necessarily absolutely "protected". If a jury convicts a person but the judge enters a directed verdict of not guilty, the prosecution can appeal that action (Wilson v. US, 420 U.S. 332). The reason is that the acquittal could be disposed of on appeal without subjecting the person to a second trial. In contrast, in Fong Foo v. US, 369 U.S. 141 the trial judge ordered the jury to enter a verdict of acquittal. The appeals court rejected the judges basis for ordering an acquittal: but Fong Foo was "protected" because there could not be a second trial (double jeopardy), and it does not follow that the jury would have convicted but for the judge's order. The question reduces to the limited circumstances under which the prosecution can appeal a verdict. For instance, the prosecution can appeal a tre-trial motion to dismiss, and since there was no trial, there is no second jeopardy. Within a single jurisdiction, the only circumstance allowing a second trial involves bribery of a judge (Aleman v. Judges of the Circuit Court of Cook County, 138 F.3d 302), where the basis for allowing a second trial is that defendant was not in jeopardy with the first trial. New evidence does not override a defendant's protection against a second trial, whether it is new DNA evidence or a confession. It does not matter if this evidence arises seconds after the final verdict is entered, or months after. Or even before, but the prosecution was unaware.	The United States gives the accused the right to a fair trial. However, it also gives exceptionally strong protection to the media (and to people in general) to speak on matters of public concern; there are very, very few cases where a US government (federal, state, or local) can legally order someone not to publish something (as opposed to letting it be published and then issuing sanctions). The rule of thumb for content-based restrictions on speech is that they must be the least restrictive way of achieving a compelling government interest. For trials, there are other ways to achieve a fair trial without restricting the press. One of the most preferred ways to do it is to use the voir dire process, in which jurors can be rejected for prejudice. Courts can also move the trial to a new location; they can grant motions from the defense to delay the trial while things cool down; they can sequester the jurors (meaning that the jurors are kept in a central place and prevented from talking to anyone else or reading anything about the case); if none of these are done, a conviction can potentially be reversed on appeal. US courts will, wherever possible, modify the trial to mitigate the damage done by the press, rather than restrict the press to mitigate the damage to the trial. For a review of a few different approaches to this in different jurisdictions, you might want to look at this law journal article.	Generally speaking, ex parte communications with a judge (i.e. communications to which all parties to a case are not notified) are prohibited, both by law and as a matter of judicial and attorney ethics, subject to some narrow exceptions (e.g. applications for arrest warrants prior to the arrest warrant being carried out). Generally speaking, communications with the court (which is to say with judges or their subordinates) are made a matter of public record, and if the communication is about a particular case, all attorneys in the case must be given notice of it (if someone is not represented by an attorney, the notice goes to the defendant rather than their non-existent attorney). The attorney may then communicate the communication to their client, and generally speaking should communicate it to the client. I don't see anything in the question that suggests that this proposed communication would fall outside the general rule. But, the question isn't very specific and I wouldn't rule out the possibility that an exception might apply in a case with very unusual facts. Also, usually, a request to reconsider a sentence has to be made by a formal motion filed by the prosecutor or the defendant. Generally speaking, a third-party cannot file that motion unilaterally. A third-party or victim would usually only have input into the decision through the prosecutor's office. Third parties and victims are not generally permitted to file motions to reconsider sentences that have been imposed even in states with "victim's rights" statutes, but can publicly provide input to the court before a sentence is imposed, usually at the behest of either the prosecutor or the defendant. Furthermore, generally a criminal defendant has a constitutional right to not have a sentence made more severe after being sentenced the first time around. Reconsideration of a sentence once it is imposed may only be in the direction of leniency. Once a sentence is imposed, it can't be reconsidered to be made more harsh.
What are the charges faced for sexting minor overseas? One of my friends(18) was in an online relationship with a girl(15) overseas. They were sexting each other for about a year until he broke off contact with her, realizing the mistake he made. He deeply regrets it and is worried everyday that he's gonna get into prison and get registered as sex offender/ predator. It has affected him so much that he has his mental health go down, grades go down and really just a pessimistic view towards his future. It has been more than a year since they broke up. What are the charges he'll face? Laws of which country apply to him? Say he's from Germany and the girl is from the US. Does the Germany or the US laws come into action in this case? What happens when he visits the US and the girl files a complaint? Does the girl face charge for distributing nudes, since he never asked for it and/or pressurized her, and it was the girl who texted him first? He's a second year physics undergrad, and a smart one. Plans on studying in the US if he gets the opportunity, to get his PhD. But is scared for his dear life that he'll into prison for this mistake he made.	I think that there won't be any trouble from Germany, but the US could be a problem if the girl reports the case to authorities. In that case, further details would depend on the state in question. As far as Germany is concerned, there are two sections in the penal code that could be relevant here: § 176 StGB - Sexual abuse of children § 182 StGB - Sexual abuse of juveniles To make things more complicated, we would also have to take into account juvenile penal law and whether Germany would have jurisdiction in the first place. 1) Jurisdiction: I'm not sure whether this case would fall into German jurisdiction under § 3 StGB as the case could be deemed to be committed in the US. However, in that case, Germany could still assume jurisdiction under § 5 item 8 StGB. 2) Since our guy was only 18, it would be at the discretion of the court to decide whether juvenile criminal law or regular criminal law is to be applied. In the former case, the sentence would be lower (if there is a sentence at all). But then we still have to figure out whether our guy broke a law in the first place. So first of all, let's take a look at § 176 StGB: “Section 176 Sexual abuse of children (1) Whoever performs sexual acts on a person under 14 years of age (child) or has the child perform sexual acts on them incurs a penalty of imprisonment for a term of between six months and 10 years. (2) Whoever causes a child to perform sexual acts on a third person or has a third person perform sexual acts on the child incurs the same penalty. (3) In especially serious cases, the penalty is imprisonment for a term of at least one year. (4) Whoever 1. performs sexual acts in the presence of a child, 2. causes the child to perform sexual acts, unless the act is subject to a penalty under subsection (1) or subsection (2), 3. influences a child by way of material (section 11 (3)) or information and communication technologies a) in order to cause the child to perform sexual acts on or in the presence of the offender or a third person or to have the offender or a third person perform sexual acts on the child or b) in order to commit an offence under section 184b (1) no. 3 or under section 184b (3) or 4. influences a child by showing pornographic images or depictions, by playing pornographic audio recordings, making pornographic content available by way of information and communication technologies or pornographic speech incurs a penalty of imprisonment for a term of between three months and five years. (5) Whoever offers or promises to supply a child for an offence under subsections (1) to (4) or who arranges with another to commit such an offence incurs a penalty of imprisonment for a term of between three months and five years. (6) The attempt is punishable; this does not apply to offences under subsection (4) nos. 3 and 4 and subsection (5).” Since the girl is 15 years old, this section is probably not relevant. However, to know for sure, we would need to know her exact age when contact started. If she was only 13 years and 11 months and contact lasted 1 year and 2 months, then § 176 might be relevant after all. That takes us to § 182. “Section 182 Sexual abuse of juveniles (1) Whoever abuses a person under 18 years of age by taking advantage of a predicament by 1. performing sexual acts on that person or having said person perform sexual acts on them or 2. causing the person to perform sexual acts on a third person or to have sexual acts performed on them by a third person incurs a penalty of imprisonment for a term not exceeding five years or a fine. (2) A person over 18 years of age who abuses a person under 18 years of age by performing sexual acts on that person or having that person perform sexual acts on them for a consideration incurs the same penalty. (3) A person over 21 years of age who abuses a person under 16 years of age by 1. performing sexual acts on that person or having that person perform sexual acts on them or 2. causing that person to perform sexual acts on a third person or to have a third person perform sexual acts on that person, and thereby exploits the victim’s lack of capacity for sexual self-determination, incurs a penalty of imprisonment for a term not exceeding three years or a fine. (4) The attempt is punishable. (5) In the cases under subsection (3), the offence is prosecuted only upon request, unless the prosecuting authority deems there to be a special public interest in prosecution which calls for ex officio intervention. (6) In the cases under subsections (1) to (3), the court may dispense with imposing a penalty pursuant to these provisions if, having regard to the conduct of the person against whom the offence was committed, the wrongfulness of the act is minor.” § 182 para. 1 StGB applies only to cases where the offender takes advantage of a predicament. I seriously doubt there's a predicament involved here. § 182 para. 2 StGB only applies for sexual acts for consideration, i. e. when money is being paid. Since apparantly there was no payment involved in this case, no problem here and we can go on to para. 3. § 182 para. 3 StGB only applies to cases where the victim lacks the capacity for self-determination and the offender is at least 21 years old. Neither is the case here. Summary: As far as Germany is concerned, there's no trouble to be expected under § 182 StGB. § 176 StGB might cause problems but only if the girl was under 14 when contact began. (You stated that she's 15. This could mean that she just turned 15 but was 13 years and 11 months when contact began.) As far as German law is concerned, it looks like our guy was overly cautious and there was no need to cut contact. From the US perspective, however, things will probably be different. I'm not familiar with US law but we would probably need to know the state in question.	Actual sex with a minor is an offence. Under the Criminal Attempts Act 1981, doing something "which is more than merely preparatory to the commission of the offence" is attempting to commit the offense, and is itself an offence. They have attempted the offence of having sex with a minor, although they didn't succeed because unbeknownst to them the other party was not a minor. There is some variability in whether it matters that there is no actual minor involved. In that specific instance the offence he was charged with was arranging the commission of a child sex offence (Sexual Offences Act 2003 §14), where one "intentionally arranges or facilitates something that he intends to do". Since he pleaded guilty, we won't find out how an appellate court would interpret 14(1)(b) ("doing it will involve the commission of an offence").	The relevant law in England and Wales is the Protection of Children Act 1978. Under section 1 of the Act, it’s a defense to distributing, showing, or possessing indecent images of children if you had a “legitimate reason” to distribute, show, or possess them. It’s also a defense if you had not seen the images, didn’t know they were indecent, and didn’t have any cause to suspect they were indecent. However, the 1999 case of R v. Bowden held that downloading a digital copy of an image counts as “making” an image. This is not subject to the “legitimate reason” defense by statute (although I don’t know if it’d count as “making” if you have no reason to know the contents, like if a computer repair shop backs up a customer’s hard drive without looking at what’s on the drive). However, it is explicitly still subject to defenses in sections 1A and 1B of the Act. 1A covers spouses and partners. If you are the spouse or partner of a child between 16 and 18, then with their consent you can legally make indecent images of them (although this doesn’t apply if anyone but the two of you is in the image). You can also possess those images with their consent and give them a copy. Section 1B covers criminal proceedings, investigations, etc., and was added after R v. Bowden. Because copying a digital image counts as “making” an image, it would generally be illegal for people to work with digital copies of indecent images even if done for a good reason. To avoid that, Parliament made an exception for making an indecent image when necessary to prevent, detect, or investigate crimes, as well as for criminal proceedings anywhere in the world. Parliament also exempted the UK’s intelligence agencies (MI5, MI6, and GCHQ) when carrying out their duties. These are specific statutory exemptions, so they can’t really be generalized to “if you have a legitimate reason.”	"Checking someone's digital footprint" could be stalking, depending on the circumstances. The better question to ask is about the legality of a certain action, and not the specific name used in a jurisdiction (although indeed in Washington there is a defined crime of "stalking"). I don't know what you mean by "checking someone's digital footprint", and it is not defined by law. Looking at RCW 9a.46.110, we can first discern that it does not matter for the definition of the crime where these people live or where the robbery took place. If two people from Alberta travel to Alaska and harass or murder a person from Texas, Washington law does not enter into the equation. The crime that you're asking about is the snooping, so for Washington to have jurisdiction, the snooping has to be "in" Washington. That does not mean that both parties have to be in Washington – there can be complex jurisdictional laws if the accused is in another state or country. The accused can easily be prosecuted in his own state, he can also be prosecuted in a foreign country, if he is caught there or if he is extradited to that country. For the act to be stalking, the first element is that "He or she intentionally and repeatedly harasses or repeatedly follows another person; and...". Harassment is defined in that section as a knowing and willful course of conduct directed at a specific person which seriously alarms, annoys, harasses, or is detrimental to such person, and which serves no legitimate or lawful purpose. The course of conduct shall be such as would cause a reasonable person to suffer substantial emotional distress, and shall actually cause substantial emotional distress to the petitioner, or when the course of conduct would cause a reasonable parent to fear for the well-being of his or her child. Since there was no communication between the parties, there is no harassment in the legal sense. There is no "following" either, therefore the act fails to constitute stalking w.r.t the first elements. Since the crime is defined by a conjunction of elements and your scenario fails on the first conjunct, it is not "stalking" (it is also not "harassment" as defined in RCW 9A.46.020, 9A.46.060.	What happens to someone who’s committed a murder in the UK? Considering the person will be caught. This is a basic and somewhat vague question so I will provide a basic and very general answer. The name of the court with proper jurisdiction, the relevant criminal procedural rules, and the substantive law that applies varies within the U.K. In particular in Scotland and the various dependencies of the U.K. differ significantly from England-Wales. There are some minor differences in Northern Ireland. England-and-Wales are treated as one for most purposes, but there are some slight differences at the very lowest levels but none materially impact a murder case. If they are caught in England and Wales they are arrested, interviewed, charged then brought before the next available Magistrates' Court who send the defendant to the Crown Court for trial. As a Magistrate has no power to grant bail for murder the defendant must be remanded in custody until he can make an application for bail before the Crown Court, but the default position is that bail should not be granted for murder unless in very exceptional circumstances. In other U.K. jurisdictions, the names of the courts will differ and there may be some other fine details that aren't the same in the pre-trial process but the same general outline applies. If they are outside of the U.K. they will be subject to either an International or European Arrest Warrant and extradited to the UK at the request of the U.K. Government under the terms of the relevant extradition treaties. On arrival in the UK they are arrested for murder and the process proceeds in the same manner. (If they are someplace that does not have an extradition treaty with the U.K., the trial may be deferred until U.K. officials have an opportunity to arrest him and are often dogged in attempting to accomplish, perhaps, for example, while the suspect is on holiday somewhere that there is an extradition treaty.) Prior to the trial, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) and the defence will prepare their cases and return to court at various times to settle any issues etc before going to the expense of a full trial. Also, at any time the CPS determine the case to be too weak for a realistic prospect of conviction or the suspect is innocent, they are supposed to dismiss or amend the indictment. The defendant is then tried for murder before a jury (almost always, but not in every single case, e.g., if the defendant admits guilt and the plea is accepted in appropriate proceedings before a judge). The CPS instruct a barrister to present their case with another barrister acting on behalf of the defendant. The process is for juvenile defendants is pretty much the same as for adults, apart from added safeguards to ensure the juvenile understands the proceedings and is not put at any disadvantage due to their age. All of the jurisdictions within the U.K., however, will have a trial that involves presentation of sworn evidence and exhibits and opening and closing arguments from both prosecution and defence counsels to a jury, procedural objections, cross-examination, and sometimes offering of additional evidence under the supervision of a single judge; normally with the defendant present. There will be some means of court reporting, and unless the judge orders otherwise (which is only done in relatively exceptional circumstances), the trial will be open to the public and the press to observe. If the defendant dies before the legal process to secure a conviction is not completed, the case is dismissed as moot. If the defendant is convicted of a homicide offense the trial/sentencing judge will impose a prison sentences, which is "fixed by law", with a life sentence in the case of the most serious homicide offense, murder (there are multiple homicide offenses that hinge largely on the intent of the defendant, often a murder prosecution will include less included homicide offenses as options for convictions). Only in exceptional cases this will be a whole-life term, in all others the judge will prescribe a minimum sentence according to the judicial sentencing guidelines after which the defendant may be released on licence, which is what an American would call parole. Any offences committed on licence will normally result in a recall to prison. The U.K. does not have a death penalty and does not authorise corporal punishment. The vast majority of people who are arrested and tried for murder are convicted, although there are sometimes acquittals or hung juries. This conviction may be appealed by the defendant to the Court of Appeal (and again up to the Supreme Court) (the intermediate appellate court may not be the same in all U.K. jurisdictions) which reviews the proceedings to determine if the law was applied correctly and if there was sufficient evidence to support the verdict. If the court finds that this was not the case, it can vacate the conviction and orders an appropriate revised disposition of the case depending upon the circumstances justifying the reversal of the trial court. If the appeal court affirm the trial verdict then the sentence continues to be carried out. Usually, but not always, the defendant will be in prison pursuant to the sentence imposed pending an outcome of any appeal. Eventually, if the sentence imposed upon a conviction is affirmed (and not a whole life term) the prisoner may be released on licence (which includes some post-release supervision) and is free and to about living their life again, subject to some collateral consequences based upon their criminal record (e.g. inability to work in certain occupations). If the defendant is acquitted, then they go free and cannot be tried again for the same offence, unless the exceptions under the double jeopardy provisions that apply in that jurisdiction apply. The main exception of double jeopardy is for newly discovered evidence of guilt in a case where there was an acquittal. If the person convicted is not a British citizen, they will usually be deported at the conclusion of their sentence if international law allows for it. There are a few exceptions to these rules that come up in a tiny percentage of all U.K. murders that apply (1) in the case of people subject to courts-martial such as active duty military service members, (2) in the case of foreign diplomats with diplomatic immunity, (3) when the murder is classified as an act of terrorism, and (4) in the case that the defendant has a title of nobility that calls for special treatment such as, e.g., Prince Charles (the current heir to the throne) or the Queen. These special cases are really too esoteric for the plain vanilla facts stated in the question and involve unique processes that are very different from the usual one described above. The fourth case is one that does not exist in my country (the U.S.) and in other countries that are republics rather than constitutional monarchies like the U.K., although most countries have some special rules for criminal trials of their very highest officials (like Presidents and Prime Ministers).	There is no such thing as "EU" law. Each member state has their own laws. In germany it is not forbidden to live together. The marriage certainly would not be legal here and I highly doubt the marriage would be recognized here if legalized somewhere else. But let's for the sake of the argument assume it would be. As soon as it gets into territory that marriage is made for, it would be highly illegal. Moving to a different country from Asia, the minor is highly dependent on their adult spouse for basically everything. Starting with mandatory health insurance, where you literally have to check the box "a dependent of the adult" in the adults insurance, to basic needs such as food, shelter, clothes, paying for school materials. Even in theory, with school being mandatory and laws against child labor, there is no way the child would not be depending on that adult. § 174 Abs. 1 StGB Sex mit Schutzbefohlenen (Personen unter 16 Jahren, die jemandem zur Erziehung, Ausbildung oder zur Betreuung in der Lebensführung anvertraut sind bzw. leibliche oder angenommene Kinder unter 18 Jahren) und Sex unter Missbrauch eines Abhängigkeitsverhältnisses ist verboten und wird mit Freiheitsstrafe bis zu 5 Jahren bestraft. Translation: Sex with a protected person (a person under the age of 16 who is entrusted to someone for upbringing, education or persons under the age of 16 who are entrusted to the care of someone for upbringing, education, or life care, or natural or adopted children under the age of 18) and sex in abuse of a relationship of dependence in general is prohibited and is punishable by imprisonment for up to 5 years. That is if they agreed. If they don't, it's rape, plain and simple, regardless of marital status or other relationship and will, depending on circumstances, net you something between the 5 years above up to 15 years in prison. The difference between raping a spouse and raping someone outside of marriage has been abolished in 1997.	Context is important. There is no law against taking a picture of a child who is entirely naked or exposing certain body parts. The laws in question such as 18 USC 2251 refer to the fact that the minor "engage[s] in, any sexually explicit conduct". Sexually explicit conduct is defined in 18 USC 2256, and would include "lascivious exhibition of the genitals or pubic area" (which does not include nipples of anyone). Federal law does not define "lascivious", but the ordinary meaning of the word does not include the situation that you describe. The Justice Department, which goes after child pornographers, provides this guide to federal child porn laws. Georgia's child porn law is only marginally different, referring to "Lewd exhibition" rather than "Lascivious exhibition" , and including the "Condition of being fettered, bound, or otherwise physically restrained on the part of a person who is nude" (so a picture of a person holding a naked baby would technically qualify, but is highly unlikely to be prosecuted as production of child porn). These laws pertain to any form of child porn, including "private use only". Dissemination would be an added charge.	It may depend on what offences are suspected of being committed. One example is: In the united-states under 18 U.S. Code § 2258A an Electronic Service Provider (ESP) is required to report apparent violations of sections: 2251 [Sexual exploitation of children] 2251A [Selling or buying of children] 2252 [material involving the sexual exploitation of minors] 2252A [material constituting or containing child pornography] 2252B [Misleading domain names with intent] 2260 [sexually explicit depictions of a minor etc] The report is made to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) who in turn forward the information to the relevant domestic or foreign law enforcement agency. The ESP is protected from commiting distribution or related offences when making the report by virtue of subsection (g)(4): Permitted disclosure by a provider.— A provider that submits a report under subsection (a)(1) may disclose by mail, electronic transmission, or other reasonable means, information, including visual depictions contained in the report, in a manner consistent with permitted disclosures under paragraphs (3) through (8) of section 2702(b) only to a law enforcement agency described in subparagraph (A), (B), or (C) of paragraph (3), to NCMEC, or as necessary to respond to legal process.
Online player nicks: personal data under GDPR? We run a server for an old, open-source FPS game. The game collects match events that get logged, where the only information stored is player nicknames (changeable at will at any time by the players). These servers are open to join (no login system of any kind), and neither IP addresses nor anything else other than game events are logged. We would like to publish tables of player performance statistics. Can we just do it, on the basis that player nicks are not personal data because they do not relate to identified natural persons? Although a random online nom de guerre can not on its own identify anyone, I can think of some scenarios where this could not be true: Somebody in the community may know who somebody else is, e.g. they might be friends, knowing each other after years playing---although that's information nobody on the basis of just the player nicks could retrieve. Some players might have used the same nick on different platforms (e.g. an internet forum), so they could be temptatively identified on that basis (provided some other information were visible in those other platforms) Even if the threshold for potential identifiability were as low as to consider nicks on their own as personal data, could we proceed on the basis of lawful processing for "legitimate interests"? Those would be those of this gaming community, by making available attractive (hopefully) information related to the game and their enjoyment. In my view this would not trump on any fundamental user rights that would have to weighted against those interests, nor would we be doing something particularly unexpected from players of a game where competition is the norm (e.g. the game itself shows player statistics after each match).	Nicknames, usernames, or gamer tags are definitely personal data under the GDPR. You are operating under a very narrow definition of “identifying”, which is understandable since the definition of personal data in the GDPR isn't overly enlightening at first glance: […] an identifiable natural person is one who can be identified, directly or indirectly, in particular by reference to an identifier such as a name, an identification number, location data, an online identifier or to one or more factors specific to the physical, physiological, genetic, mental, economic, cultural or social identity of that natural person; — GDPR Art 4(1) However, this definition does show that “identifiable” should be interpreted rather broadly. For example, indirectly identifying data is still identifying data – there doesn't even have to be a strong identifier like a name, passport number, or street address. It is also not necessary that identification enables you to determine the real world identity – identification is anything that allows you to single out a person, or to combine data into a profile of that person (compare Recitals 26 and 30). In any case, an online username or user ID is clearly an identifier and will fall under one of “a name, an identification number, […] an online identifier”. If in doubt, ask your data protection authority for guidance. You've correctly understood that you will need a legal basis to process this data, and that legitimate interest could be that legal basis. This doesn't have to be your own interest, so a community interest would be OK. You need to balance the user's rights against this interest. You have performed this balancing and have found that the interest outweighs these rights. You've noted that such leaderboards are a cultural norm and are generally expected, which strongly weighs in your favour. However, legitimate interest is not a free pass but just means an opt-out solution (right to object per Art 21). You should also inform users that the leaderboard is accessible publicly when they join your server (transparency principle per Art 5(1)(a) as detailed by the information obligations in Art 13). In particular, you should use a “message of the day” or welcome message functionality to link to your privacy policy. You should also be aware that other rights such as the right to access, erasure, and data portability apply. As an alternative to legitimate interest (opt-out) you could also consider consent (opt-in), though this results in slightly different data subject rights and is more difficult to do correctly. But I'd agree that legitimate interest is more appropriate here.	It's complicated You still own your own posts First off, you own everything that you originally created. Posting it on Stack Exchange doesn't affect your rights to your own content. Incorporating suggestions If you copy any of the text from posts that were created by others, you must comply with the CC BY-SA license. The exact version will depend on when the content was posted, and can be viewed by clicking the "Share" link or viewing the post's timeline via the clock icon on the left. Currently, new posts are licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0, which requires you to (basically) provide attribution with the creator's name, a link back to the content, and an indication of whether changes were made. A more detailed description of the exact requirements is here. You would also be required to license the work that you incorporated it into under the same license. However, game mechanics aren't copyrightable. If you merely used mechanics suggested in the posts without actually using the actual creative expression (for instance, names or description text) from the posts, you would not be required to provide any attribution or use any particular license, because you didn't use any copyrightable material from the post. A thank-you would still be nice All that said, it's still a nice thing to do to provide some sort of informal thanks to those who provided valuable assistance, even when you're not legally required to do so.	There is not necessarily a contradiction. Information that they may keep may be: Account information Subscriber information Information on breaches of the Terms of Service or Agreement So yes, they might certainly not keep any logs – although that claim is doubtful, since they almost certainly keep at least error-level logs of their services – but that doesn't mean that they have no information to disclose to law enforcement. It's also questionable what "logs" refers to – would aggregate statistics be considered a log, by law? Would your last known IP address be considered a log, provided they don't keep any other history?	You wrote: As far as I believe, it is permitted under GDPR to record and store non-anonymized web server access logs, as these can be useful for security reasons. True, Recital 49 GDPR: The processing of personal data to the extent strictly necessary and proportionate for the purposes of ensuring network and information security, i.e. the ability of a network or an information system to resist, at a given level of confidence, accidental events or unlawful or malicious actions that compromise the availability, authenticity, integrity and confidentiality of stored or transmitted personal data, and the security of the related services offered by, or accessible via, those networks and systems, by public authorities, by computer emergency response teams (CERTs), computer security incident response teams (CSIRTs), by providers of electronic communications networks and services and by providers of security technologies and services, constitutes a legitimate interest of the data controller concerned. This could, for example, include preventing unauthorised access to electronic communications networks and malicious code distribution and stopping ‘denial of service’ attacks and damage to computer and electronic communication systems. You asked: My question is whether this anonymization process counts as processing personally identifiable data under GDPR? IP addresses are personal data in some cases, so yes, you're processing personal data. Then, these anonymized logs will be fed into an analytics tool to provide stats on unique visitors, page hits, etc. These are purposes considered compatible with initial purposes according to Article 5.1.(b): Personal data shall be (...) collected for specified, explicit and legitimate purposes and not further processed in a manner that is incompatible with those purposes; further processing for (...) statistical purposes shall, in accordance with Article 89(1), not be considered to be incompatible with the initial purposes (‘purpose limitation’); As a matter of fact, you might be required to anonymize the data for those purposes, see Article 89.1: Processing for (...) statistical purposes, shall be subject to appropriate safeguards, in accordance with this Regulation, for the rights and freedoms of the data subject. Those safeguards shall ensure that technical and organisational measures are in place in particular in order to ensure respect for the principle of data minimisation. Those measures may include pseudonymisation provided that those purposes can be fulfilled in that manner. Where those purposes can be fulfilled by further processing which does not permit or no longer permits the identification of data subjects, those purposes shall be fulfilled in that manner. If I were to anonymize the logs and continue to use them exclusively for security reasons, would that change anything? No, you would be processing data in a manner compatible with initial purposes (ensuring network and information security). Or does it not matter what I do with them once they are anonymized? Yes, it does. If you're not using them for "archiving purposes in the public interest, scientific or historical research purposes or statistical purposes" then you're using them for purposes incompatible with initial purposes. You would need to find new legal basis for processing. does this extra anonymization process on top then take it over the line meaning that consent and a privacy notice would be required? It depends on what you want to do with anonymized data. In your case, for security purposes or security and statistical purposes, you don't need the consent and there is no requirement for the privacy notice (but sure, it would be nice to publish one). For other purposes it might be different.	Corrections to your statements or quotations Your quotation "To fall within the remit of the GDPR, the processing has to be part of an "enterprise" (...)" is not from the GDPR, and is an erroneous statement. Also, the threshold of 250 employees you refer to, is only relevant with regards to the record-keeping obligations of Article 30. GDPR provisions relevant to your question The GDPR applies to individuals or students in accordance with the material scope of the GDPR, which is treated in Article 2 (2) c) where GDPR states that "This Regulation does not apply to the processing of personal data: (...) by a natural person in the course of a purely personal or household activity;" The Recital 18 of the GDPR gives some insight as to what would be a purely personal or household activity as follows: (18) This Regulation does not apply to the processing of personal data by a natural person in the course of a purely personal or household activity and thus with no connection to a professional or commercial activity. Personal or household activities could include correspondence and the holding of addresses, or social networking and online activity undertaken within the context of such activities. However, this Regulation applies to controllers or processors which provide the means for processing personal data for such personal or household activities. Interpretation To my knowledge, there are no specific guidelines regarding this matter to date from WP29. Those may be adopted in the future, or some requirements may already exist in local laws in one of the EU countries or from documentation available from local data protection authorities. If you are based in the EU, you could check this with your local data protection authority. There is, however, case law from the European Court of Justice as pointed out by Free Radical, interpreting the scope of the "personal use exception" in Directive 95/46/EC (which provisions are similar to the GDPR in this matter). If your hobby is not limited to your personal circle (yourself and the persons in your household), and thus if you plan to share the results of your data collection and processing with third parties (possibly teachers, other fellow students, or anybody else if you publish the results of your work) resulting from your "hobby" activity, you certainly would not fall in this exception to the scope. Case C-101/01 is an example of publication on the Internet made by an individual claiming to use its "freedom of expression to create internet pages in the course of a non-profit-making or leisure activity". The court clarified that: exception must (...) be interpreted as relating only to activities which are carried out in the course of private or family life of individuals, which is clearly not the case with the processing of personal data consisting in publication on the internet so that those data are made accessible to an indefinite number of people Another, less optimistic interpretation from the examples given by the GDPR recitals, could derive from the spirit in which purely personal or household activity are to be understood. These examples actually refer to limited amounts of data and which are related to the individual itself (his own address book, his social networking activity, etc.), and creating limited risks relevant to the person herself and its contacts. In this view, there is a risk that a "hobby" in which you collect data about thousands of persons unrelated to you, could be considered as not being really purely personal. Actually, an interpretation of case law C-212/13 from the European Court of Justice also mentioned by Free Radical could support this reasoning. In this case, a video recording of people was stored from cameras installed by an individual on his family home for its own security purposes, but the cameras were also monitoring a public space. The court ruled that: To the extent that video surveillance such as that at issue in the main proceedings covers, even partially, a public space and is accordingly directed outwards from the private setting of the person processing the data in that manner, it cannot be regarded as an activity which is a purely ‘personal or household’ activity (...) Extending this reasoning to your question, a "hobby" consisting of collecting "huge list of names, emails, zipcodes" unrelated to you could be regarded as "directed outwards from the private setting (...)". Conclusion As a hobbyist, or a student, if you can work on fake computer generated data and achieve the same results in your personal learning purposes you should definitely consider doing so.	No GDPR applies to people (not just citizens) who are in the EU. It has no applicability if both parties are not in the EU.	I suspect that US voting records would fall under Article 2(2)(a): Article 2 Material Scope ... This Regulation does not apply to the processing of personal data: (a) in the course of an activity which falls outside the scope of Union law; I doubt it would be possible to argue successfully that a foreign election is anything other than "an activity which falls outside the scope of Union law." Even the territorial scope could be questioned. This is set forth in the next article, on "territorial scope," the second item of which says: This Regulation applies to the processing of personal data of data subjects who are in the Union by a controller or processor not established in the Union, where the processing activities are related to: (a) the offering of goods or services, irrespective of whether a payment of the data subject is required, to such data subjects in the Union; or (b) the monitoring of their behaviour as far as their behaviour takes place within the Union. It is probably arguable whether processing absentee ballots from EU residents constitutes "offering services to data subjects in the Union," but in this case it's likely to be more difficult to resolve that question than to determine whether the activity falls outside the scope of Union law.	First of all, a password is not personal data. ‘personal data’ means any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person (‘data subject’); an identifiable natural person is one who can be identified, directly or indirectly, in particular by reference to an identifier such as a name, an identification number, location data, an online identifier or to one or more factors specific to the physical, physiological, genetic, mental, economic, cultural or social identity of that natural person; From GDPR Article 4 (https://gdpr-info.eu) As for password hashes, what do you mean by requesting a copy of yours? You can produce it if you knew the hashing algorithm of the website. By the way, websites should be using good hashing algorithms, such as bcrypt or scrypt, not MD5 or SHA1.
Is a notorized "Agreement" between buyer and seller binding? Bought a vehicle from a dealer couple of months ago only to have my insurance refusing to insure it due to fraudulent odometer reading. I ran my own history report and sure enough, it was rolled back 150k miles. In the US under Federal odometer law, 49 U.S.C. Chapter 327 (Public Law 103-272), prohibits the disconnection, resetting, or alteration of a motor vehicle's odometer with intent to change the number of miles indicated thereon. The law requires that a written disclosure of the mileage registered on an odometer be provided by the seller to the purchaser on the title to the vehicle when the ownership of a vehicle is transferred. If the odometer mileage is incorrect, the law requires a statement to that effect to be furnished on the title to the buyer. After filing a police report, I went back to the dealer and the owner explains to me when I purchased the vehicle, his "friend" used his dealer plates...What? Now I know something fishy is going on for sure. He tells me he'll take the car back and if it sells in two weeks, he will give me full amount if it doesn't sell in two weeks, he'll give me 90% of what I paid. He put this in writing and I read over what he typed up and I called a notary so at least we had a witness and it was documented. We both signed the paper and I took pictures of the vehicle and left it there. Is the agreement made by the seller binding? This is a refund agreement between Buyer (me) and seller (Dealer) on XXX vehicle on 06-24 (purchase date). The car has been returned to the lot in the same condition sold. A refund of is to be given on or before 08-21. All previous agreement between buyer and seller is considered null and void. Buyer and seller are in mutual agreement" UPDATE: Dealer has honored our signed agreement. I was told car has been sold but without proof of the sale price, I received the $7,000 that was originally guaranteed after two weeks. Whether the odometer has been changed to show correct mileage I cannot say, I was never listed as the owner or did I sign the car title to my name.	Is the agreement made by the seller binding? Yes. You "secured" reimbursement of 90% of what you paid and de facto waived your entitlement to the remaining 10%. Prior to that signing the agreement, you were entitled to be fully reimbursed regardless of how long it takes for the counterparty to sell the car to someone else. Depending on the exact terms of the agreement, the counterparty might have the meritorious argument that your waiver is in exchange for a "timely" (i.e., two week) reimbursement of at least 90% of your payment.	The person getting the item by fraud didn't get any ownership. Therefore when you bought it, you didn't get ownership either. It's still the company's property, and they can do with it what they like (within reason, they wouldn't be allowed to make it blow up in your face). If you sent back the item, good on you, because the item is now with its rightful owner. If you don't like it, you can sue the person who sold the item to you.	Short Answer You are legally entitled to the cost of an adequate replacement (possibly a lightly used previously owned computer) reduced by the amount refunded. This is sometimes called a "benefit of the bargain" measure of the relief to which you are entitled. But as a practical matter, there is no cost effective way of enforcing your legal rights under these facts, that doesn't deeply compromise you chances of success. But, trying to litigate the case on the cheap, because it is unlikely to succeed, makes the effort to enforce your rights even less worthwhile. Your best options are those you could take outside the formal legal process (such as social media gripes, or complaining to "the manager" of the person you dealt with first if they refuse to give you what you want or are entitled to under the law). Long Answer Applicable Law The default rules of law, absent an express contractual term to the contrary, are as follows: In every U.S. jurisdiction in an intra-U.S. transaction, this is governed by the following section of Article 2 of the Uniform Commercial Code, which apart from section and subsection numbering conventions is substantially identical in all of these jurisdictions. It states: § 2-713. Buyer's Damages for Non-delivery or Repudiation. (1) Subject to the provisions of this Article with respect to proof of market price (Section 2-723), the measure of damages for non-delivery or repudiation by the seller is the difference between the market price at the time when the buyer learned of the breach and the contract price together with any incidental and consequential damages provided in this Article (Section 2-715), but less expenses saved in consequence of the seller's breach. (2)Market price is to be determined as of the place for tender or, in cases of rejection after arrival or revocation of acceptance, as of the place of arrival. In international transactions between signatory countries, the relevant body of law of the Convention on the International Sale of Goods (CISG) (1980). The primary applicable provisions of that Convention (to which the U.S. is a party) are: Article 45 (1) If the seller fails to perform any of his obligations under the contract or this Convention, the buyer may: (a) exercise the rights provided in articles 46 to 52; (b) claim damages as provided in articles 74 to 77. (2) The buyer is not deprived of any right he may have to claim damages by exercising his right to other remedies. (3) No period of grace may be granted to the seller by a court or arbitral tribunal when the buyer resorts to a remedy for breach of contract. Article 46 (1) The buyer may require performance by the seller of his obligations unless the buyer has resorted to a remedy which is inconsistent with this requirement. . . . Article 47 (1) The buyer may fix an additional period of time of reasonable length for performance by the seller of his obligations. (2) Unless the buyer has received notice from the seller that he will not perform within the period so fixed, the buyer may not, during that period, resort to any remedy for breach of contract. However, the buyer is not deprived thereby of any right he may have to claim damages for delay in performance. Article 48 (1) Subject to article 49, the seller may, even after the date for delivery, remedy at his own expense any failure to perform his obligations, if he can do so without unreasonable delay and without causing the buyer unreasonable inconvenience or uncertainty of reimbursement by the seller of expenses advanced by the buyer. However, the buyer retains any right to claim damages as provided for in this Convention. (2) If the seller requests the buyer to make known whether he will accept performance and the buyer does not comply with the request within a reasonable time, the seller may perform within the time indicated in his request. The buyer may not, during that period of time, resort to any remedy which is inconsistent with performance by the seller. (3) A notice by the seller that he will perform within a specified period of time is assumed to include a request, under the preceding paragraph, that the buyer make known his decision. (4) A request or notice by the seller under paragraph (2) or (3) of this article is not effective unless received by the buyer. Article 49 (1) The buyer may declare the contract avoided: (a) if the failure by the seller to perform any of his obligations under the contract or this Convention amounts to a fundamental breach of contract; or (b) in case of non-delivery, if the seller does not deliver the goods within the additional period of time fixed by the buyer in accordance with paragraph (1) of article 47 or declares that he will not deliver within the period so fixed. . . . Article 74 Damages for breach of contract by one party consist of a sum equal to the loss, including loss of profit, suffered by the other party as a consequence of the breach. Such damages may not exceed the loss which the party in breach foresaw or ought to have foreseen at the time of the conclusion of the contract, in the light of the facts and matters of which he then knew or ought to have known, as a possible consequence of the breach of contract. Article 75 If the contract is avoided and if, in a reasonable manner and within a reasonable time after avoidance, the buyer has bought goods in replacement or the seller has resold the goods, the party claiming damages may recover the difference between the contract price and the price in the substitute transaction as well as any further damages recoverable under article 74. Article 76 (1) If the contract is avoided and there is a current price for the goods, the party claiming damages may, if he has not made a purchase or resale under article 75, recover the difference between the price fixed by the contract and the current price at the time of avoidance as well as any further damages recoverable under article 74. If, however, the party claiming damages has avoided the contract after taking over the goods, the current price at the time of such taking over shall be applied instead of the current price at the time of avoidance. (2) For the purposes of the preceding paragraph, the current price is the price prevailing at the place where delivery of the goods should have been made or, if there is no current price at that place, the price at such other place as serves as a reasonable substitute, making due allowance for differences in the cost of transporting the goods. Article 77 A party who relies on a breach of contract must take such measures as are reasonable in the circumstances to mitigate the loss, including loss of profit, resulting from the breach. If he fails to take such measures, the party in breach may claim a reduction in the damages in the amount by which the loss should have been mitigated. Your Legal Rights This brings us to the question: What buyer protections are there for this? Will I be able to easily sue the manufacturer for monetary losses if the manufacturer refunds me anyway instead of letting me wait for the item to come back in stock? The buyer is legally entitled to the fair market value of obtaining a replacement (perhaps in the secondary market for used laptops) that is equivalent to what was ordered reduced by the amount of money refunded. Practical Vindication Of Your Legal Rights But it is much easier to get the refund than it is to prevail in a lawsuit for the additional damages to which the buyer is legally entitled, a prevailing buyer will probably not get their attorney fees if they prevail, and there is a good chance that the dispute will be sent to arbitration which is, generally speaking (according to strong empirical evidence) a forum with a strong anti-consumer bias (although consumer arbitration can be fairly inexpensive to litigate in, is somewhat more tolerant of lack of legal expertise by a self-represented party, and sometimes despite everything, you win, or can even get an unfair result that works in your favor rather than that of the seller). If you are fighting over $1,500 to $2,500, and you have a fairly complex case to prove that will require expert testimony (and expert witness fees and court costs would be awarded to a prevailing party in addition to the actual damages to which they are legally entitled even though attorney fees are not recoverable in most cases), it will be very hard to find a lawyer willing to take the case. This is because it will take far more than 5-12 hours of attorney work to take the case to its conclusion, which is your maximum cost effective litigation budget, even if everything you win goes to the attorney and you receive no actual benefit. To get even a 50% recovery, your lawyer needs to get the job done ins 2-6 hours depending on your lawyer's hourly rate, which is close to impossible when your legal argument is as difficult to prove as it is in this case. So, basically, the only cost effective way to litigate the case is without a lawyer in small claims court or consumer arbitration, even though representing yourself without a lawyer greatly reduces your chances of success on the merits. On balance, you would usually be better off accepting a refund and acknowledging that you have been damaged in a manner for which the law provides no reliable and cost effective remedy, because the harm is too small. Bad mouthing the offending company on social media (which sometimes results in a PR driven instead of lawyer driven, favorable resolution) would probably be a more fruitful strategy. Complaining to a manager or writing a letter to the President of the company might also be a more fruitful strategy. Sometimes small disputes can be resolved with class action lawsuits, but this isn't a case where this is an option, since it involves just a single individual or a handful of individuals who are harmed. This is also not the sort of case where a state consumer protection agency or attorney general's office or federal consumer protection agency is likely to get involved, since it doesn't involve a systemic deceptive trade practice, just an unfair to you bad situation. Why have these laws if they are so hard to enforce in consumer cases? As my commercial transactions professor in law school (James J. White, the author of the leading legal treatise on the subject) was fond of saying: all legal issues become more interesting if you add more zeros to the amount in controversy. If the computer system you bought had a price of $150,000 that had since gone up to $300,000, this dispute would absolutely be worth litigating. Furthermore, since you could litigate it adequately on the litigation budget that this amount in controversy would make possible, your prospects of successfully vindicating your rights as a buyer, at only a modest discount for unrecoverable litigation costs, would be much greater. Essentially, our system is designed to get close to justice in the most important disputes, as measured by the amount in controversy, while it tolerates small injustices that are not as damaging (in raw absolute dollar terms) as big disputes. This is unfair, but the source of this unfairness is intrinsic to the nature of the problem (rather than simply being a matter of artificial bias created by the people who designed the civil justice system). Also, this unfair bias comes close to maximizing the aggregate improvement in economic value that the legal system as a whole can provide for a given legal of expenditure on this system. Basically, at a fundamental economic level, the economic costs of justly resolving small wrongs can be greater due to the deadweight loss of litigation expenses for the economy as a whole, than the economic benefits of resolving the wrongs fairly (which provides not only justice to those involved but also provides an incentive to act justly in future transactions before one knows whether a problem or dispute will arise).	Maybe You linked to the publication of a patent application, not to a patent. Based solely on looking at the format of the number the answer would be, Yes, unless it eventually became an issued patent. As it happens, it did become issued patent US9066511B2. That would make the answer no. Since the application was filed before you started selling them, the fact that you were selling them in 2017 could not be used to challenge the patent. I say the answer is maybe because the patent has been disputed in court and I do not know if the outcome has left the patent valid. You can look this up at the USPTO Public PAIR. Then you need to search with either the patent number or the publication number. When you get to the record of the history of that application look at the Image File Wrapper tab.	Is odometer fraud a felony or a misdemeanor? It's both: a felony under federal law, and a misdemeanor under Colorado law. There's no conflict; each of those sovereigns can enforce its laws independently. Someone who tampers with an odometer could be prosecuted in federal court, and convicted of a felony; or prosecuted in Colorado court, and convicted of a misdemeanor; or even both. In practice, it sounds like the federal authorities are most interested in prosecuting large-scale odometer fraud schemes, and would generally leave one-off cases to the state authorities. Are there exceptions where this may not be enforceable? This site (https://www.nhtsa.gov/equipment/odometer-fraud) indicates that the requirement for a written disclosure of odometer roll-back is not applicable for vehicles over 20 years old (also pre-2010 models, which seems a bit more restrictive). I'm having a hard time nailing this particular restriction down in the Colorado Statutes. Can anyone point out where this law is defined? As far as I can tell, Colorado law simply incorporates the federal requirement: CRS 42-6-202 (5): It is unlawful for any transferor to fail to comply with 49 U.S.C. sec. 32705 and any rule concerning odometer disclosure requirements or to knowingly give a false statement to a transferee in making any disclosure required by such law. 49 USC 32705 (a)(5) permits the Secretary of Transportation (i.e. the federal Department of Transportation) to make regulations that carve out exemptions from the mileage disclosure rules, which can be found at 49 CFR 580.17 and include the 20-year and 2010 rules. So these same exemptions apply to the state requirement. (Incidentally, the Colorado title forms do not mention this exemption.) Note, however, that this is only an exemption from the disclosure requirement. There is no exemption from the general law against odometer fraud. It is illegal to tamper with an odometer no matter how old the car is. What is the statute of limitations to pursue crimes of odometer fraud? I think this is answered in Colorado Statute 13-80-102(j) (https://leg.colorado.gov/sites/default/files/images/olls/crs2020-title-13.pdf). This seems to indicate this type of fraud has a 2-year timeline. Does this apply from date of purchase or date of discovery? 13-80-102 is a statute of limitations for civil actions, and it does indeed cover actions for odometer fraud (see (1)(j) which references CRS 42-6-204). This would apply if the buyer wanted to sue the seller in civil court. But that's unrelated to the criminal statues we discussed above, which would be prosecuted in criminal court by the state or federal government. The limit is two years "after the cause of action accrues", which is defined in 13-80-108(3): A cause of action for fraud, misrepresentation, concealment, or deceit shall be considered to accrue on the date such fraud, misrepresentation, concealment, or deceit is discovered or should have been discovered by the exercise of reasonable diligence. For criminal prosecutions, the Colorado statute of limitations for misdemeanors is generally 18 months, from the time the offense was committed (CRS 16-5-401). For some crimes, it is defined to start instead when the offense was discovered, but odometer fraud doesn't appear to be one of them; still, it could conceivably be prosecuted under other fraud statutes. As for federal law, the statute of limitations is generally 5 years from commission (18 USC 3282).	Two people can have an equal interest in real property without being married, and being incarcerated doesn't affect a person's property rights. What matters is that now your ex-wife has a legal interest in the property. As a separate issue, she presumably also has a legal obligation w.r.t. the mortgage (otherwise the quitclaim deed makes no sense). The easiest solution is for the other party to voluntarily transfer their interest in the property to you via a quitclaim deed. A difficult solution is to use the judicial process to remove a person from the title. This could be done if there was fraud involved in the property transfer process, for example if the quitclaim deed was forged (presumably not the case here). You might sue to correct an error which doesn't reflect the terms of the transaction, via a reformation action, but that doesn't seem to be the case (a party not understanding the consequences of transferring an interest isn't an error in the relevant sense). You need to hire an attorney to solve the problem (he will look at all of the documentation relevant for your case for a possible solution).	Ah, the old "is this contract invalid (but still legally binding for the other party)"? You signed a contract with someone else. You do not dispute that it was you who signed the contract and agreed to it. You made it abundantly clear that there was a contract between you when you allowed him to do the work. This means one of the following was true: There was a mistake in the contract. What was followed was how it was intended. You signed a contract containing false information in an attempt to defraud someone. One of these will end up much worse for you. The fact that the work was not completed to the agreed upon standard could be considered a breach of contract- this is something a small claims court would decide.	No, not for 1+ years See section 47 of the Motor Vehicle Act 1988: (1) When a motor vehicle registered in one State has been kept in another State, for a period exceeding twelve months, the owner of the vehicle shall, within such period and in such form containing such particulars as may be prescribed by the Central Government, apply to the registering authority, within whose jurisdiction the vehicle then is, for the assignment of a new registration mark and shall present the certificate of registration to that registering authority: [...] Related: 1 2
Under what circumstances do civil cases go before juries in the U.S.? In a criminal case, per Rule 23, either party may demand a jury trial (and the defendant usually does). A civil case, however, is often decided by a "bench" (judge) trial. Under what circumstances is a civil case likely to go to a jury trial, and under what circumstances can a party either demand, or prevent a jury trial (aside from a contract where both parties waive their rights to a jury trial)?	A civil case, however, is often decided by a "bench" (judge) trial. Under what circumstances is a civil case likely to go to a jury trial, and under what circumstances can a party either demand, or prevent a jury trial (aside from a contract where both parties waive their rights to a jury trial)? In federal court, there is a right to a jury trial in cases where the complaint is predominantly based on a "legal" as opposed to an "equitable" theory (roughly speaking claims for money damages v. claims for injunctive relief, but actually based upon historical practice in 18th century England with some select historical exceptions), if the plaintiff demands one with the filing of the Complaint and pays a jury fee, or if the defendant demands one with or shortly after filing an Answer and pays a jury fee, under the 7th Amendment to the United States Constitution and related civil procedure rules. Pre- and post-dispute contractual waivers of the right to a jury trial are allowed in most matters (although jury waivers are not allowed for a few kinds of statutory claims)1, and of course, one could also waive not just the right to a civil jury trial, but also a right to court system based dispute resolution with a valid arbitration clause. Many kinds of contracts like promissory notes and written leases, routinely include a jury trial waiver. Other kinds of contracts (e.g. cell phone contracts, bank customer agreements, and securities broker engagement agreements) routinely contain arbitration clauses. 1 The states of California and Georgia are exceptions to the general rule that contractual pre-dispute jury trial waivers are valid. A non-exclusive list of common cases where there is a right to a jury trial (in the absence of a contractual waiver of this right) include: Breach of contract Damages claims for breach of a lease Common law tort claims such as negligence, nuisance, defamation and fraud Civil rights and discrimination claims seeking money damages Patent and copyright infringement cases seeking money damages Non-preliminary claims to recover tangible personal property Will contests Termination of parental rights Eminent domain just compensation hearings The vast majority of personal injury claims are brought are common law negligence tort cases. A non-exclusive list of common cases where there is not a right to a jury trial include: Foreclosure of liens and mortgages Receiverships Core bankruptcy matters (but PI claims in bankruptcy get a jury trial) Dissolution of marriage, legal separation and annulments Child custody Adoption and paternity actions Change of name petitions Municipal or special district incorporation or annexation petitions Probate matters other than will contests (e.g. guardianship and custodianship and trust cases). Claims to reform written instruments Claims to invalidate contracts on equitable grounds (e.g. mistake) Fraudulent transfer lawsuits (even if for money damages) Disputes involving management of a corporation Suits seeking principally injunctive relief other than recovery of tangible personal property Quiet title cases involving real estate Preliminary relief in the nature of eviction, attachment, or preliminary recovery of tangible personal property pending a determination on the merits Juvenile delinquency cases Hearings on the right to bring an eminent domain proceeding Court of claims suits for money damages against a governmental entity Suits seeking to declare a statute unconstitutional or invalid Actions to invoke, assist, or enforce an arbitration clause Election law disputes not predominantly seeking money damages Partition cases (to divide or sell co-owned real estate) Cases seeking an accounting (e.g. between partners in a partnership) Tax refund lawsuits (Phillips v. Commissioner , 283 U.S. 589 (1931); Franchise Tax Bd. v. Superior Court, 2011 WL 2177248 (Cal., June 6, 2011)). The nature of counterclaims asserted is irrelevant to the jury trial right in federal court. But, in federal court, the case can be dismissed pursuant to a FRCP 12 motion to dismiss or for judgment on the pleadings (basically for jurisdictional reasons or for failure to state a plausible claim upon which relief can be granted), or can be resolved because all of the claims that give rise to the jury trial can be resolved as a matter of law based upon undisputed facts stated in affidavits under FRCP 56 (motion for summary judgment), or can be dismissed as a discovery sanction pursuant to FRCP 37, or can be dismissed due to a settlement reached by the parties pursuant to FRCP 41, or can be dismissed for failure to prosecute. If a jury is properly demanded and is not dismissed before trial, then the case will proceed to a trial by jury, but the jury will decide only "legal" claims in the case while the judge will decide any "equitable" claims in the case, when there is a jury trial. In most U.S. states and territories (other than Louisiana, Commonwealth court cases Puerto Rico and territorial court cases in American Samoa) which have civil legal systems based upon the French, Spanish and German legal systems respectively), the right to a civil jury trial is essentially the same, but arises under a state constitution, a state law, or a state court rule, since the 7th Amendment does not apply to state court proceedings. But, jury trials are often prohibited is small claims court cases. In actual practice, civil jury trials are quite rare (and have grown much more rare in both state and federal court over the last several decades). About 75% of civil jury trials involve personal injury tort causes, civil rights cases, or fraud. There is a right to a jury trial in contract cases (although many contracts contain pre-dispute waivers of the right to a jury trial), but it is much less common for either party to demand a jury trial in a breach of contract case that does not involve fraud than it is in tort or civil rights cases are involved. A jury is demanded is almost every case in which part of the damages sought include non-economic damages (e.g. pain and suffering, or emotional distress), or exemplary damages (i.e. punitive damages) are sought. For example, here is a breakdown of bench and jury trials held in 2005 in Colorado in state and federal court combined based upon their respective annual reports (which is fairly typical although jury trials were slightly less common across the board in 2016): Criminal and Quasi-Criminal Cases Infraction Final Hearings 8764 Traffic Trial To Court 187 (33%) Misdemeanor Trial To Court 298 (31%) Juvenile Trial To Court 281 (Delinquency and Parental Rights Terminations) (89%) District Court Criminal Trial To Court 28 (Mostly Felonies) (3%) Federal District Court Criminal Trial To Court 15* (41%) Subtotal: 809 (excludes infractions) (29%) Traffic Jury Trial 386 Misdemeanor Jury Trial 651 Juvenile Jury Trial 35 (Parental Rights Terminations) District Court Criminal Jury Trial 857 (Mostly Felonies) Federal District Court Criminal Jury Trial 22 Subtotal: 1,951 Criminal and quasi-criminal jury trials make up about 85% of all jury trials in Colorado. Civil Cases Civil Cases Small Claims Trial To Court 3,485 (100%) County Court Civil Trial To Court 1,236 (99%) District Court Civil Trial To Court 280 (50%) Evidentiary Federal Magistrate Civil Hearings 9 (100%) Evidentiary Federal Magistrate Prisoner's Case Hearings 7 (100%) Federal District Court Civil Trial To Court 36* (46%) Subtotal: 5,053 (94%) County Court Civil Jury Trial 17 District Court Civil Jury Trial 277 Federal District Court Civil Jury Trial 43 Subtotal: 337 Civil jury trials make up about 15% of all jury trials in Colorado In national statistics, about three-quarters of general jurisdiction state trial court jury trials are in personal injury cases. The available data makes it impossible to determine if this is true in Colorado, although there is no reason to think that Colorado is atypical in this regard. If Colorado is typical, about 95% of jury trials in Colorado are for criminal, quasi-criminal or personal injury cases, while all other cases account for about 5% of jury trials. Excludes 30 pre-trial evidentiary hearings and 7 evidentiary sentencing hearings. ** Excludes 36 evidentiary hearings in preliminary matters and motions, etc. In Colorado, small claims cases are up to $7,500 and county court has a $15,000 jurisdictional threshold. There is no dollar limit on federal question cases in federal court but diversity cases in federal court must have $75,000 or more in controversy. As the statistics above illustrate, a significant minority of criminal cases are tried in bench trials. About 3% of state felony trials are bench trials (the federal court data includes both bench trials in federal misdemeanor cases and bench trials in federal felony trials). About 30% of misdemeanor trials are bench trials rather than jury trials. More than 95% of civil cases in both state and federal courts, and more than 95% federal criminal cases are resolved by default, dismissal on motion, voluntary dismissal, or settlement before trial. About 80%-90% of state criminal cases are plea bargained and therefore do not go to trial. Federal civil cases are proportionately more likely to go to a jury trial than state general jurisdiction court civil cases.	Could the person on the stand refuse? Yes. The witness may refuse to read it aloud, which does not mean he cannot be compelled to do so. The witness may object on grounds you mention (prejudice) only if he is the defendant. Either way, the judge will make a decision on how that evidence is to be presented to the jury. Regardless of who reads the evidence, the witness may be ordered to answer the question of whether or not he authored that document. Defying that order could result in contempt of court or, depending on the context, the entry of an adverse inference.	In the United States, the constitutionality of a law can be challenged in any court. Unless and until the court is reversed by a higher court, then the law will be considered unconstitutional and invalid. A jury can also theoretically nullify a law for any reason, including unconstitutionality, however, the jury's finding will only hold for that one case that they are trying.	Carl may not do this, as he would be prohibited from making this argument at trial. At trial, evidence must be relevant, meaning that it makes a fact of consequence more or less likely to be true. Because the trial is meant to determine whether Carl is or is not guilty, his promises of future philanthropy have no bearing on the matter. And even if they somehow did, Carl still would not be able to tell the jury about them because they would be blocked under Rule 403, which excludes evidence because its probative value is substantially outweighed by its risk of biasing or confusing the jury. If Carl attempts to make these statements anyway, he risks a mistrial, which means he has to start over with with a new jury. In some jurisdictions, Carl may, however, be permitted to make this argument during the sentencing phase, where the court can properly consider the societal effects of whatever punishment it imposes. At this point, though, it's obviously a little late for Carl, as it presumes he has been convicted.	The jury never finds there was “no crime” They either find that the state has proven that this particular defendant committed this particular crime (guilty) or they have not proven it (not guilty). Another jury at another time may find the opposite - this does sometimes happen where a guilty verdict is appealed and the appeals court orders a retrial. For another defendant charged with a different crime (e.g. accessory to the first crime) before another jury, the result of another trial is both irrelevant and inadmissible.	Are there cases or situations where both parties are burdened with justifying their positions? england-and-wales Yes, but different standards are applied. One example is the "reverse burden of proof" placed on the defendant in section 1(1) of the Prevention of Crime Act 1953: Any person who without lawful authority or reasonable excuse, the proof whereof shall lie on him, has with him in any public place any offensive weapon shall be guilty of an offence... The prosecution have to prove "beyond a reasonable doubt" that the article is actually an offensive weapon and that the named defendant possessed it on a particular date and that s/he was in a public place at the time. Whereas the standard of proof for the defendant to show they had lawful authority or a reasonable excuse for having is the, lower, "balance of probabilities". Similar legislation, for a similar offence, at section 139 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 states that: (4)It shall be a defence for a person charged with an offence under this section to prove that he had good reason or lawful authority for having the article with him in a public place. (5)Without prejudice to the generality of subsection (4) above, it shall be a defence for a person charged with an offence under this section to prove that he had the article with him— (a)for use at work; (b)for religious reasons; or (c)as part of any national costume. Which, again, is on the balance of probabilities. See, for example, R v Lambert [2001] UKHL 37: If [a legal burden of proof on an accused] is created the matter in question must be taken as proved against the accused unless he satisfies the jury on a balance of probabilities to the contrary...	People are routinely and almost universally defended by lawyers in serious criminal cases in both civil law country and common law country legal systems. The availability of counsel for the indigent in cases involving petty crimes varies, but not in a way systemically related to the common law v. civil law distinction. It has more to do with the available supply of lawyers. The lawyer's job isn't very different, despite the fact that the lawyer has an audience of a panel of judges rather than a judge presiding over a decision making jury, although obviously lots of fine details (e.g. concerning the procedures for presenting evidence) are different. In both cases, defense lawyers call the attention to the facts favorable to the defendant's case, offer up evidence that tends to exonerate the defendant if the lawyer can obtain it, argues to the court regarding how the evidence should be interpreted and what inferences should be drawn from it, and argues regarding any ambiguities in how the law should be applied to these particular facts. Furthermore, in most criminal cases, in both civil law countries and in common law countries, guilt or innocence is not the primary issue. The primary issue for criminal defense counsel in most cases is assisting the judges in determining the right sentencing option on the right charges for a defendant who pleads guilty or is found guilty at trial of some crime, based upon the character of the crime and offender that is presented to the court by the lawyer. This part of the process is very similar indeed in the two systems. Typical issues might include an assault case where the issue is whether there was serious bodily injury, justifying a more serious sentence, or mere ordinary bodily injury, justifying only a less serious sentence, in a case where it isn't clear cut at the guilt and innocence phase, or arguing whether probation and a fine, or incarceration is a better fit to a minor offense, in the sentencing phase. It isn't entirely or primarily about "legal loopholes" in any system, although "legal loopholes" tend to be more important in U.S. criminal law than in many legal systems. There are some places in which civil law courts are more open to consider a defendant's arguments than others (and many civil law countries decide serious criminal cases with a panel that is a mix of legally trained judges and lay jurors), but that can vary wildly from country to country and within a country as well.	Generally speaking, ex parte communications with a judge (i.e. communications to which all parties to a case are not notified) are prohibited, both by law and as a matter of judicial and attorney ethics, subject to some narrow exceptions (e.g. applications for arrest warrants prior to the arrest warrant being carried out). Generally speaking, communications with the court (which is to say with judges or their subordinates) are made a matter of public record, and if the communication is about a particular case, all attorneys in the case must be given notice of it (if someone is not represented by an attorney, the notice goes to the defendant rather than their non-existent attorney). The attorney may then communicate the communication to their client, and generally speaking should communicate it to the client. I don't see anything in the question that suggests that this proposed communication would fall outside the general rule. But, the question isn't very specific and I wouldn't rule out the possibility that an exception might apply in a case with very unusual facts. Also, usually, a request to reconsider a sentence has to be made by a formal motion filed by the prosecutor or the defendant. Generally speaking, a third-party cannot file that motion unilaterally. A third-party or victim would usually only have input into the decision through the prosecutor's office. Third parties and victims are not generally permitted to file motions to reconsider sentences that have been imposed even in states with "victim's rights" statutes, but can publicly provide input to the court before a sentence is imposed, usually at the behest of either the prosecutor or the defendant. Furthermore, generally a criminal defendant has a constitutional right to not have a sentence made more severe after being sentenced the first time around. Reconsideration of a sentence once it is imposed may only be in the direction of leniency. Once a sentence is imposed, it can't be reconsidered to be made more harsh.
Are terms and conditions preventing already illegal things meaningful? I'm looking at writing T&Cs for my service and found that many examples repeat that they prevent things which are already illegal. An example fragment: You may not use the Services and may not accept the Terms if: [...] you are a person barred from receiving the Services under the laws of Australia or other countries including the country in which you are resident or from which you use the Services. Is there a point to adding rules like this? If it's already illegal for the person, my T&Cs don't change that, so it seems like a waste of space.	Yes They explicitly make the identified illegal act a breach of contract and allow you to sue. Without that, you may have no remedy.	This is not prohibiting the resale. You can resell your old box, but you can not transfer your account, and since the box can't take a new account, it is not a useful item to anyone but the original account holder. It is not illegal to make a resale effectively impossible, but you can not ban it under the First Sale Doctrine and [Patent] Exhaustion Doctrine. Accounts are in this case not sold items but subscriptions and don't fall under First Sale but instead are running contracts - and can be regulated as the contracting parties put into the contract. This contract can ban the transfer (for money or free) of the contract.	All of this is illegal. You do not give a jurisdiction so I will use NSW, Australia as an example but many countries' laws have similar effect. Australian Consumer Law prohibits misleading and deceptive conduct: It is illegal for a business to engage in conduct that misleads or deceives or is likely to mislead or deceive consumers or other businesses. It doesn't matter that what you have said is strictly speaking factual - the way it has been said is likely to mislead or deceive. However, what you are proposing goes further and IMO crosses the line into fraud (s192E of the Crimes Act): 192E Fraud (1) A person who, by any deception, dishonestly: (b) obtains any financial advantage or causes any financial disadvantage, is guilty of the offence of fraud. Maximum penalty: Imprisonment for 10 years. (2) A person’s obtaining of property belonging to another may be dishonest even if the person is willing to pay for the property. In addition to the illegality, stealing other people's money is morally wrong by any reasonable standards of morality.	I know the OP is asking about America, but its also worth knowing about other countries. This is legal if both subscriber and subscription are within the EU. There was also a court case about this. In another case in 2014 the pub lost, but that seems to have been because the decoder was only licensed for domestic use. These cases were for satellite decoders rather than Internet streaming, but the legal issues would be the same. Both these cases involved British pubs, so obviously this law doesn't apply to them since Brexit.	I'm not aware of any cases on point, but as a rule legal fig-leaves don't play well in court. If the webmaster simply puts up a banner saying that EU residents are not permitted but takes no other action to exclude them, then that is going to be considered irrelevant. The webmaster is still very likely required to comply with the GDPR. On the other hand if the webmaster takes other steps to exclude EU residents, such as using a geolocation service to block connections known to be in the EU, validating email addresses and blocking those from EU domains, and ejecting anyone who mentions that their residence is in the EU, then that is more likely to be seen as a good-faith attempt to avoid being subject to the GDPR. It will also have the practical effect of greatly reducing the number of actual EU residents. All these controls can be evaded, but it would be much harder for any data subjects to claim that they acted in good faith or that the webmaster acted in bad faith. Note that validating an email address or logging an IP is itself processing of personal data, so anyone implementing such a system still can't ignore the GDPR completely, but it would greatly limit the scope and make it easy to delete any such data after a short time. (Note: the term "EU resident" above is an approximation of the territorial scope).	why do they sometimes specify the federal law as well as the state/provincial law? Isn't it redundant? Not necessarily. The contract might be entered and/or performed in a different country, whence mentioning only the Canadian provincial law does not override the other country's federal law (or that country's "supra-provincial" equivalent). Mentioning Canadian federal law removes --at least on paper-- the ambiguity of which law applies for matters beyond the scope of Canadian provincial law. In such scenarios, portions or the entirety of the provision might be null and void. For instance, an employment contract might establish waivers which are void or perhaps even unlawful under the legislation of that other country. Please note that in general a copy/paste of sample clauses is strongly discouraged unless the parties fully understand their meaning and implications.	Like many other jurisdictions, in the UK sites like the Daily Mail are liable for the content they host. In other words, the legal issue here is they either do not have the staff available to (or simply do not want to) spend the time moderating the comment sections in order to remove potentially defamatory or otherwise illegal content. As Lag added in a comment below: another legal reason may be liability for publishing something that creates a substantial risk of seriously impeding or prejudicing the course of justice in some ongoing legal proceeding. Far easier to prevent it beforehand than moderate it (and risk missing it) later. Content on Twitter (for example, replies to their own tweets), on the other hand, is not the Daily Mail's problem to moderate.	Yes, if ... ... they are a ‘designated communications provider’ conducting ‘ eligible activities’ under s317C. Your example, Whatsapp is one under item 4. If they refuse to comply they can be subject to financial penalties. If they refuse to pay the fines they can have their assets that are subject to Australian jurisdiction seized - this includes money in accounts held by third parties like MasterCard, Visa and PayPall. The could also seek to have orders and judgement debts given by Australian courts executed by US courts. They would be successful unless the judgement violated US law - the first and fourth amendments spring to mind.
Are juries able to ask questions during a trial? One thing I keep seeing on TV crime dramas like Law and Order is that the defense and prosecution ask questions of those at the bench for the sake of the jury, at times trying to trigger emotional responses to sway a jury's opinion (i.e. trying to get an accused to lose their temper). However, I have never really seen a juror ask someone at the bench a question. In a recent Australian case in which the convicted murder's appeal was granted for a lighter sentence the judge commented that the jury could not properly have been satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that the element of intent to kill or do grievous bodily harm had been proved. Given this case was about a man who killed his wife (and I have also forgotten some of the facts about the case), when I heard about this I thought "did the jury not think that when you pick up any weapon you have to be fully aware you can take a person's life or do grievous bodily harm with it?" But then I remembered that in the crime dramas I have seen (probably not a good idea to assume this is how trials work in the real world), the defense and prosecution may not have revealed to the jury when the murder weapon was picked up and the state of mind of the accused moments before said weapon was picked up, tiny facts which on the surface may not mean a lot. So I am wondering: are juries able to ask questions of those on the bench during a trial? If not, why aren't they, considering that it's the jury who ends up deciding if the accused is innocent or guilty?	First, while Law and Order should not be taken as an accurate depiction of a New York trial, it especially should not be taken as an accurate depiction of an Australian trial. Australian law, while it has some major similarities with US law (both ultimately derive from the law of England), is not US law. With procedural matters (such as "may jurors ask questions of witnesses"), it can potentially differ from court to court. In general, jurors may not simply ask a witness a question. The jury's job is not to investigate and figure out if the defendant was guilty or not; it's to evaluate the cases presented by each side. US (and Australian, as far as I know) courts use what's known as the adversarial model, where the prosecution and the defense both present the best cases they can and a neutral third party decides which case was stronger. In a US criminal trial, the state is expected to justify why someone should be in jail; the jury shouldn't be helping them justify it. This isn't how all jurisdictions around the world work, but it's how the US does. One concern with juror questions is that it has the risk that the juror will not be impartial. Jurors are not supposed to get into arguments with witnesses, or to go after them to try to prove a point. In your case, the juror might be introducing an entirely different line of reasoning from the one either side is presenting, and that's simply not their job. People have raised the concern that a juror thinking up questions might be deciding the case before they hear all the evidence, and might give too much weight to the answers to their own questions (or read a lot into it if a question is denied). There are also rules on what questions may be legally asked; lawyers know these and jurors generally don't, which is why jurors may almost never directly ask a question to a witness. Where they can ask questions, it's virtually always written questions, which the judge reviews, gives to both sides to see if anyone objects, and then reads to the witness in a neutral tone.	Generally speaking, witnesses are not legally represented at trial, unless they are also parties. While a witness may choose to seek legal advice about a request or order they have received to give evidence, they would generally be expected to take this opportunity before they actually show up at trial. A witness examination would not normally be adjourned because a witness said something damaging to their own credibility or to one party’s case, and would like to pause and obtain legal advice. One goal of cross-examination is to expose unreliable evidence by obtaining this kind of tactical advantage over a witness. It is up to the party whose case was damaged to try to fix the problem in re-examination or reply evidence. That party may not be particularly interested in protecting the witness’s personal interests. There may be exceptions in specific factual situations, when it becomes clear that a witness does not understand their right to object to giving evidence on the grounds of self-incrimination or some other privilege. A judge may choose to halt further questioning of the witness if there is a real risk of a mistrial or some other procedural unfairness, which can be addressed without unfairly depriving the cross-examiner of their opportunity to challenge the evidence.	I'm not sure what jurisdiction you're referring to, but here are the state involuntary manslaughter laws. Broad brush, the elements tend to be: Someone was killed as a result of act by the defendant. The act either was inherently dangerous to others or done with reckless disregard for human life. The defendant knew or should have known his or her conduct was a threat to the lives of others. However, you're really backwards planning from a jail vs. army decision, so you might actually be after something like felony hit and run, which can most certainly result in incarceration. The elements of felony hit and run generally include leaving the scene of an accident regardless of fault (hit and run typically becomes a felony when someone was injured in the accident). Since the elements vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, it makes sense to look them up wherever the accident will take place in the book. If it takes place in the U.S. this is a state-by-state compendium. Then you can tweak the story to satisfy the applicable elements and induce the jail vs. army decision (even if army policy prohibits it, it's still pretty common fiction!).	Based on the question, this was not perjury; if the officer did not review the footage, the fact that his testimony was in error indicates a mistake, nothing more. To even consider a perjury charge, the prosecuting authorities would need evidence that the officer knew the testimony was wrong when he gave it. You do not indicate the jurisdiction, so nobody can say whether an appeal would lie (since new evidence has come to light), whether the conviction could be quashed for procedural failure (if multiple requests for evidence were really not received) or whether a complaint could be made against the prosecutor, the defence lawyer, or even the judge. But no case has ever been strengthened by brandishing about words like 'perjury' without being able to substantiate them.	The general rule is that force may be legally used in defense of self. I will draw on RCW 9A.16.020, other jurisdictions say essentially the same thing. The relevant parts are: (3) Whenever used by a party about to be injured, or by another lawfully aiding him or her, in preventing or attempting to prevent an offense against his or her person, or a malicious trespass, or other malicious interference with real or personal property lawfully in his or her possession, in case the force is not more than is necessary Curated internet videos don't tell the whole story, but for the sake of argument I will assume that Mr X chucked a bottle at Tyson, and Tyson proceeded to punish him with his fists. Both parties thus committed a crime. The new report indicates that there will be no prosecutions "based on 'the circumstances surrounding the confrontation'", which I take to include all of the available evidence. Prosecution for a crime is discretionary. There is no requirement at a prosecutor file charges in every instance where (in the prosecutor's professional opinion) a conviction can be secured. The abstract law is clear: both parties committed a crime. The abstract law is also clear that a prosecutor has discretion to decide whether to prosecute.	The jury ultimately decides if a person is guilty or not. Jury nullification is when the person is clearly guilty or innocent, but for some odd reason the jury (who knows the person is guilty/innocent) gives the "wrong verdict" An example of this in the UK was when a guy was being charged with a spy crime years after his crime happened (I cant remember the case), the jury essentially thought that so much time has passed that it was silly to convict him, so gave a non guilty verdict. There are cases for and against jury nullification. In my personal belief I think in certain cases, such as if edward snowden would be charged, I would find him non guilty as a matter of what is right to ky conscience, regardless of the fact that he clearly did something illegal	In most jurisdictions, the lawyer would have two options: Resign from counsel and never talk about the confession. Take the counsel and defend the client as best they can without mentioning that they know the client is guilty. In most jurisdictions, there is something called "attorney client privilege". It means that whatever a client says to their attorney is confidential (there are usually exceptions to this, but usually none which are relevant for this question). The court can not force the attorney to testify against their client. The job of the defense counsel is to achieve the best possible outcome for their client. If the client pleads not guilty, then the attorney's duty is to do their best to convince the court that their client is not guilty, even when they know it to be false. There are a few limits, for example attorneys are usually not allowed to use underhanded strategies like falsify evidence or compel witnesses. But breaking attorney-client privilege by telling the court about a private confession without the consent of the client would be a major case of misconduct and would in many cases cost the attorney their legal license (at least!). And besides: A defense attorney who knows their non-guilty-pleading client is guilty can actually go through the process without ever explicitly claiming that the client is innocent. In order to convict someone for a crime, the prosecuter must prove the clients guilt beyond reasonable doubt. The defendant doesn't necessarily need to prove they are innocent, they just need to create doubt. The defense attorney can fulfill that duty by raising questions like "If my client had committed the crime, then how do you explain [...]", "What reason would my client have had to commit this crime?", "Does this piece of evidence really prove anything?" or "How can we be sure that the witness is telling the truth when she says [...]?". All very good questions which need to be answered by the prosecution, even if the defense already knows the answers. At no point does the defender have to claim "my client is innocent". The defender just needs to claim "You have not yet proven beyond reasonable doubt that my client is guilty".	In the USA, you must be found guilty "beyond reasonable doubt". As you describe it, I'd say there is an unreasonable suspicion of guilt, not guilt beyond reasonable doubt. If the magician killed three people that way, then three unexplainable deaths following three spells might get him convicted. A jury might say that even though there is no way to explain how the killing worked, the correlation might be enough to prove guilt beyond reasonable doubt.
How can Edward Snowden be denied a jury trial? Is the US right to a trial by jury a conditional right which can be revoked preemptively? It was my understanding the US Constitution allowed anyone accused of a crime to be judged by a peer jury. However, Edward Snowden would not be allowed to have a jury trial (judge only trial instead). https://www.thenation.com/article/snowden-espionage-civil-disobedience/ Also, when are US trials only allowed to occur in secret? Apparently Snowden's trial would not be open to the public, despite the defendants desire to do so.	The trial at issue is a civil trial over the publication of his book Permanent Record and the non-disclosure agreement that he signed connected to his employment, see the DoJ announcement, which also notes that this is separate from a future espionage trial. The remedy sought involves no imprisonment. In the US, the constitutional right to a jury trial applies to criminal cases. See the Arpaio case, where cases involving imprisonment of less than 6 months are not subject to the jury trial requirement. The right to a jury trial in civil cases is much more complicated and fact-specific, see this answer. Not yet in evidence is the question of whether his employment agreement included a waiver of jury trial w.r.t. non-disclosure, but one should assume that the government anticipated the scenario that a person would breach the NDA. ......	The situation you describe is extremely unlikely First, you will have been required to give a statement to the police who would have asked you most or all of the questions that you suggest before anyone gets anywhere near a courtroom and likely before any arrest has been made. That statement will be part of your evidence in chief. As in "Is this your statement?" "Yes". "Is this your video recording?" "Yes". After that, your evidence in chief is pretty much done. A witness of fact (rules for expert witnesses are different) can only testify as to what they personally sensed and what their state of mind was. So questions about what you saw, heard, tasted etc. are all perfectly legitimate as are questions about what you thought or felt. You are required to answer these questions honestly - if that means "I don't know" then say "I don't know". All of the hypothetical questions look fine but as I said, they will all have answers in your police statement. The only one that's off-limits is ""Do you feel that a crime has been committed?" - nobody knows if a crime has been committed; that's why we're having a trial.	The privilege of peerage in criminal proceedings was abolished by s. 30 of the Criminal Justice Act 1948. As for why, see Colin Rhys Lovell, "The Trial of Peers in Great Britain", The American Historical Review, Vol. 55, No. 1 (Oct., 1949). There were "grave disadvantages in the procedure to the accused peer, who could not waive it." The accused could not challenge the jurors or appeal their decisions. It was ultimately decided that the procedure had "outlived its usefulness." See also some justification from Hansard: [...a peer] cannot say, "Waive all this, and treat me like anybody else." The existing law is that he must be tried by this grotesque and antiquated arrangement. It is a Court, but it is a very ancient Court, and it is high time that provisions were made that a Peer who is charged with a felony should be treated in the same way as anybody else.	The right to trial by jury under the Washington State Constitution does not attach to mere regulatory infractions: City of Pasco v. Mace, 98 Wn. 2d 87 (Wash. 1982) (still being cited as of 2019). While not at issue in that case, the Court listed "traffic offenses" and the corresponding "uniform and expeditious system for the disposition of these 'infractions'" as an example where a jury is not required by the state Constitution. At the same time, the Legislature has shown itself cognizant of the distinction between offenses which are criminal in nature and those to which such a stigma is not attached. This awareness is reflected in RCW 46.63, decriminalizing certain traffic offenses and providing a uniform and expeditious system for the disposition of these "infractions". As long as the offender commits only an infraction, no prison sentence can be imposed. RCW 46.63.060(2)(b). If it is thought that our conclusions here today will unduly burden the courts of limited jurisdiction, that situation can undoubtedly be ameliorated by legislative "decriminalization" of those offenses which are in fact regulatory, rather than criminal in nature, and limiting the penalty accordingly. As for those offenses which carry a criminal stigma and particularly those for which a possible term of imprisonment is prescribed, the constitution requires that a jury trial be afforded unless waived.	Your silence can be used against you: this is known as an adoptive admission. It is an exception to the hearsay rule, and is based on the premise that if a person hears and understands an accusation against them (even framed very indirectly), and "adopts" the truth of the accusation by directly acting in a certain way or by failing to dispute the accusation, this can be introduced as a form of admitting to the accusation. For instance, B might say to A "I laughed when you shot Smith in the foot" and A might say "That was pretty funny, right", that can be admitted and interpreted as a confession. The same goes for A saying nothing. What's crucial is that the accusation has to be made in the defendant's presence, they must hear and understand it, they must be able to deny the accusation and it would be natural to deny the accusation. There is a relationship between this and the Fifth Amendment, see Salinas v. Texas (and prior law), that "To prevent the privilege against self-incrimination from shielding information not properly within its scope, a witness who “‘desires the protection of the privilege . . . must claim it’". During a non-custodial interview, defendant was asked asked if his shotgun “would match the shells recovered at the scene of the murder”, and he said nothing (and actually gave non-verbal indicators that the accusation was true). He did not invoke his right to silence, thus the court reasoned that "Because he failed to do so, the prosecution’s use of his noncustodial silence did not violate the Fifth Amendment".	The US has jurisdiction because the systems that the accused allegedly attacked are in the US. To use an example with older technology, you can't escape criminal liability for defrauding someone in one country simply because you did so through the mail or by telephone from another country. The UK and the US have an extradition treaty. The UK might refuse to extradite the accused; in that case the US would most likely complain loudly. If too many extradition requests are refused on one side, the other side might start limiting cooperation in any of several areas.	In the United States, the constitutionality of a law can be challenged in any court. Unless and until the court is reversed by a higher court, then the law will be considered unconstitutional and invalid. A jury can also theoretically nullify a law for any reason, including unconstitutionality, however, the jury's finding will only hold for that one case that they are trying.	There is no legal requirement that a jury be composed of people demographically like the defendant (or the plaintiff), there is simply a requirement that the selection process give all kinds of people an equal chance at being empaneled. So being a different race or gender from one of the parties is not prima facie evidence of a biased jury. The statement that "The jury asked a question because some invoices were not attached to a statement and wanted to impeach the victim's testimony" is somewhat puzzling, since Georgia is widely cited as a state where jurors are forbidden to ask questions. Let us suppose though that jurors manage to communicate an interest in knowing a fact, such as "Do you have an invoice for X?", then the judge could decide whether that is a proper question. At that point, it moves from being a jury matter to a legal judge matter, and if the question was itself highly prejudicial, the case could be overturned on appeal. Alternatively, the way in which the question was framed by the jury could be proof of bias, e.g. "Please ask that lying %@!^* defendant to prove her ridiculous story". The defense attorney has entered an objection (if you don't object, you can't appeal), and perhaps if the question was legally improper then the verdict could be set aside. If the attorney failed to move for mistrial (if the question proves blatant bias) then that's the end of the matter, except for a possible action against the attorney. The implied questions about attorney conduct are hard to understand. An attorney may refuse to engage in a futile legal act, but this does not preclude an individual from seeking another attorney to file a motion or even attempting to file a motion on one's own (which is probably a futile act). However, I also assume that the victim did not have her own attorney and that this was a case between two insurance companies about individuals – a third party claim. In this case, the attorney represents the insurance company, not the victim, and has to be responsible to the interests of the insurance company. The attorney thus is obligated to not cost the insurance company a packet of money if there is no realistic chance of getting anything in return. The alternative would have been be to engage (and pay) your (her) own attorney.
Any solid research on error rate of criminal conviction system: jury vs judges? To my knowledge most countries use one of two systems for determining the guilt of the accused in criminal cases: “jury of your peers” (who don’t have to justify their decision) vs “judg(es), possibly with lay jurors” (who have to justify their decision). Also some countries allow the striking of deals pre-trial / instead of trial. Is there solid research on which system performs better (as in how many erroneous convictions, how many erroneous dismissals) in which circumstances?	It is hard to measure accuracy in absolute terms because figuring out the truth is the problem that trials seek to solve in the first place. This is especially true of cases that go to trial. Cases that are almost sure to be resolved one way or the other by any tier of fact generally plea bargain (in criminal cases) or settle prior to trial (in civil cases). The plea bargaining rate is 90%-95% in criminal cases and less than 5% of civil cases go to trial. For better or for worse, civil jury trial have become much less common in the last half century, while criminal jury trial rates have been comparatively much more stable (criminal jury trials have become increasingly less common in federal trial courts, however, where the rate at which criminal cases go to trial is about half that of state courts). The good news is that this suggests that the accuracy of the entire process acting in the shadow of trial in most cases, is much greater than the accuracy of trials themselves, which tend to involve the hardest and closest cases. The bad news is that to the extent that trial outcomes are unpredictable, even those who are innocent or not at fault in a civil case, will sometimes reach an unfair agreed plea bargain or settlement. As a 1992 law review article comparing outcomes in civil cases between judges and juries notes, "The empirical results prove resistant to simple explanations." Some key studies summarized here concluded that: The judge and jury in the Kalven-Zeisel survey of 3,500 criminal cases agreed in 78% of the cases on whether or not to convict. When they disagreed, the judge would have convicted when the jury acquitted in 19% of the cases, and the jury convicted when the judge would have acquitted in 3% of the cases—a net leniency rate of 16%. Disagreement rates were no higher when the judge characterized the evidence as difficult than when the judge characterized it as easy, suggesting that the disagreements were not produced by the jury’s inability to understand the evidence. Disagreement rates did rise when the judge characterized the evidence as close rather than clear, indicating that disagreement cases were, at least in the judge’s view, more likely to be those cases that were susceptible to more than one defensible verdict. Primary explanations offered for the overall differences were differences in judgments about the credibility of witnesses and a different threshold of reasonable doubt. Two smaller, more recent studies using the Kalven-Zeisel method have shown remarkably similar patterns in criminal cases, obtaining 74% to 75% agreement, with a greater leniency of 13% to 20% from the jury. Studies outside the United States have shown similarly high levels of agreement between professionals and juries or lay judges in criminal cases. For the 4,000 civil trials in their judicial survey, Kalven and Zeisel obtained the same agreement rate of 78% on liability, but disagreement was almost equally divided, so that in 12% of the cases, the jury found for the plaintiff, while the judge favored the defense and in 10% of the cases, the jury found for the defense, while the judge would have made an award. Awards by juries were 20% higher on average than awards by judges. Several smaller, recent studies of civil jury cases in several locations have indicated agreement rates on liability between 63% and 77%, but it is unclear whether any overall change has occurred over time because no national study comparable with the Kalven and Zeisel study has been conducted. Because punitive damages are awarded so rarely (in roughly 3% of contract and tort cases), researchers conducting case-specific judicial surveys have not been able to compare judge and jury decisions on punitive damages. While the discrepancy between judges and juries in criminal cases (one in six cases) is quite large, this suggests that no more than 1-1.5% of criminal defendants charged with felonies in the system as a whole are inappropriately acquitted by juries, and that no more than about 0.16% of criminal defendants charged with felonies are wrongfully convicted by judges (since only about 10% of criminal trials in the U.S. are bench trials). Moreover, as discussed below, the "inappropriate acquittal" by juries rate as a share of system-wide felony cases is probably lower because there are good reasons to think that the higher conviction rate in bench trials than in jury trials has more to do with the biases of judges than with more accurate fact finding by judges. A 2010 empirical study looking at the impact of the racial composition of juries on the likelihood of convictions in felony cases in a Florida county found that statistically, a similar number of felony cases (82%) that go to trial are "easy" cases in which any finder of fact would reach the same result, but that the acquittal rate in other cases varied dramatically based upon the racial composition of the jury. This study provides further support for the hypothesis that close cases are more strongly influenced by the implicit biases of the fact finders than by their capacity to assess the facts accurately. Incidentally, this higher conviction rate is not particular to the United States, it has also been true historically in Japan during periods when it had a jury trial system, even though its legal codes use German legal codes as a starting point. I have personally had discussions with several South Korean and Japanese judges (while I was in law school and they were pursuing graduate law degrees in the U.S. while on sabbatical from their judicial positions) who say that they have a policy of alway believing the prosecutors in criminal cases and assuming as a starting point, at least, that any defense testimony that contradicts the prosecution's case is a result of lies by the defense witnesses, which doesn't speak highly for the accuracy of bench trials in criminal cases in those countries. An experienced judge argued in a law review article in the late 1980s based upon his lengthy career presiding over jury trials, that juries were more accurate. Probably the strongest argument he makes is that judges are prone to bias, in part, though what many people would now call the process of regulatory capture. Other experienced trial judges echo this positive assessment of juries as noted in a 2012 article, for example, noting that juries are often better grounded in the reality of everyday life and in community standards than judges. A 2007 study (full text here) reached a conclusion on the accuracy of jury trials in criminal cases based upon the a priori assumption that judges are at least as accurate as juries, which isn't helpful at resolving your question because it assumes the answer rather than proving it, but does shed some light on the minimum extent to which one or the other triers of fact would have reached the wrong conclusion: A new Northwestern University study shows that juries in criminal cases are reaching incorrect verdicts. The study, which looked at 271 cases in four areas of Illinois, found that as many as one in eight juries is making the wrong decision – by convicting an innocent person or acquitting a guilty one. In each case, while the jury deliberated, the judge filled out a questionnaire detailing what his or her verdict would have been had it been a bench trial. The verdicts only matched in 77 percent of cases. The study assumed that judges are at least as likely as a jury to make a correct verdict, leading to the conclusion that juries are only correct 87 percent of the time or less. The study was conducted by Bruce Spencer, a Northwestern statistics professor, and will be published in the July issue of the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies. Spencer said in a statement that it would take a much larger study to truly predict the accuracy of jury verdicts nationwide in all cases. The same 2007 study is also critically analyzed here, and notes that judges again are more likely to convict than juries in cases where defendants opt for jury trials (which they do about 90% of the time in criminal cases in state courts). A different 2007 study used evidence mostly derived from DNA based exonerations in capital rape-murder cases from the 1980s to conclude that the wrongful conviction rate in those cases following jury trials is 3.3% to 5%. Given that judges are much less likely to acquit than juries, this strongly suggests that the wrongful conviction rate for bench trials in serious criminal cases would be much higher than it is in jury trials. The methodology of the study doesn't make it possible to estimate the wrongful acquittal rate in jury trials which is further muddied by the question of the extent to which jury nullification, in the form of an acquittal of someone who is actually guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, is a legitimate exercise of mercy or is problematic - something also influenced by perceptions of where jury nullification is most common (e.g. this may disproportionately benefit police tried for crimes allegedly committed while carrying out their duties). It is worth noting, however, that juries in capital cases (i.e. those where the death penalty is a potential sentence) are systemically less pro-defendant than other juries because they are "death qualified" which is to say that people opposed to the death penalty are systemically removed for cause from the jury pool, which makes juries in capital cases more likely to convict than juries in other cases. This means that it is also probably likely that wrongful conviction rates are higher in capital cases than in other cases. Indeed, one reason that prosecutors choose to bring death penalty charges in a case is to increase the odds that a defendant will plea bargain to avoid the risk of the death penalty, and to increase the odds that the defendant will be convicted at trial, in a criminal prosecution where the evidence is factually weak compared to a typical felony case that prosecutors would bring. Yet another 2007 study concluded that: Drawing on a sample of 798 Ohio criminal justice professionals (police, prosecutors, defense attorneys, judges), the authors examine respondents’ perceptions regarding the frequency of system errors (i.e., professional error and misconduct suggested by previous research to be associated with wrongful conviction), and wrongful felony conviction. Results indicate that respondents perceive system errors to occur more than infrequently but less than moderately frequent. Respondents also perceive that wrongful felony conviction occurs in their own jurisdictions in .5% to 1% of all felony cases, and in the United States in 1% to 3% of all felony cases. Respondents, however, specify an acceptable rate of wrongful conviction to be less than .5%. A replication of this study with a survey of comparable Michigan officials published in 2008 gave rise to almost identical results. The review of literature in the 2007 paper surveying Ohio officials also notes the notable fact that 7% of convicted felons whose convictions are reversed on appeal and who are then retried before a new jury are acquitted (I don't have data breaking out the retrial results for capital convictions that are reversed on appeal and retried easily at hand right now), which provides another order of magnitude estimate of the reliability of jury trials (although, of course, cases reversed on appeal are by definition cases whose verdicts are not reliable for some specified reason, relative to cases in which convictions are not appealed or are affirmed on appeal). About 40% of criminal convictions following a trial are appealed (the appeal rate is very nearly 100% in death penalty cases). This is much higher than the rate of appeals of civil jury verdicts, in part, because convicted criminal defendants who cannot afford a lawyer are entitled to a direct appeal at state expense (although it can be pointless to do so if you already have a felony criminal record, you are likely to be released before the appeal is ruled upon after considering your sentence and time served, and your prospects of success on appeal are poor, which is the case in many minor felonies). About 8% of cases appealed in criminal cases result in a reversal of at least part of a trial court decision (although the figure is about 19% in death penalty cases). So, the odds of a criminal conviction following a trial being appealed, reversed on appeal, and then retried resulting in a conviction is roughly 0.2% (one in five hundred). There is also considerable evidence to support the hypothesis that certain facts patterns are much more prone to producing wrongful convictions than others. For example, excessive faith in eye witness identification of defendants (especially in cases of white witnesses identifying black defendants who are strangers to the witness) and scientifically unsound forms of expert testimony are particularly common causes of wrongful convictions. A 2010 review article examining 100 years of research on the question of wrongful conviction notes that "traditional sources of error (eyewitness misidentification, false confessions, perjured testimony, forensic error, tunnel vision, prosecutorial misconduct, ineffective assistance of counsel, etc.) are contributing sources, not exclusive causes, of wrongful convictions." A 1998 law review article looks at a small sample of convictions allegedly obtained with false confessions and also examines the tricky question of what "innocence" and a "wrongful conviction" really mean. For example, suppose that someone falsely confesses to facts that would make him guilty of first degree murder when in fact he was actually an accessory to manslaughter. He isn't truly "innocent" of any crime related to the death in question, but is likely to be convicted of a crime much more serious than the crime of which he is actually guilty. A 2006 law review article examining a single case in detail in the context of broader research finings comes to similar conclusions about high risk fact patterns, but throws in another - clusters of mass wrongful convictions driven by one or many deeply corrupt police officers in a single department who routinely lie and falsify evidence to obtain large numbers of wrongful convictions. A Wall Street Journal blog post from July 16, 2017 cites a Journal of Empirical Legal Research article in support of the proposition that juries get about one in six criminal cases wrong and that judges do only slightly better. Some studies have looked at indications that judges are not better than juries at accurately reaching correct outcomes that don't look at the actual outcomes themselves: In study after study, researchers have found more similarities than differences (see Robbennolt, 2006; Rowland, et al., 2010). For example: Retired judges were no better than college sophomores, teachers and other novices at spotting witness mendacity. Retired judges were no better than mock jurors at ignoring inadmissible evidence. Retired judges evince no greater understanding of the scientific principles underlying Daubert standards than do mock jurors. Moreover, social science research makes it very clear that many decisions by trial judges, federal and state, are affected by extra-legal political influences. For example: The decisions of Federal district judges, usually thought to be better trained and less susceptible to extra-legal influences than are their state counterparts, can for many case types (e.g., abortion) be predicted at a high rate of accuracy simply by knowing the judge’s appointing president. Elected state judges’ sentencing decisions change in tandem with the proximity of elections A comprehensive review of prior studies in a 2005 article reiterates almost all of the conclusions from various kinds of data reached above - i.e. juries are more lenient but their skills at assessing facts are similar to those of judges. Arguments For And Against The Jury System Unrelated To Their Accuracy A 2011 law review article reiterates that judges are far more likely to convict that juries, on average, which it argues is good even if it comes at the expense of lower accuracy. This article does not squarely address the real money question of whether judges or juries are more accurate in their decisions to convict or acquit defendants. The author argues that certainty of punishment is more important to deterring bad conduct than sentence length or the accuracy of the process. A 1981 article by John Langbein, one of the leading scholars in the field of comparing the European legal system (where serious criminal trials often involve "mixed courts" with a judge and lay judges serving together in a capacity that isn't quite a true American style jury) to the American legal system concluded that: The conclusion is that the mixed court serves the jury policies well, though not fully; and that it is a superior alternative to the indigenous nontrial devices-plea bargaining and bench trial-that have displaced the jury from routine American practice. It is also worth noting that one of the important justifications for using jury trials rather than bench trials or mixed trials, is that it enhances the institutional legitimacy of the judiciary, regardless of its accuracy, in a system where both triers of fact sometimes make mistakes. This is because in a jury trial system, an outcome that is perceived as incorrect can be blamed on the diffuse and effectively anonymous jury who cannot be held accountable, deflecting blame from judges who could be held accountable or whose bad decisions would reflect poorly on the judiciary, or the judge in question at least. It is easier to support the legitimacy of the judicial system if judges are rarely blamed for reaching the hard verdict in high stakes cases. Also, since juries deliver only a verdict, and not a detailed justification for their ruling as a judge in a bench trial must, the jury verdict, while less transparent, does allow people who might potentially agree with the result even if they wouldn't have agreed with the means by which that particular jury actually reached its decision, to give the jury the benefit of the doubt, again increasing popular acceptance of the result.	This determination is largely a facts and circumstances specific test to be evaluated with little additional legal guidance by the judge or jury faced with evaluating the question (usually a judge in the way that the issue usually presents itself). Like many fairly vague legal standards, it leaves open the possibility that there will be inconsistent rulings on this question in circumstances presenting similar facts.	Technically anyone can sit on a jury. Lawyers are not automatically excluded from juries anymore, as being called for jury duty is a right and a duty that the law abhors automatically excluding people from. That is the official line on this. However, in reality, lawyers will always be stricken from serving by one of the lawyers trying the case. Each lawyer has a certain number of preemptory strikes (the ability to get rid of a juror for any reason, aside from those protected by law, such as race, religion, etc). They also have unlimited "for cause strikes," which are when a juror is biased in some way. Lawyers trying the case almost always try to use a cause strike to get a lawyer off, saying that they are biased toward either Defense or Plaintiffs based on the type of law they practice. The judge will usually not let them use a cause strike, saying that an attorney is ethical enough to apply the facts to the law and not sway the jury based on their personal biases that everyone has; plus, we're officers of the court so we have a duty to be ethical. Hence, they are typically forced to use a preemptory strike to get a lawyer off, but they will, every time. (If the lawyer just tried a similar case, then they'd get to use for cause.) The real reason that the lawyer from one side or the other definitely wants a lawyer off is that the jury instructions presented by each side to the judge are crafted in a way that each word carries specific meaning and, with that, is designed to lead to a certain way of thinking. Once the lawyers have fought over the instructions and the judge decides what will be presented, the jury only gets them in writing...in some states not even in writing, they only get them read to them without a copy to take back to the room. If a lawyer is in the jury, that person will undoubtedly be able to explain exactly what the law requires for a finding, or exactly why a certain finding should be had. They will advocate one way or another; this is undeniable. The instructions are purposefully confusing. The reason is this: when we fight over jury instruction, inherently, one of us will want an instruction that is hard to understand, for a lay person. This is because we want them to apply the law as it is commonly (mis)understood, not as it truly is, because that's not good for our case. To have a lawyer on the jury would defeat the finely crafted instruction and its potential to confuse. They would undoubtedly explain the instruction to the jury. One may think this would be helpful, however, juries are told that any special knowledge they have about anything pertaining to the case shall not be shared as it could sway the jury. This is most true when it comes to a lawyer sitting. When a jury doesn't understand a jury instruction, their only recourse is to send a question to the judge. In states where they have the instruction in writing, all he can say is "read carefully;" he cannot give his interpretation of what the instruction means. If a judge did give his own interpretation that is grounds for a mistrial or an appeal at least. A lawyer on the jury would be able to explain, "Oh, what this really means is X," and this is bad from one side's perspective, almost always. We all have biases, and even finely determined rules of law can be subtly pushed toward one direction or another with the use of a certain word over another, or the placement of one element before another. Generally, unless the side who would most want the attorney off had exhausted their preemptory strikes, and lost the argument to remove for cause, there is very little chance a lawyer will serve. The fact of the matter is that both sides are very likely to want a lawyer stricken from the jury pool, (even from the side who may believe the lawyer to have leanings in their favor). It is essential to control as many factors as possible in a jury trial, and an attorney on the panel is just a wild card. The potential always exists that if a lawyer ends up on the jury, they could explain the elements of the case to their fellow jurors, who may then not rely as fully upon the carefully crafted language in the instruction(s). This could backfire on either side when certain portions of the language used may be intentionally vague or difficult to parse though for someone who doesn't practice law. Anyone interested in the process of choosing and striking jurors (in the U.S.), through the process of voir dire, this is a fairly comprehensive article on the topic.	Criminal conviction by a judge after acquittal by a jury would violate the Double Jeopardy Clause of the 5th Amendment. A criminal conviction involves both a finding of fact and the application of the law, and a judge (unless this is a bench trial) doesn't find facts, he makes judgements of law. Overturning an acquittal after a jury trial would thus be in essence a whole new trial (moreover one where the defendant was not given a renewed opportunity to defend himself).	The most innocent of your scenarios is "against the rules", so less innocent acts fair worse. The idea behind researching legal theory and precedent (presumably not presidents) is that surely it is good for a juror to know what the law is. But that thinking is wrong. The judge will instruct you as to what the law is, and will also instruct you that "the law" is limited to what he says it is. I will draw on the instructions for an antitrust case, Best Buy v. Toshiba, HannStar. The core instruction is: It is your duty to find the facts from all the evidence in the case. To those facts you will apply the law as I give it to you. The preliminary instructions (the pattern instructions for California civil trials) say the same basic thing: At the end of the trial, I will explain the law that you must follow to reach your verdict. You must follow the law as I explain it to you, even if you do not agree with the law. The judge instructs the jury that: When a party has the burden of proof on any claim or affirmative defense by a preponderance of the evidence, it means you must be persuaded by the evidence that the claim or affirmative defense is more probably true than not true. Your research might find alternative statements of the law out there, which seem entirely plausible. That doesn't matter: you have to set aside whatever ideas (about the law) that you've gotten from anybody besides the judge. In fact, if the judge makes a (serious) mistake and rules against a party in a manner that is contrary to established law, and you know this (it doesn't matter how), you are supposed to apply the law (including rulings during trial as to admissibility) as given to you by the judge. As for a case of a juror knowing that the judge was mistaken (specifically, knowing based on his pre-existing knowledge of statutes and case law – not based on forbidden research during a trial), we can get the "should" from the absolute instruction to follow the judges instructions. Additionally, if you read transcripts of voir dire (not a trivial task), you can observe judges probing attorneys who happen to be in the prospective pool, asking questions to determine whether that person can just do as they are told. But it would be difficult to establish a "hard rule". There never will be an instruction that says "You must follow my orders even if you know for a fact that my orders are wrong" – jury instructions never admit the possibility of judicial error.	Yes. This is legal. See, e.g. SPARF v.U.S. 156 U.S. 51 (1895); U.S. vs Moylan, 417 F 2d 1002, 1006 (4th Cir. 1969); U.S. v. Krzyske, 836 F.2d 1013 (6th Cir. 1988) ("the jury asked the judge about jury nullification. The judge responded, "There is no such thing as valid jury nullification." The jury convicted the defendant. On appeal, the majority and the dissent agreed that the trial judge's instruction was untrue, but the majority held that this false representation was not a reversible error."). Indeed, procedurally, the system is specifically designed to prevent courts from even considering such a question. See also, e.g. People v. Iannicelli, 2019 CO 80, § 2 (Colo. 2019) (holding no crime was committed) ("Defendants Mark Iannicelli and Eric Brandt stood in the plaza square adjacent to the Lindsey-Flanigan Courthouse in Denver and asked people entering the courthouse whether they were reporting for jury duty. If any of these people answered affirmatively, then Iannicelli and Brandt would hand them one or more brochures discussing the concept of jury nullification, which the brochures defined as the process by which a jury in a criminal case acquits the defendant regardless of whether he or she has broken the law in question. As a result of this conduct, the People charged Iannicelli and Brandt with multiple counts of jury tampering") This is deeply entwined with the U.S. law interpretation of the Fifth Amendment Double Jeopardy Clause's protections, which prohibit a retrial or appeal following a judgment of acquittal, which have been incorporated by the U.S. Supreme Court as applicable in state courts as well.	To what standard does the evidence need to be convincing so that the judge is satisfied that a jury could “reasonably convict” the defendant? The High Court expanded on the answer to this question in Mitchell, the decision you cited, at [32]: [In R v Kim [2010] NZCA 106] the Court of Appeal discussed the meaning of “insufficient to justify a trial” in the context of sufficiency of evidence: It is for the jury to determine whether the evidence is, or is not, sufficient to establish guilt. It is not for the Judge to predict what the jury will find. The test is whether the evidence, if accepted by the jury, is sufficient in law to prove the essential elements of the charge to the required standard. If so, the Judge should leave the case to the jury and not withdraw it on evidentiary grounds. Can circumstantial/cumulative evidence be sufficient? In 2015, Dr Chris Gallavin, Dean of Law at Canterbury University, wrote: Circumstantial evidence is the bedrock of inferential reasoning. As advocates, we are well aware that a case is not “weak” by virtue of it being based upon circumstantial evidence alone (a common misconception). Circumstantial evidence will often form the base of a strong case, again, in both the criminal and civil jurisdiction alike. Does this evidence meet the standard asked about above? Unfortunately this question is not allowed, because the rules state: Please don't ask questions seeking legal advice on a specific matter. These are off-topic for Law Stack Exchange. While users generally contribute answers in good faith, the answers are not legal advice, and contributors here are not your lawyer. The test of “insufficient to justify a trial” is somewhat Delphic because it calls for an evaluative judgment. That judgment can only be formed by a court with relevant jurisdiction.	Acquittals in criminal jury trials cannot be appealed (at least in a way that affects the outcome, Colorado and a few other states allow criminal appeals by the prosecution solely for the purposes of clarifying the law prospectively). Interlocutory appeals (i.e. appeals before the case is over) by the prosecution are allowed for pre-trial rulings (e.g. suppression of evidence rulings in a pre-trial hearing), in criminal cases, but not for evidentiary rulings made in the midst of a jury trial (which is when jeopardy attaches for the purposes of the double jeopardy rule, which is what prevents acquittals from being retried). An error in a ruling on an admission or rejection of evidence at trial may be appealed by a convicted defendant if the alleged misapplication of the evidence rule was an abuse of discretion by the judge, and was not "harmless error" (i.e. if as part of all errors made in the case there is a reasonable probability that it changed the outcome that the jury reached).
USA, why the trial decision based completely on jury? Watching the series about O.J. Simpson I was wondering “why in almost every case the decision based on jury?” and I personally think that this case is a good example to cast doubt of that legislation because the jury thought that if O.J. simpson was proven innocent then it will be a punch in racism guts. Can someone who is a lawyer answer me why the judge system is not reformed and stays like this and is more vulnerable to take a wrong decision because they do not know the law, thus the verdict depends on people’s morals? PS. I don’t suggest eliminating the jury but I suggest a middle solution. For example, in Greece the final verdict was made at votes but 3 of the voters are judges and the 4 of the voters are the jurors.	As others have said, the reason for this is that the US Constitution grants a jury trial as a right in criminal proceedings. The reason for that right to be granted is to be a check against (that is, a limitation of) the power of the government, generally, and judges, specifically. To answer your specific question of why "the judge system is not reformed and stays like this and is more vulnerable to take a wrong decision because they do not know the law, thus the verdict depends on people’s morals?" Firstly, the jury does know the law (or at least, the specific portions of the law that are relevant to the case), by the time they render their judgement. An important part of the judge's responsibility in a criminal case is to craft "jury instructions" that are given to the jury before they are sequestered for deliberations. These instructions should have an explanation of what questions they need to collectively answer, and what evidence they can and cannot consider. Secondly, there are two central dogmatic difference between the points of view that your question seems to promote or be based on, and the one generally held by the US Founding Fathers, who wrote the US Constitution. Your question seems to assume that: judges are sacrosanct, or at least trustworthy; and rule by law is the foremost concern In contrast, the general view of the US Founding Fathers was that: judges have power, and thus need to be checked (in the US system, a judge's power is checked by the prosecutor, the jury, the chief executive, and by courts of appeal); and protection of the citizenry from the power of the government is the first concern. One thing to note, is that this second point means that the judge in a US trial can actually override a criminal jury, but only in the defendant's favor.	The title question is overly-ambitious: it is not guaranteed, and nobody thinks that it is. The law does what is practical to achieve the desired result. Actual failure one way or the other is mostly irrelevant until a clear pattern to the failure is found, then there might be a legal resolution, but it might also require a political resolution. One consideration is whether it is possible for a defendant to receive a fair trial in a certain jurisdiction. Generally, you are tried in the jurisdiction where the offense occurred, sometimes (rarely) the venue can be changed to a more neutral location. This consideration is significant in high-profile cases. For example, the trials of Lee Boyd Malvo and John Allen Muhammad took place relatively far away from the scene of the crime. The trial judge must weigh the arguments for an inconvenient trial location, and in this trial the judge refused a petition for a change of venue. The judge stated that "As far as change of venue, I do not think that that would give the defendant any kind of a fair trial beyond what we are doing here today. I don’t think there’s any place in the state of Minnesota that has not been subjected to extreme amounts of publicity on this case" A second layer of protection is that prospective jurors may be excused. If a juror declares in advance (during voir dire or elsewhere) that the defendant is guilty, they will be excused for cause. The defense (or prosecution) also has some number of peremptory challenges – in this case, the defense has 5 and the prosecution has 3. In this category, a seated juror can be excused for cause (this happened), when a juror admits that some news e.g. about the city's settlement had prejudiced the juror. Also related to juror selection is that juror must swear to follow the law in reaching a decision. The third layer of protection is limiting testimony, for instance if the prosecution were to ask a witness something like "Won't there be major riots if Chauvin isn't convicted?", the defense would presumably object and prevent such testimony from getting uttered in the first place, or getting officially stricken if it somehow gets out. The fourth layer of protection is that jurors are meticulously instructed as to the logic of decision-making. If you can find a copy, there are here (MN does not make the instructions freely publicly available). Here are the California instructions. Additionally, a judge might attempt to limit what can be said by the media, or might sequester the jury so that they cannot hear any such publicity during the trial (but that's impossible for pre-trial publicity). Another layer is that a mistrial can be declared. However, what goes on in the jury room is in a black box that the legal system cannot generally touch. If a juror was paid off, that could be touched by the legal system, but there is nothing that can be done if it turns out that a juror has a bias in favor of the prosecution, despite the premise of neutrality. Finally, if the facts are so clear, a judge might overturn a conviction on the grounds that a reasonable jury could not reach that conclusion, based on the facts and the law. By "final" I ignore the possibility of an appeal.	Was This An Egregiously Lenient Sentence? Yes. Did he get lighter punishment than he "should have" (in some sense)? Yes. A six month sentence for a non-negligent homicide was virtually unprecedented then and remains extremely low. Even a six month sentence for the rape of an adult woman (which is generally a comparable or less serious offense than manslaughter) by a privileged white offender generates immense controversy today as it did in the case of the sentencing of Brock Turner for that offense in 2016 (something that ultimately cost the judge imposing that sentence his job). There is no way that intentionally hitting someone is negligent homicide. It is at a minimum reckless, and honestly, is hard to see as anything other than intentional conduct. While it wasn't premeditated and hence wouldn't qualify as first degree murder eligible for the death penalty, this would be a fairly straightforward case for a second degree murder charge and a sentence of a decade or more. The intentional part apples to the act of hitting someone, not the result of causing their death. This intent was present here. Where Did The System Fail? in what way did the legal process fail? Or do you think that there was any failure at all in the legal process? Was the substantive law at fault? No. The substantive criminal law in 1963 was very similar to what it is now and would have authorized a much more severe sentence on the crime of conviction and would have made a more serious charge of murder viable. Arguably the substantive law should have had a mandatory minimum sentence for homicide, but since judges very rarely impose such lenient charges for homicide in cases like this one where there was no good reason for leniency, many states don't do that now and it isn't a problem that legislators would reasonably have believed that they had to worry about. Allowing leniency in some extraordinary cases that capture considerations that the law does not expressly mention is often a good thing, rather than a bad one. Did The Appellate Process Fail? No. The defendant's conviction was not wrongfully reversed on appeal, and it is generally not possible for a defendant's sentence to be increased on appeal in these circumstances. Arguably, this is not an ideal rule of law (and it is not the law in most countries in these circumstances). But this was not a major problem with the legal system that was a primary reason causing the outcome in this case to be an exceptional miscarriage of justice. The Judge's Sentence Was An Abuse Of Discretion. The judge imposed a very light sentence within the statutorily allowed range of discretion. While we can't literally read the mind of the judge and the judge doesn't acknowledge this as a basis for the sentence, given a larger pattern of similarly lenient sentences of similarly situated people given light sentences by judges, we can make a very reasonable guess about the most likely and plausible reason for the lenient sentence. The most likely and plausible reason for the sentence is the one identified by Bob Dylan. A high status white man killed a low status black woman, and the judge felt that, as a result, it didn't justify as serious of a sentence. The actual chain of reasoning in the judge's mind consciously may have involved considerations like the view that the victim was an "eggshell" victim, and the likelihood that the defendant was capable of reforming his conduct after a short sentence and thus didn't present a threat to the public. But the courts very rarely grant leniency to someone on the grounds that the victim was "fragile" - usually this justifies a more severe sentence. And the documented fact that the perpetrator routinely assaulted others with his cane casts grave doubt on the extent to which he could be rehabilitated more easily than a typical defendant. Also, even if the charge of conviction was manslaughter, this case would have been considered at the high end of the range in terms of the culpability of the offender who went around assaulting many people at a public gathering seriously enough to cause harm, and to in one case cause a death of a more fragile victim. The sentence should have been at least at the midpoint of what is allowed (currently about five years out of ten possible) in a case like this one. Further, while Maryland is not in the "Deep South" it is a Southern state with a history of slavery and Jim Crow discrimination, and the judge in this case would have lived under and seen enforced to his benefit, Jim Crow laws in Maryland during his lifetime. The Civil Rights movement had not succeeded to the point that racism was a completely disavowed and unacceptable form of motivation in 1963, particularly in even parts of the South outside of the "Deep South" at that time. As a reference point, President Biden, in nearby Delaware, was starting to make a name for himself in politics at the time as a defender of segregation in the school system and an opponent of busing to desegregate schools. This issue got him elected and re-elected. Biden reformed his views later, but racism was alive and well in Chesapeake Bay area at the time. Was Prosecutorial Discretion An Issue? Possibly To Some Extent. The prosecution's decision to press charges for manslaughter rather than murder was also questionable, but less obviously so. Today, common practice would be to bring both murder and manslaughter charges in a case like this one. The facts would have supported a second degree murder charge. The fact that the prosecution originally brought a murder charge suggests that it knew that the facts supported that charge, and was influenced by some political or tactical consideration, or by judicial pressure, to drop the more serious charge before trial. But without insight into what that reason was (which is much less obvious than the judge's motivations) it is hard to judge whether the prosecutor should have acted differently under the circumstances. The fact that the prosecution pressed charges, took the case to trial, and got a conviction at all also suggests that the prosecutor's conduct was not at the bottom of the barrel compared to more racist prosecutor exercises of discretion in 1963 elsewhere in the U.S. The prosecutor had the full legal ability to decline to press charges at all without facing any legal consequences for failing to do so. Further, while it is certainly plausible that prosecutor's racism figured into this decision, it is also important to note that the prosecutor has to consider the attitudes of a likely jury pool when bringing charges. Even if the prosecutor believes that the defendant is guilty of murder under the law, the prosecutor has to consider whether the odds of getting a conviction from a local jury that is likely to have considerable racial bias influences what charges are right to bring in order to get a maximum conviction, as opposed to what charges the prosecutor believes are legally justified. Likewise, if the judge indicated the he would be likely to dismiss the murder charge before trial in a preliminary hearing, that would also make a prosecutor's decision to comply with an implicit judicial suggestion to stay in the judge's good graces for the remainder of this case, and for future cases before the same judge, understandable. However, if electoral public pressure, or the defense counsel's pressure or influence, caused the prosecutor to give up on a murder charge that a conviction would probably have been secured upon, this is much more problematic and would suggest racial and status bias on the part of the prosecuting attorney's office. Was Jury Conduct An Issue? No. The conduct of the jury in this case was not an issue, even though the potential of jury nullification that didn't happen was a factor that may have influenced the charge brought by the prosecution. The jury convicted the defendant on the most serious charge presented to it.	A jury verdict does not have any effect as legal precedent. Only appellate court opinions (that are not mere de novo bench trials of a court not of record) have effect as legal precedent outside the dealings of the actual parties to the case in future litigation with each other. Even then, an appellate court ruling is binding precedent only over the courts inferior to the appellate court issuing the opinion.	First, while Law and Order should not be taken as an accurate depiction of a New York trial, it especially should not be taken as an accurate depiction of an Australian trial. Australian law, while it has some major similarities with US law (both ultimately derive from the law of England), is not US law. With procedural matters (such as "may jurors ask questions of witnesses"), it can potentially differ from court to court. In general, jurors may not simply ask a witness a question. The jury's job is not to investigate and figure out if the defendant was guilty or not; it's to evaluate the cases presented by each side. US (and Australian, as far as I know) courts use what's known as the adversarial model, where the prosecution and the defense both present the best cases they can and a neutral third party decides which case was stronger. In a US criminal trial, the state is expected to justify why someone should be in jail; the jury shouldn't be helping them justify it. This isn't how all jurisdictions around the world work, but it's how the US does. One concern with juror questions is that it has the risk that the juror will not be impartial. Jurors are not supposed to get into arguments with witnesses, or to go after them to try to prove a point. In your case, the juror might be introducing an entirely different line of reasoning from the one either side is presenting, and that's simply not their job. People have raised the concern that a juror thinking up questions might be deciding the case before they hear all the evidence, and might give too much weight to the answers to their own questions (or read a lot into it if a question is denied). There are also rules on what questions may be legally asked; lawyers know these and jurors generally don't, which is why jurors may almost never directly ask a question to a witness. Where they can ask questions, it's virtually always written questions, which the judge reviews, gives to both sides to see if anyone objects, and then reads to the witness in a neutral tone.	"Precedent" refers to a finding of what the law is. A jury only finds facts, and operates (supposedly) within the meaning of the law as already established. All the jury reports is "yes" and "no" to questions of fact (with some reference to existing law): they do not report, at least in any official way "we interpret the law as saying X". So it would be impossible for a jury to "set precedent" in the case law sense. In a notorious case, they might "set precedent" in inspiring other jurors to act similarly, but this is not enforceable precedent in the way that case law precedent is. In the US, if the jury acquits the defendant, that is the end of the matter and there is no re-trial. As for the UK, I am not sure but I think that the prosecution being unhappy with the jury's decision does not create an exception to the double jeopardy rule.	This is largely congruent with* the doctrine of laches. The basic idea, under common law, is that you can lose rights by failing to assert them. This is generally important for many reasons, but specifically in the case of appeals: The argument should have been brought before the trial court. Justice is not a game, but it's important to recognize that the party trying to raise the argument had an opportunity to do so already. They have given up their right to raise this argument, and extending them the privilege of doing so is (for the following reasons) not good for the system. Courts of appeals are typically not well-equipped to evaluate factual evidence. It is not their area of expertise. Witnesses or evidence may be less available. It's just not practical to try to adjudicate factual issues on appeal, most of the time. If anyone could get an appeal by bringing new factual arguments, then everyone would do that. You'd bring your strongest argument before the district court, and then if that fails, bring the second strongest before the circuit court. That way, you get an extra trial. This is inefficient. Allowing factual arguments on appeal would encourage attorneys and their clients to strategically bring different facts before different courts. This kind of forum-shopping is harmful because it has little to do with who has the stronger overall case, and more to do with who has the better lawyer. * "Congruent with" is not the same as "an instance of"; this rule is not formally an application of laches. It just happens to share the same justification.	The alternative is the same whether just one lower court or many lower courts ignore SCOTUS precedent. An aggrieved parts will appeal the lower court ruling, and the matter will work its way up the ladder until SCOTUS directly rules on this application of the law. This sort of happens all the time, when lower courts don't apply the ostensive "final ruling" because they find that there is some other overriding consideration ("that rule only applies to businesses employing more than 50 people"). Where the case to be remanded to lower courts for further proceedings consistent with SCOTUS opinion and still the lower courts refuse to comply, i.e open rebellion, SCOTUS could rule that non-compliance by lower courts constitutes contempt, and an order could be issued for the removal (in some form) of offending parties (we may presume, the justices of the lower court). The statute outlining court power allows on order of imprisonment for "disobedience or resistance to its lawful writ, process, order, rule, decree, or command". Federal marshals would then arrest non-compliant judges, unless the marshals too are in open rebellion. If the judges in question were federal judges, the marshals would have to decide whether to obey the order of SCOTUS vs. the order of the district or circuit court. Since under the US Constitution states that "The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish", it is objectively established that SCOTUS rulings are superior, so provided that the marshals elect to uphold their oath of office, they will enforce the SCOTUS ruling. However, citizen action becomes irrelevant once SCOTUS has made its ruling, and the matter has moved from legal determination of fact to enforcement of established fact.
Justification for shooting a suspect in the back IANAL. I am puzzled by today's headline in the media. As I understand it, civilians are sometime able to invoke self-defense if they have a reasonable belief of immediate life-threatening harm. However, if the suspect is retreating and not threatening anyone else, a shot in the back is not justified. There is justification "box" (context) that a citizen must be within order to invoke the self-defense justification. Assuming my understanding is correct (if it is not please correct the above). is law enforcement's box "bigger"? In what context is shooting a suspect in the back justified? Is governing law at the state or Federal? Another example for consideration if needed: https://abcnews.go.com/US/newly-released-video-shows-police-officer-shooting-16/story?id=66498285	This is controlled by state law (there is also a federal murder statutes but the federal government doesn't dictate defenses for state law). Here is Washington's. RCW 9A.16.020 says when use of force is lawful, and there are different "public officer" vs. "person" related provisions. Generally, public officers may use force (1) Whenever necessarily used by a public officer in the performance of a legal duty, or a person assisting the officer and acting under the officer's direction; but persons (other than those assisting an officer) may only use force (3) Whenever used by a party about to be injured, or by another lawfully aiding him or her, in preventing or attempting to prevent an offense against his or her person, or a malicious trespass, or other malicious interference with real or personal property lawfully in his or her possession, in case the force is not more than is necessary; Additionally, RCW 9A.16.040 is a long section specifically about officers, the most germane parts of which are that use of deadly force is justifiable (a) When a public officer applies deadly force in obedience to the judgment of a competent court; or (b) When necessarily used by a peace officer meeting the good faith standard of this section to overcome actual resistance to the execution of the legal process, mandate, or order of a court or officer, or in the discharge of a legal duty; or (c) When necessarily used by a peace officer meeting the good faith standard of this section or person acting under the officer's command and in the officer's aid: (i) To arrest or apprehend a person who the officer reasonably believes has committed, has attempted to commit, is committing, or is attempting to commit a felony; RCW 9A.16.050 has more limited circumstances when homicide is justifiable by others (not in self-defense): (1) In the lawful defense of the slayer, or his or her husband, wife, parent, child, brother, or sister, or of any other person in his or her presence or company, when there is reasonable ground to apprehend a design on the part of the person slain to commit a felony or to do some great personal injury to the slayer or to any such person, and there is imminent danger of such design being accomplished; or (2) In the actual resistance of an attempt to commit a felony upon the slayer, in his or her presence, or upon or in a dwelling, or other place of abode, in which he or she is In other words, the box for police officers is bigger: they can use deadly force to do their job, your plumber cannot. RCW 9A.16.040 is not a general license to kill: the rest of the section details the conditions under which one can consider such use of force to be lawful. The officer must have "probable cause to believe that the suspect, if not apprehended, poses a threat of serious physical harm to the officer or a threat of serious physical harm to others". If that is so, "deadly force may also be used if necessary to prevent escape from the officer". Also, as usual, the fact-finders do not make that judgment post hoc, the officer at the scene does and he "shall not be held criminally liable for using deadly force without malice and with a good faith belief that such act is justifiable pursuant to this section". In enacting this law (in case the courts wondered, years later, the legislature declared The legislature recognizes that RCW 9A.16.040 establishes a dual standard with respect to the use of deadly force by peace officers and private citizens, and further recognizes that private citizens' permissible use of deadly force under the authority of RCW 9.01.200 [since recodified], 9A.16.020, or 9A.16.050 is not restricted and remains broader than the limitations imposed on peace officers There do not appear to be statutory defenses for federal murder statutes, instead this results from common law interpretation, implemented in federal rules of criminal procedure (discussed here w.r.t. defenses) and jury instructions in the various circuits.	The terminology used may vary some by jurisdiction, but in many it will be said that Bob provoked the confrontation, or that Bob was the aggressor, or that Bob was engaged in a felony and so cannot claim self-defense. This fact patter is highly unlikely to arise in real lie, because if Bob has even a half-competent lawyer, the issue of self-defense, sure to fail, will not be raised. Doing so only wastes the court's time, and may well make them think worse of Bob, which may cost him. In less open-and-shut cases, the general rule is that one who provokes a confrontation, or who is the aggressor, may not claim self-defense. But the exact rule varies by jurisdiction, and the line will be drawn in different ways in different jurisdictions. In some one who seeks a confrontation may be denied a right of self-defense.	It Depends This will depend on the jurisdiction. In the US it will depend on the state. In some states it is legal to use deadly force in defense of property. In some an aggressor is not entitled to self defense. Oregon Rule The page "Self-Defense and Deadly Force in Oregon" by Susan G. Hauser states: According to Oregon law, “A person may use physical force upon another person in self-defense or in defending a third person, in defending property, in making a [citizen's] arrest or in preventing an escape.” “In Oregon,” says Portland criminal defense lawyer Lisa J. Ludwig, “it’s not really organized around a location so much as the reasonable perception of a threat.” One may defend one’s life, no matter the location, or use force in defense of a person or defense of property. Oregon Laws ORS 161.209 provides that Except as provided in ORS 161.215 (Limitations on use of physical force in defense of a person) and 161.219 (Limitations on use of deadly physical force in defense of a person), a person is justified in using physical force upon another person for self-defense or to defend a third person from what the person reasonably believes to be the use or imminent use of unlawful physical force, and the person may use a degree of force which the person reasonably believes to be necessary for the purpose. ORS 161.215 provides (in relevant part) that: Notwithstanding ORS 161.209 (Use of physical force in defense of a person), a person is not justified in using physical force upon another person if: (1) With intent to cause physical injury or death to another person, the person provokes the use of unlawful physical force by that person; or (2) The person is the initial aggressor, except that the use of physical force upon another person under such circumstances is justifiable if the person withdraws from the encounter and effectively communicates to the other person the intent to do so, but the latter nevertheless continues or threatens to continue the use of unlawful physical force; or ... ORS 161.219 provides that: Notwithstanding the provisions of ORS 161.209 (Use of physical force in defense of a person), a person is not justified in using deadly physical force upon another person unless the person reasonably believes that the other person is: (1) Committing or attempting to commit a felony involving the use or threatened imminent use of physical force against a person; or (2) Committing or attempting to commit a burglary in a dwelling; or (3) Using or about to use unlawful deadly physical force against a person. ORS 161.225 provides (in relevant part) that: (1) A person in lawful possession or control of premises is justified in using physical force upon another person when and to the extent that the person reasonably believes it necessary to prevent or terminate what the person reasonably believes to be the commission or attempted commission of a criminal trespass by the other person in or upon the premises. ? (2) A person may use deadly physical force under the circumstances set forth in subsection (1) of this section only: (2) (a) In defense of a person as provided in ORS 161.219 (Limitations on use of deadly physical force in defense of a person); or (2) (b) When the person reasonably believes it necessary to prevent the commission of arson or a felony by force and violence by the trespasser. ORS 161.229 provides that: A person is justified in using physical force, other than deadly physical force, upon another person when and to the extent that the person reasonably believes it to be necessary to prevent or terminate the commission or attempted commission by the other person of theft or criminal mischief of property. Analysis When the question states: it is not legal to use deadly force in defense of property this is incomplete. While deadly6 forcwe cannot be used to defend "property" under ORS 161.229, a person may use deadly force to defend "premises" under ORS 161.225. This includes both a home an any other building. Under ORS 161.215 one who provokes another or is the aggressor in a confrontation may not use physical force, and therefore is not entitled to assert a right of self defense. Under ORS 161.219 one may use deadly force against a person who is "Committing or attempting to commit a felony involving the use or threatened imminent use of physical force against a person" Conclusion As John is stealing from James, it would appear that John is the aggressor, and has provoked James. Moreover, John is (probably) engaged in a felony, and may well be using physical fore in committing that felony, depending on details not states in the question. Thus it would seem that in the circumstances described in the question, John does not have a right of self-defense as against James in Oregon, and will not prevail if he raises the issue of self defense in an Oregon court	The above is not quite accurate. First, assault. The correct definition is "a threat or physical act that creates a reasonable apprehension of imminent harmful or offensive contact." Therefore, no attempt at a battery is necessary. Rather, simply making someone subjectively believe that you are about to commit a battery against them is enough for an assault charge. Please note the following two points. One, that apprehension does not mean fear. Apprehension means that the victim has to believe that the actor's conduct will result in imminent harmful or offensive contact. Two, it's not necessary that the victim believes such conduct will actually be effective - rather, he only has to believe the conduct is "capable" of making the contact. I can't tell if by "other security personnel" you mean, in addition to bouncers, say, security at concerts or if you mean private security guards, such as ones who guard warehouses or other businesses. Nonetheless, for the warehouse/business "guards," they do not have a special privilege above or beyond what any random person may do. That is, you may use force to the extent you reasonably believe necessary to prevent a felony, riot, or serious breach of the peace. You may use deadly force only if it appears reasonably necessary to prevent a "dangerous felony" involving risk to human life, including, for example, robbery, arson, burglary. However, if the private security personnel are operating under authority vested to them by local ordinance or the state legislature, then their rights (and also any attendant restrictions, such as those provided to citizens under the Fourth Amendment) would apply instead. So where's the difference? It comes about at the standard a situation must meet to allow use of deadly force. A police officer can use deadly force to effectuate an arrest based on a reasonable belief that a suspect has committed a felony involving the risk of physical harm or death to others (murder, manslaughter, kidnapping, rape or burglary) or if there is substantial risk that the suspect was dangerous to the point that he may cause serious physical harm or death to someone if the arrest were delayed. On the other hand, as a private citizen, you may only use deadly force when attempting to effectuate an arrest if the suspect did indeed commit such a felony. Police can base their action on a reasonable belief and even if that belief is wrong, they will be safe from prosecution. A private citizen actually must be right about the suspect having committed the requisite crime. No matter how reasonable the belief was of a private citizen regarding a suspect, if that suspect did not actually commit the crime, the private citizen who used such force will be subject to prosecution. Bouncers are afforded no more rights than private citizens. They can issue verbal warnings, ask a patron to leave the establishment, check identification, refuse entry, call the cops, protect bystanders from violence, break up fights, and respond with equal force if necessary. They may not strike an individual with a punch or kick, push or physically toss someone out of the establishment, restrain them using chokeholds or other submission techniques, or use weapons or pepper spray.	2019 Manual for Courts-Martial, Rule 916(h): (h) Coercion or duress. It is a defense to any offense except killing an innocent person that the accused’s participation in the offense was caused by a reasonable apprehension that the accused or another innocent person would be immediately killed or would immediately suffer serious bodily injury if the accused did not commit the act. The apprehension must reasonably continue throughout the commission of the act. If the accused has any reasonable opportunity to avoid committing the act without subjecting the accused or another innocent person to the harm threatened, this defense shall not apply. So, if your hypothetical soldier asserts they had a reasonable apprehension that they would have immediately suffered serious bodily injury if they didn't reveal the intelligence, then they should not be convicted by a court-martial, unless the prosecution can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that this was not the case (Rule 916 (b)(1)).	It is premature to judge the particular case because the facts are not all available. But we can address the general principles. The Model Penal Code 3.04(2)(a) sets out the general principles clearly. A person has the right to self-defense against unlawful force. But, the use of force is not justifiable to resist an arrest which the actor knows is being made by a peace officer, although the arrest is unlawful. But more specifically under (b) The use of deadly force is not justifiable under this Section unless the actor believes that such force is necessary to protect himself against death, serious bodily harm, kidnapping or sexual intercourse compelled by force or threat However, there is a further condition that force is not justifiable if the actor knows that he can avoid the necessity of using such force with complete safety by retreating or by surrendering possession of a thing to a person asserting a claim of right thereto or by complying with a demand that he abstain from any action which he has no duty to take Then finally, §3.05 says that this goes for people using force in defense of others. The short version is that the common law right to resist illegal arrest has been supplanted by a statutory requirement to submit to police authority, for example in California and New York. In Ewumi v. Georgia, defendant was illegally arrested and physically defended himself, which resulted in a battery charge and conviction. The battery charge was overturned because the arrest was illegal ab initio. If one resisting an authorized arrest, where an officer's force is likely to result in unjustifiable great bodily harm, the question is whether a reasonable person would find it necessary to resist in self-defense. It is unusual for the courts to find that to be the case. Minnesota law says that reasonable force may be used upon or toward the person of another without the other's consent when the following circumstances exist or the actor reasonably believes them to exist: (1) when used by a public officer or one assisting a public officer under the public officer's direction: (a) in effecting a lawful arrest Other sections say that a person who is not a public officer may use force to effect an arrest, or, "(3) when used by any person in resisting or aiding another to resist an offense against the person". Being arrested by the police is not an offense, and none of the other justifications for use of force apply.	A follow-up story appears on the local ABC television station, indicating that the security guard pleaded no contest to simple assault. The fact that the security guard was convicted of a misdemeanor does not necessarily indicate that the deputy was allowed to have the gun in the IRS office, only that the security guard's response to the situation was not acceptable. I am not able to locate any firearm policy for the Lucas County, Ohio' sheriff's office. Many US law enforcement agencies have a policy that their officers carry their firearms essentially at all times, so that they can respond to unexpected incidents even when they are off duty. At the same time, owners of private property ordinarily can admit people, or not, for any reason at all. Unless the officer has an official reason for entering a property when the owner doesn't want the officer there, the officer isn't allowed to enter. It appears that in this case the officer had no official law-enforcement reason to enter. But this case doesn't involve private property, it involves federal property. A digest from the FBI states "Federal laws or regulations are not superseded by LEOSA. Qualified officers may not carry concealed weapons onto aircraft under the act. They also cannot carry firearms into federal buildings or onto federal property."	If the pursuit is unlawful (which it almost always is except for police) and the pursued suffers harm in fleeing from the pursuer, then the pursuer is responsible both criminally and civilly. Being pursued would put a person in fear of harm: that’s the criteria for assault so the act of pursuing someone without lawful cause is a crime. Self-defence ceases to be a defence when the other person is running away - even if they are carrying your TV. You can use reasonable force to effect an arrest but a pursuit is not likely to be reasonable if it is of any significant distance or involves vehicles. Police pursuits are strictly limited and police have been successfully sued when they exceed those limits and harm comes to the pursued. If the pursed dies, pursuers can and have been convicted of murder or manslaughter.
If I owe state taxes, can the state seize a relative's property in retaliation? I live in the United States and I owe taxes to the state, which I'm not able to pay. I don't have a permanent residence and live with family/friends. One of my family members received a letter stating their property will be seized. They don't have any financial affiliation with me. Is it possible for the state to seize someone's property if I lived there — even though they have no financial affiliation with me?	The government cannot seize property because a person residing at that property has a tax debt: the debtor has to have a legal interest in the property, which you say you don't have. The government can seize property under the practice of civil forfeiture, which is a legal dispute between law enforcement and property – the simplest way to put it is that the property itself has "done wrong" (is involved in illegal activity). That's not what tax debt is. It is possible for the state to seize property in error, so just because the state makes a mistake somehow does not mean that the state cannot file the paperwork and seize the property if the owners ignore the summons.	It is certainly possible to give gifts to your relatives (or to anyone really). But, the harder question is whether or not it is really a gift. A characterization of a transaction as a gift is less likely to be questioned if it is between related parties, and it is less likely to be questioned if it isn't obviously a quid pro quo. If you told your brother that you would make a gift to him of all of the appreciation in the house, if he made the guarantee in advance, it would be a guarantee fee (or an equitable or nominee ownership) rather than a gift. But, with the timing and motives described in this post, it is certainly a closer call. The fact that the "gift" amount exactly matches the appreciation casts doubt on the theory that this is really a gift, but doesn't absolutely clearly require the conclusion that it is not. This could end up being resolved either way, and ultimately, could be very dependent upon the detailed facts and how they are presented to the person determining if tax is owed.	What happens to a corporation, or any of its executives, when that corporation is dissolving but has unpaid state franchise tax fees that it does not have the assets to pay? You can't get blood out of a turnip, even if you are the tax collector. This said, if assets were transferred without consideration to someone, the tax due could be recovered from the recipient of the assets in a fraudulent transfer action against that recipient. Can these corporation liabilities transfer to their executives? Depends upon what the applicable state statute says. More than one state has franchise taxes and the consequences for violating them are not the same. The magnitude of the taxes are also not the same. In some states it is basically an annually filing fee of a couple of hundred dollars or less, and simply forcing the corporation to dissolve for nonpayment would be considered punishment enough. In California, franchise taxes amount to a full fledged and significant state level corporate income tax. Many states impose personal liability as a matter of law on directors of corporations that pay dividends or make liquidating distributions to owners of a corporation when it is insolvent.	First, there's no tax credit (at least on the Federal side), just a tax deduction (and even that isn't guaranteed - depends on your personal circumstances). Second, you get to claim the deduction (you should keep your receipt, just in case).	Could you insure yourself either given the fact that- you bought the property on mortgage? A mortgage does not generally have the legal effect of insurance. You owe the debt to the lender, which is a strict liability obligation, without regard to the value of the collateral. So, if the collateral is devalued, you still owe the debt, whether or not the lender forecloses. For example, if you sell the property for less than the amount of the debt (i.e. a short sale), you remain personally liable for the deficiency between the proceeds of the sale, and the amount owed on the debt, unless the lender consents. The exception to this is a "non-recourse mortgage", which is a mortgage in which the lender expressly agrees to accept the collateral as the sole means from which the debt can be repaid in a compulsory fashion. The financial crisis of 2009 was mostly a function of a handful U.S. states like California and Florida with economically important mortgage markets having residential mortgage loans that were as a matter of law, non-recourse debts (or nearly non-recourse debts) compounded by people making risky decisions knowing that they didn't face the risk of a deficiency judgment. But, non-recourse mortgage lending is very rare in the U.K. (the linked material inaccurately asserts that mortgages in "most of the United States" are non-recourse, however, when, in fact, that is true only in a small minority of U.S. states, probably not more than five state in all, although a couple of the states that are close to non-recourse for residential mortgages, like Florida and California, are economically important U.S. mortgage markets). Of course, even in the case of a debtor who is obligated on a full recourse mortgage, it may be in the interest of the lender to write off the deficiency judgment, rather than seeking to recovery the debt from the borrower, if the borrower is apart from the collateral, judgment-proof or very nearly so. The lender is taking the risk that both the collateral will be insufficient and that the borrower will also be unable to pay the debt, and when that happens the lender takes a loss. Or is there any insurance which could protect you against massive downfall in any Unforseen compulsory purchase situation. In the United States, lenders often buy what is called "mortgage insurance" at the expense of the buyer, when the down payment on the property is under 20% of the purchase price, that remains in force until 20% of the purchase price has been paid through a combination of a down payment and principal payments on the loan. But, this form of insurance is not generally available to property owners themselves as a matter of economic reality, possibly because it is an uninsurable risk, and possibly because there isn't enough economic demand for it at prices that would make it profitable to do so. Also, when a lender receives a payment on a mortgage insurance policy, the insurance company receives in exchange, all of the rights that the lender had to sue the borrower for a deficiency judgment, if any. These are called the insurance company's "subrogation rights." I have certainly also never seen any form of insurance for an unfavorably bad outcome in an eminent domain/condemnation proceeding for any reason. In a case like that the court determines as a matter of law (in one of the few proceedings where there is still a right to a jury in the U.K.) what the fair market value of the property is at the time of the condemnation, and that determination would complicate recovery on any insurance policy because you would need to have a proof of the loss. Generally speaking, a mere decline in the fair market value of real estate, in and of itself, it not considered to be an insurable loss, of the owner of the real estate, for insurance law purposes. Bonding A very close cousin of insurance contracts are bonding contracts. When a third party is unsure that you will be able to perform a contract or pay a debt, you can encourage them to do business with you by having a bonding company agree to meet your obligations up to a certain dollar amount if you are unable to do so, usually, in exchange for a fee, a right to sue you if they have to make a payment for the amount that they had to pay, and sometimes for some sort of collateral to protect them against the risk that they are taking. But, bonding companies don't generally provide bonds for residential mortgage customers at any price, because someone who needs a bond on a debt like that is unlikely to be able to ever repay the bonding company for its loss if it does have to pay the mortgage debt, and because bonding companies would need to set aside too much money as financial reserves against this risk to be prepared in the event that it had to pay a lot of claims due to collapsing real estate price bubble or something like that. Or is there any way to mitigate this risk / avoid this risk? Option To Sell Contracts On the buyer's side the primary "insurance-like" legal instrument would be for the buyer to purchase from a third-party a legal option to sell the property at a specific price that is lower than the current purchase price. Such an option would probably be legal to enter into, and, with the proper regulatory compliance and financial disclosures, a firm could sell such options to residential property buyers. But, as a matter of practical economic reality, I have never encountered a transaction in which someone actually did that with an unrelated third-party in an arms-length business transaction. In the financial crisis of 2009, secondary market mortgage debt buyers had purchased options to hedge against just this kind of risk, but the counterparties who were obligated to cover the losses pursuant to those options didn't have sufficient reserves and other assets to cover the losses that they were obligated to pay, and so the people who had purchased these options were stiffed anyway. This is because prominent credit rating firms for businesses (of which there were only three or four in the United States) failed to properly evaluate the fact that the risk of one claim under this kind of option was not independent of the risk of other claims under similar options happening at the same time, and in general, failed to accurately evaluate the risk of counterparties being unable to perform their sides of the contracts because the counterparties were be prominent financial companies that had never failed before. But, faced with this situation, almost every investment bank in the United States either went bankrupt or was acquired by another financial company that was not allowed to engage in this kind of derivatives transaction. Mortgage insurance companies, in contrast, paid all of the claims against them, because state insurance regulators had adequately evaluated the risks and forced the mortgage insurance companies to set aside adequate reserves to pay claims in the event of a situation like the 2009 financial crisis. But, because the need to set aside reserves made mortgage insurance (which also had premiums that were not tax deductible to the property owner) made mortgage insurance more expensive than having the same bank give someone both a first mortgage and a higher interest second mortgage on a residence, and then entering option contracts to control their risk of loss in the event of a real estate devaluation that made the second mortgage uncollectible, mortgage insurance companies had a pretty low market share of the financial services providers who were addressing the property devaluation risk for mortgage lenders. Long Term Leases In Lieu Of Purchasing With A Mortgage Another alternative would be to enter into a favorable long term lease of the property, which would be owned by somebody else, rather than actually buying it. If the lease had a term automatically terminating upon a compulsory purchase such as an eminent domain proceeding, the landlord and not the tenant, would bear the risk of loss in the event that the property bad massively devalued due to a change in prevailing market prices (although the landlord would also benefit in the event of massive appreciation at the termination of the lease, although that might be long in the future). This would be an extremely uncommon arrangement for someone to make with their own residence, but isn't unthinkable. For example, over in Ireland, the Guinness Brewing Corporation rents rather than owns most of the real estate that it used on long term 999 year leases (if I recall correctly), possibly out of concern for this possibility, which was a very real one at the time that those leases were put in place. Similarly, my childhood home in a university town was built on land leased from the university on a 99 year lease in the 1960s or 1970s, that was later converted to absolute ownership of the land by my faculty and administrator parents about fifty years into the original lease by mutual agreement between the university and the original home builder. But, that wouldn't really be strictly analogous, because the house was purchased by my parents subject to a full recourse mortgage secured by the building and their rights as tenants on the land lease, so they weren't really protected from a mass devaluation of the property. The transaction didn't really hedge against an economic downturn. Instead, it effectively gave the university the right to buy back the land at the cost of compensating my parents for the value of the residence built on that land, if it wanted to expand. But, it would still probably be possible and legal to enter into a long term lease whose terms did hedge against that possibility, possibly with an option to buy the premises after a certain number of years long in the future when devaluation relative to the purchase price was much less likely to due gradual annual appreciation and inflation over that time period (e.g. 40 years out), if you could find someone willing to serve as a landlord in that kind of deal. Caveat Regarding Taxation The way business transactions are structured is frequently heavily driven not just by the underlying economic effect of the transactions, but also by the tax implications of the transactions. But, I am not familiar enough with the tax laws of the United Kingdom to evaluate that piece of the puzzle. In the context of the question, the most viable alternative to limit risk downside devaluation risk would be to enter into a long term lease rather than buying the residence. But, that only makes sense if there are not big tax benefits to owning a residence with a mortgage as opposed to leasing one. In the United States, there are huge tax incentives to buy rather than lease. But, I don't know if there are similar tax incentives in the United Kingdom that might make a long term lease solution less attractive. For example, a large share of all businesses in the United States lease rather than own the real property that they use, and a large share of skyscrapers and other high rise buildings in the United States are built on leased land. But, those transactions are structured as long term leases, rather than purchase transactions, primarily for tax reasons. Under U.S. tax law, businesses can't treat money spent to purchase raw land or principal payments on mortgages as an expense for tax purposes, but can treat the full amount of any lease payment the business pays to a landlord as an expense for tax purposes. So, transactions are structured accordingly. For example, in a high rise transaction, the building owner pays the fully deductible long term land lease payment to the owner of the land (usually a non-profit that isn't worried about having taxable income not matched by an expense deduction), while the building owner can make up for not being able to deduct principal payment expense on the construction loan by being able to take depreciation deductions on the building itself as an expense in a similar amount. The non-profits usually don't borrow the money to buy the land that they lease to high rise owners. Instead, this is an investment option for cash rich, stable non-profits that need to find a way to get reliable, low risk, long term passively managed returns on their investments. And, the risk of devaluation is much lower for a long term investor with a forty year time horizon than it is for property owner with a shorter time horizon. But, without these tax incentives, there would be far less real estate leasing by businesses in the United States, and a desire to hedge against significant real estate devaluations is a far more secondary reason for businesses to lease of real estate in the United States.	Can a court order a large asset to be sold if the defendent lost the case on a relatively small amount? Say a defendent owns land worth $200,000. The defendant lost the case and has to pay $9,000. He does not have any money to pay. Could courts order the land to be sold? In most U.S. law jurisdictions, yes, a high value assets can be ordered sold to satisfy a small money judgment or a small secured claim (i.e. a mortgage or the equivalent in real of personal property), subject to some exceptions that don't precisely target this concern but do alleviate it somewhat. Forcing a sale is mostly a decision made by the collection lawyer and the judge has very little discretion in the matter in most cases, so long as all formalities are observed. In most U.S. jurisdictions there are not minimum dollar amount of a debt that can be collected by execution and levy (i.e. seizure and sheriff's sale) on property of arbitrary value (although I am sure there must be at least one out there that does have a minimum dollar amount). Some kinds of property are completely exempt from creditors claims (e.g. defined benefit pension plans). Some kinds of property are protected up to a certain dollar amount of equity (most exemptions for household property and for homesteads, although a small number of homestead exemptions are unlimited). This allows courts and parties to disregard homes with little equity and low value personal property, focusing collection efforts on higher value property. There are also laws in some states require that creditors attempt to collect the debt from all other known assets with equity that can be collected through a formal process (other than a personal residence), before attempting to sell the personal residence (unless the debt is a voluntary mortgage or mechanic's lien on the personal residence and no other assets). There are several ways that the injustice of this can be avoided, if the debtor doesn't simply have the cash to pay off the debt. First, the debtor may be able to borrow the small amount of the debt owed from someone else to pay it off and avoid the foreclosure of the asset. Second, the debtor can take out a loan with the property as collateral to pay the debt, even if the debtor has few other assets. Third, the debtor can sell their own property to pay the debt probably producing a better price than would be obtained at a sheriff's sale. Fourth, someone other than the debtor and the creditor could bid at a sheriff's sale an amount closer to the fair market value of the property than the amount of the debt. Usually, the sheriff's sale price is still far below the fair market value, but it could be a lot more than the debt, and in those cases the excess goes back to the debtor. In some jurisdictions, bids for personal residences must be supported by appraisals that show what the fair market value of the property is and can't be less than that (apart from litigation costs and costs of sale). Fifth, someone could file for bankruptcy and negotiate a payment plan for the small debt in that context.	Yes; While contracts can be made in written and oral form bigger acquisitions normally are in written form. Also consider this: They can't prove that they told you that the balcony is not usable. Thats a big negative in buying a property and they would need to have it documented. If they still refuse consider seeking professional help. In my country lawyers offer "fast help" that isn't legally binding but costs you only 10$ and helps you finding out if your case has any possibility to get accepted/if you're right. EDIT: Regarding the reservation fee: You can dismiss that. You didn't reserved that object, you reserved a house with balcony.	Two people can have an equal interest in real property without being married, and being incarcerated doesn't affect a person's property rights. What matters is that now your ex-wife has a legal interest in the property. As a separate issue, she presumably also has a legal obligation w.r.t. the mortgage (otherwise the quitclaim deed makes no sense). The easiest solution is for the other party to voluntarily transfer their interest in the property to you via a quitclaim deed. A difficult solution is to use the judicial process to remove a person from the title. This could be done if there was fraud involved in the property transfer process, for example if the quitclaim deed was forged (presumably not the case here). You might sue to correct an error which doesn't reflect the terms of the transaction, via a reformation action, but that doesn't seem to be the case (a party not understanding the consequences of transferring an interest isn't an error in the relevant sense). You need to hire an attorney to solve the problem (he will look at all of the documentation relevant for your case for a possible solution).
Are animated GIFs Recognised as videos or images in court? When settling legal disputes about copyrighted GIFs (or apngs webps etc) are they recognised by the court as videos or images (Or does it make no difference)? It's worth mentioning that they are (in terms of computer science) recognised as images, but you can easily get a silent film and convert it into a really long GIF. Since I'm not sure if this can vary with location, I'll leave it open (if it can, assume international, US and/or UK law)	They are both “documents” under most rules of evidence Basically, there are only two sorts of evidence: Testimony. What a witness says to the court. Although, in practice a lot of testimony is said out of court and given in writing but it’s still testimony. Documentary. Everything else.	Showbox is legal in the UK The UK implemented the Copyright Directive in 2003 (officially the Directive 2001/29/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 22 May 2001 on the harmonisation of certain aspects of copyright and related rights in the information society). On June 5, 2014, the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) ruled on a UK case Public Relations Consultants Association Ltd v Newspaper Licensing Agency Ltd et al finding that: ...the copies on the user’s computer screen and the copies in the internet ‘cache’ of that computer’s hard disk, made by an end-user in the course of viewing a website, satisfy the conditions that those copies must be temporary, that they must be transient or incidental in nature and that they must constitute an integral and essential part of a technological process, as well as the conditions laid down in Article 5(5) of that directive, and that they may therefore be made without the authorisation of the copyright holders. This can, and arguably should, be read to state that streaming media content meets the Article 5(1) exception to the Article 2 reproduction right. Said differently, the Copyright Directive in Article 5(1) provides an exception to copyright protection - temporary files (the Directive calls them "acts") which are transient and essential are not given copyright protection. The court ruled that files made during streaming are these types of files. Said even more differently, streaming copyrighted content is legal. Inasmuch as Showbox is streaming media, Showbox is legal.	Most of the major archiving platforms are nonprofit ventures with purposes that could fall within the fair-use exception to the Copyright Act. Archive.org, for instance, is for educational and archival purposes. Perma.cc, meanwhile, is for preserving legal history. I don't know about Perma.cc, but Archive.org will take down pages just because you asked, so that also cuts in its favor.	Not having immediate access to the source doesn't preclude a finding of copyright infringement. If you have seen the source material, subconscious infringement can happen. However, in this example, both the short phrases doctrine and the merger doctrine would likely prevent the is_prime function from having copyright. Words and short phrases are not individually copyrightable, so the name would be free to take. Regarding the implementing code, if it isn't an exact copy (i.e. copy and paste), courts will apply the abstraction-filtration-comparision test. They may find that you took the selection and arrangement of instructions from the original source, albiet using different names. That selection and arrangement would probably be considered a substantial similarity and, if not for the merger doctrine, infringement. However, given the limited number of ways to express the prime-detection algorithm means that the expression of that idea has merged with the idea, and thus is not protected by copyright. (Or in some jurisdictions, merger is a defence to infringement rather than a bar to copyrightability).	This has yet to be specifically decided in the federal courts. The Post Office can set "rules of conduct" for its facilities. Prohibiting photographing is plainly a restriction on one's First Amendment rights, and it is established beyond question that a government cannot issue / enforce a blanket prohibition of public photographing. Someone would have to take a case to court to determine whether this limitation on First Amendment rights passes the relevant level of judicial scrutiny. The rationale (as set forth by the USPS) is that such photographing may be "disruptive". One can perhaps analogize the right to film police with a new-found right to film post office, following from a right to public oversight over the government. DHS gives general guidance of its own (with a pile of redacted stuff), directing you to 41 CFR 102-74.420. Permission is thus required, until the courts find that to be an unconstitutional restriction (I would not expect there to be such a finding). But it is not unthinkable that the courts could at some point so rule. The YouTube aspect of the question is irrelevant: if you have the right, you have the right, and it doesn't derive from nor is it blocked by an intent to distribute on YouTube.	Wikipedia and you likely have no contract. If you don't have to click "I agree" to access the data, its likely there is no contract. Therefore this is a pure IP law question. The ONLY IP law issue that I see is copyright. The DATA is not subject to copyright. Only the expression of that data. So copying the html and selling that IS potential copyright infringement. Copying the data in some other format and using that is not. Finally, even if you do copy the full html (i.e. full expression), this MAY be licensed by their terms of use (as you suggested they have licensed some content). That is a more particularized legal question that I can't answer here.	Yes, you may The layout of the board and its appearance are not protected by copyright, because they are not expressions or any other type of copyrightable content. Even if they were (say if some protested art was displayed on the board) you are displaying this for instructional purposes, and not harming any market for the board, so fair use is likely to apply (in the U.S.). The device could be protected by patent, but you are not copying or imitating the board, nor showing anyone how to do so, so that would not apply. You are not selling or advertising the board, nor knock-offs of it, so trademark protection would not apply, even if a protected trademark is visible on th board. Just in case, be sure to make clear that your video is not authorized or endorsed by the maker of the board.	Please Note: This was written before the title change of this question and may no longer be applicable According to the Harvard website: In Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Service Co. 499 US 340 (1991) the United States Supreme Court held that copyright does not extend to a mere compilation of facts. In this case, it was a telephone directory much the same as the one in ProCD v. Zeidenberg 86 F.3d 1447 (7th Cir. 1996). Furthermore, the Court also ruled that something more than simple "sweat of the brow" labor was required before copyright protection would ensue, with some modicum of authorial originality necessary. Accordingly, it was held in Feist that copyright did not extend to a telephone directory, no matter how laborious a task its compilation was. The decision in ProCD v. Zeidenberg 86 F. 3d 1447 (7th Cir. 1996) is highly significant, therefore, in that it permits copyright or quasi-copyright protection to be extended to non-copyrightable material through the use of contract. One would have to consider each meta tag independently. For example, the "description" tag could by copyrightable since it is written for more than just the 'facts', such as a subtle advert for the site that is more than an objective description. However the 'og:type' would not be copyrightable since it would just be considered a fact. Now, if you are using it on another website and sourcing it properly, you could probably use it under "Fair Use" Uses That Are Generally Fair Uses Subject to some general limitations discussed later in this article, the following types of uses are usually deemed fair uses: Criticism and comment -- for example, quoting or excerpting a work in a review or criticism for purposes of illustration or comment. News reporting -- for example, summarizing an address or article, with brief quotations, in a news report. Research and scholarship -- for example, quoting a short passage in a scholarly, scientific, or technical work for illustration or clarification of the author's observations. Nonprofit educational uses -- for example, photocopying of limited portions of written works by teachers for classroom use. Parody -- that is, a work that ridicules another, usually well-known, work by imitating it in a comic way. A copyright would exist on the image. One would have to know what license currently applies to the image to know for sure, however, the "Fair Use" to copyright would still apply. With Fair Use, the entity type that uses the image is important. There is much more leniency when a non-profit uses copyrighted information than when the information is used in commercial activity. (With, of course, more exceptions.)
Is it trademark infringement if you put the word 'the' in front? There is a trademarked company by the name "good vibe tribe", registered for "Hosting an online community web site featuring the bringing of people together for the common good and challenges them to do good deeds in their community". Is "the good vibe tribe" sign different enough to be legally sold on my print on demand business merch?	No Minor changes to trade marks are still the same trade mark.	"Swiss Army Knife" is indeed a trademark. Indeed, it is a very special trademark, because after the last of the Geneva Conventions was adopted, the use of the Swiss insignia used in the Swiss Army Knife's trademarked logo was prohibited except for grandfathered trademarks such as the one you identify. But use of a trademark is infringing only when it is used in connection with the sale of a good or service to imply that the good or service sold is endorsed by or affiliated with the owner of the trademark. In the context you describe, the trademark is not being used in that fashion, and so it is not infringing.	No, it is certainly not legally safe to sell a shirt with such an image printed on it. There are two compatible facts to consider: Wikipedia is correct that the image is not covered by copyright in the United States. The image is likely protected by trademark law, which Wikipedia also notes, directly under the public domain information: This work includes material that may be protected as a trademark in some jurisdictions. If you want to use it, you have to ensure that you have the legal right to do so and that you do not infringe any trademark rights. Copyright Copyright provides a monopoly on the reproduction of creative works, but copyright only applies to sufficiently creative works. In cases such as these, Wikipedia is expressing the opinion that the work in question is too simple or too utilitarian to meet the threshold of originality and/or creativity for copyright. For the U.S. specifically, consider 37 CFR 202.1 which enumerates some categories of work excluded from copyright protection: The following are examples of works not subject to copyright and applications for registration of such works cannot be entertained: (a) Words and short phrases such as names, titles, and slogans; familiar symbols or designs; mere variations of typographic ornamentation, lettering or coloring; mere listing of ingredients or contents; [...] (e) Typeface as typeface. Category (a) excludes the word "Marvel" or "Nirvana" from copyright protection, while category (e) excludes the creative choices that went into the styling of the text. (Note that fonts -- the software that creates/renders a typeface on a page -- are copyrightable in the U.S., but a font's "output" of typefaced text is not similarly protected.) Therefore, in the U.S., that "Marvel" image is likely not copyrightable, since it is just a single word with a particular stylized typeface (the use of which does not make it copyright-eligible either). This may be different from other jurisdictions, some which do recognize the use of the typeface as protectable element under copyright. Trademark Trademark law is a completely distinct area of law that applies to the use of logos, phrases, and other elements to identify a vendor in commerce. The words "Toyota" and "Camry" are not eligible for copyright protection, but the government affords the Toyota Motor Corporation a monopoly on the use of those words to identify the source and model of a car. If you built your own car and tried to attached the name "Toyota Camry" to it without their permission, you would be liable for trademark infringement. Similarly, logos that are too simple to qualify for copyright may still be covered by trademark law, if the company has registered them as trademarks or otherwise uses them distinctively in trade. This is likely the case here. If you put that rectangular Marvel logo on a shirt, you would be misrepresenting your product as being authorized by Marvel Entertainment and be liable for trademark infringement.	I am assuming that you are in the United States for this question. Please correct me if this is not the case. MathWorks still holds the right to take action, which may be anything from cease-and-desist letters up to litigation. You have followed the correct process in asking for permission to use a trademark. The owner of the trademark, MathWorks, has given you their answer, which is quite simply, "no". You may not feel that their reasoning is fair, but the default state of trademarks is that they are under ownership of whomever created them, and you do not have permission to use them. Things will remain that way unless MathWorks changes their mind. It doesn't matter if it feels dismissive of them; they are under no obligation to even consider requests to use their marks. If they didn't explicitly say, "sure, go ahead", or even, "yes, you may use it provided you follow a list of conditions", then using their trademark will be an unlicensed usage. If you still would like to pursue getting permission to use their trademarked assets, you will need to try to contact them again. Until they say otherwise, using their trademarks will be considered unauthorized use. (Edited to add this clarification brought up by @David Siegel): However, your usage might not be violation of trademark. The primary purpose of trademark restriction is to stop someone from misrepresenting a product as being from the entity that owns the trademark; this stops someone from, for example, selling a cola soft drink called "Coke-a-Cola". The reasons for this are manyfold, but the basic idea is that allowing that type of usage means that consumers might not be able to tell that your product is distinct from the original, and could then mistakenly attribute the quality and level of service of the previous brand with the new product. If your usage of MATLAB marks is such that you are identifying the products used as from MathWorks, and not yourself, and are doing everything in good faith to disassociate your website and/or offerings from MathWorks, it is possible that your usage would be considered correct usage of trademark. Even if it is legal usage, MathWorks still may decide to take action. If MathWorks believes that your usage is unauthorized and that it is trademark violation, they may decide to take action. This is regardless of whether it actually is; until you have this case in front of a court, you will not get a definitive answer. We cannot answer whether this is a legal usage of trademark. Ultimately, whether or not a usage of a mark is considered to be correct usage is a question that can only be answered by the courts, which means the only person who can give you concrete advice on a course of action is a lawyer. In lieu of proper legal advice, you will need to weigh the risk of MathWorks taking action against your usage with the benefit you receive from usage. (Edited to add this clarification by @Dale M): Regardless, you may be breaking copyright by using the logo. There is a separate issue besides just trademark at play here. The copyright for the MATLAB logo belongs to whomever created it/owns it (presumably, MathWorks in this case). Using the logo without permission is a copyright violation. The only case in which this would not be a violation is if the logo is released for use in general under a compatible license, such as Creative Commons; do note that these licenses typically have additional conditions, such as requiring attribution. If you are unaware as to whether there is a such a license, or if you fail to follow the terms of the license, usage of the logo almost certainly constitutes copyright infringement.	Yes, you may The layout of the board and its appearance are not protected by copyright, because they are not expressions or any other type of copyrightable content. Even if they were (say if some protested art was displayed on the board) you are displaying this for instructional purposes, and not harming any market for the board, so fair use is likely to apply (in the U.S.). The device could be protected by patent, but you are not copying or imitating the board, nor showing anyone how to do so, so that would not apply. You are not selling or advertising the board, nor knock-offs of it, so trademark protection would not apply, even if a protected trademark is visible on th board. Just in case, be sure to make clear that your video is not authorized or endorsed by the maker of the board.	If such a case came to court, the court would presumably rule that merely publishing the advertising could not be considered to be doing something "commercial". (Otherwise the contract would be absurd, as the question points out.) The court would therefore define "commercial" as some act beyond merely displaying the advertising -- perhaps charging for the website on which it is displayed, or using it to sell goods. Moreover, since the company apparently wrote the contract, any ambiguity in it would be construed against the company, if there is another reasonable interpretation. Thus the contract would not be void, and could be sued on, but the company would win only if it established some conduct that the court was prepared to consider as "commercial" in light of the circumstances and the purpose of the contract. By the way it is not really on point, but it is a common misunderstanding that: some customers may be organized as nonprofit and they're not allowed to make profits Nonprofit entities may do business and make income that would be considered "profit" for an ordinary corporation. What they cannot do is distribute that income as "profit" to owners, shareholders, members, or other individuals.	Disclaimer: I'm from the US and don't claim to know German or Turkish law. So let me discuss some general principles here, but details may well be different in Germany and Turkey. You're mixing together three very different things: trademark, copyright, and patent. Copyright protects the expression of an idea, in this case, the exact computer code, images, etc. If you didn't copy his code, the chance that you would coincidentally write identical code is remote. The fact that you both have a line of code that says x=x+1 wouldn't give him any grounds for a lawsuit. He'd have to show substantial portions of the code were identical. If you didn't deliberately copy his code, this isn't going to happen. Barring some extraordinary and unbelievable coincidence, you can't violate copyright accidentally. Trademark protects names and symbols used to identify a company or a product. If you decided to call your software company "Microsoft", then that other Microsoft could sue you for trademark infringement. Likewise if you copied somebody else's logo or other distinctive graphics. This is very different from copyright. It is quite possible to violate someone's trademark accidentally. Especially if he gave his company or product a rather generic name. Like if someone called his product, say, "Password Manager", someone else might make a product with the same name without ever having heard of the original. Ditto if he has some simple logo or other graphics. If you did accidentally duplicate a name or graphic elements, well, in the US a court would likely order you to change your name or graphics and that would be the end of it, unless you refused, in which case you'd end up in court. US Courts have ruled that very generic names have limited trademark protection. An example I saw recently was "Main Street Auto Repair". A court said that the owner of that name could prevent someone else from opening a shop in the same town with the same name, but he couldn't sue someone in another town who happened to use the same name. This is why, by the way, companies often use made-up words for their product names. In your case, this should be a trivial issue. If he is claiming trademark to the look of the main menu screen, just change the colors or move some buttons around. If it actually went to court, you should be able to argue that the similarity was accidental and when you were informed you promptly changed it, and that should be the end of it. Depending, I guess, on how hard-nosed the judge is, etc. Patents are different still. A patent gives the owner the exclusive right to use an invention or process for a specified period of time. It doesn't matter if you invented the same thing entirely independently. Whoever filed the patent first has exclusive rights. There have been cases where an inventor lost out to someone with a similar invention because he submitted his patent application one day later. If this other person has patents that you are infringing, you are pretty much out of luck.	The purpose of such a statement is to disavow the reading of any impression that the person making the statement is affiliated with the trademark owner, because the gravamen of a trademark infringement suit is that the person using the trademark mislead a consumer into thinking that the person using the trademark was endorsed by or affiliated with the trademark owner.
Who will get the possession of the property in this case? Two children are fighting over the possession of a flute. A has made the flute B is simply very poor and has no other toys to play. In this case, who will get the possession of the flute - A or B? As per John Locke, in his 2 Treatise of Government has written the one who has created the thing will own that thing. However, he has also said that "one can only take as much possession of property as would ensure that everyone else also has enough common property" Though I believe that A should get the flute because he has created it. However, considering the land re-distribution in India, the second one is also right. Hence, who should get the flute?	A Probably. Exceptions include: A didn’t own the materials from which the flute was made; the flute belongs to the material’s owner. A made the flute under a contract of employment; the flute belongs to A’s employer. A has sold the flute before making it; the flute belongs to the buyer. This is not only the law in india but pretty much everywhere in the world. If you want to ask about redistributive justice or taxation/welfare; please post the question on our sister sites philosophy or politics.	The will further states property shall be sold and offspring are to split the proceeds. However, the will does not specifically designate who inherits the property/deed. This is an instruction regarding who inherits the property. It means that the executor of the probate estate (in an official capacity), who takes title by operation of law upon appointment, is directed to sell the property rather than to distributed it in kind. Will there be legal or financial problems with a foreign executor? Not necessarily. Generally, the main issue is that a foreign executor must sign a document expressly submitting to the jurisdiction of the probate court when appointed in addition to other documents that are signed by all executors. Pre-death, in the will, would it be better to designate the American resident offspring as executor? Not necessarily. Hands on administration of the estate and dealing face to face with a local probate lawyer is easier for a resident of the state where the assets are located and the decedent resides, but in these days of telecommunications this isn't a decisive factor. The relative competencies of the prospective executors is more important. If both offspring agreed, can the overseas offspring easily transfer executorship to the American offspring, or will there be legal or financial consequences? Assuming that they are the only interested parties in the estate, they can do so. You can't be compelled to serve as an executor just because you are nominated by a will to do so. If one person declines to serve, the person with next highest priority which would likely be the other sibling, may apply to the probate court to be appointed. The main financial consequence is that typically, whoever does the job is entitled to reasonable compensation from the estate for their services. Would there be legal or financial deed ownership issues, since neither offspring specifically inherited the property? No. Could a court order the property to be auctioned out from under the offspring? If all interested parties agree, they can defy the will. The normal process, however, is for the executor to follow the will and to sell the property in a commercially reasonable manner, typically by engaging a real estate agent to handle the sale. If the executor fails to take action, and an interested party objects, it would be more common for a probate court to remove the executor and appoint another one, than to order a sale at auction, which would typically be a course of last resort. This said, under appropriate circumstances, the court of probate jurisdiction would have authority to order an auction of the house. Most commonly, a court order to sell a decedent's house at auction would arise when the decedent (i.e. the dead guy) only owned an undivided partial interest in the house (called a tenancy in common interest) and the non-deceased third party co-owner of the house (perhaps a brother or ex-wife of the decedent) declined to cooperate in selling it. If a court determines the overseas executor offspring receives the property deed, the overseas executor wants to remain executor but give deed to American offspring for easier selling of the property, would the property have to go through titling and closing costs for the transfer, and then again for property sale to a third party? This question reflects a fundamental misunderstanding about how probate works. Title to the property vests in the estate by operation of law upon the death of the decedent. The executor has authority, once appointed, to take actions such as signing a deed to a third-party buyer, on behalf of the estate. There is no intermediate closing and transfer of title to vest title to the property of the decedent in the name of the estate before it goes from the estate to the third party. The net proceeds of the sale to the third party (after costs of sale and prorations of things like property taxes and prepaid insurance) are then placed in a bank account for the estate and paid to the heirs after expenses of administration are paid. There is nothing that makes it significantly harder for an overseas executor to close than a domestic one. The title company handling the sale emails the deed (and any other paperwork that needs to be signed) to the executor. The executor prints the documents to be signed, signs the non-notarized documents, and signs the deed in the presence of his friendly neighborhood notary in the foreign country where the executor lives, who notarizes the deed. The executed deed, together with a document called an apostille proving that the notary is really a notary, is sent back to the title company (probably with a scanned copy by email and a hard paper copy following by express delivery). Coordinating time zones may be a pain depending on the location of the particular foreign country in question (but the closing does not have to happen for all parties at exact the same time), and if the overseas executor is someplace primitive and remote with no internet access or computers or printers or faxes and no notaries, that could be a problem. But there are increasingly few places like that in the world.	You likely have no legal recourse Your copyright claim is irrelevant and your title claim is likely statute barred. It is a little unclear exactly what is going on here so I will state my understanding and answer on this basis. There is a historic artifact (the notebook) that contains words and possibly pictures made by someone, now deceased, who was a relation of yours. You believe that in the normal course of inheritance, that notebook should have become a possession of yours or others in your near family. At some point in the (distant?) past the notebook came into the possession of another family. The museum acquired the item from someone in this family; I will assume in good faith - that is, without knowing about your claim to it. Copyright You say you have "copyright of a precious notebook" - this is not true. Any copyright you might have is in the words and drawings in the notebook - they give you no claim to the notebook itself. The distinction here might be illustrated by considering the words of the Declaration of Independence (which are available for the Googling) and the actual engrossed copy held in the National Archives. Copyright is a bundle of exclusive rights that attach to literary and artistic expression once placed in a tangible form. The notebook is the tangible form but it is the words and pictures that the copyright subsists in. Assuming that you own the copyright that does not give you any right over the physical notebook; it only gives you rights to prevent or allow copies or derivative works to be made and only to the extent that those uses are not permitted by copyright law. Based solely on copyright, you could not prevent the museum from displaying the notebook (as an artifact without displaying the copyrighted words), including photographs of it in catalogues or on their website, or even reproducing small parts of it for educational purposes. In any event, copyright only lasts for a set period of time. The exact details depend on which nation's law the copyright was originally created and sometimes when. The US is particularly tricky here but other nations can also make things challenging. In addition, when suing for copyright infringement, the laws of the nation where the infringing copy is produced are also relevant. Title Title is the legal term for the bundle of rights that we commonly think of as ownership of property. For our purposes we are going to limit ourselves to just these: possession: who physically has the property whether they have a right to it or not. right of possession: who has the legal right to be in possession, whether they presently have it or not right or property: is the right which, if all relevant facts are known (and allowed), defeats all other claims These exist in a hierarchy - 3 beats everyone, 2 beats everyone but 3, and 1 beats everyone but 2 or 3. Often these rights are possessed by a single person - when I'm driving my car I have possession, I have the right of possession, and I have the right of property. When I take my car to the mechanic and it gets stolen - the thief has possession, the mechanic has the right of possession, and I have the right of property. Here the museum has possession of the notebook - which gives them the best claim so far. To defeat that, you would need to be able to prove that you either have a right of possession or a right of property. This is not as easy as it sounds. To do this thoroughly, you would need to prove that the original author had one of these rights in the notebook - that he didn't steal it, or buy it from somebody who stole it, or that it wasn't made with stolen paper, or stolen glue etc. This could be presumed unless someone had evidence to contest it. Then you would need to prove that the notebook should have come to you through gift or purchase. This is particularly troublesome. Let's assume that this notebook originally belonged to your great-grandfather (that is he had all three rights above) and, when he passed, he had three surviving children. Unless he specifically willed it to one of those children (or the cat's home) then the three children will inherit the right of property and the right of possession collectively. Of course, unless they share a house, only one of those children can actually possess it. Then each of those children has 3 surviving children; when all three pass on, those 9 will own it collectively - and so on. Now, because this becomes such a bloody mess, governments have passed statutes of limitations that draw a line in how far back people can go in pursuing these claims against the person in possession. These limits vary by jurisdiction but ranges of 2-10 years are typical; they may sometimes be extended in exceptional circumstances by the courts. So, when the other family took possession of the notebook, the clock started running for your family to file a claim to get it back. Unless this happened within say, the last half-decade, you basically have no legal recourse.	This is likely to depend on whether Person B is aware of what Person A is doing, regardless of any imputations Person A makes as to the nature of their business. If Person B is aware, or it is found that Person B ought to have been aware, that Person A is doing something illegal, then they may be held contributorily liable for damages suffered. For instance, in (what is still) a landmark case for copyright infringement, A&M Records, Inc. v. Napster, Inc., 239 F.3d 1004 (2001), Napster was found to be contributorily guilty of copyright infringement. A defense that they attempted is they weren't aware of it - which was thrown out on the basis that they should have, and could have, known that it was happening. I'm not a lawyer, but you'll need to give a lot more information about the situation for liability to be determined. Oh, and also — both of them could be held liable. It's not necessarily a case of one or the other.	Someone similar say While it is quite true that no one can have a copyright that excludes all others from preparing their own unique copy of the Bible or other public domain works for copyright protection, our Bibles and other materials are not exactly like any others and are fully protected by copyright laws in all countries So for example, I could theoretically take an ancient public-domain texts and republish it in some modified form. Copyright does not protect the original, but it does protect my modifications. To the extent that Mechon Mamre does include protected material (of their own creation), and Snunit redistributed that material with permission, Mechon Mamre might sue you for copyright infringement. Since they don't say what their creative contribution is, it's hard to evaluate the merits of their claim.	Alice has been developing her own enhancements, and they're pretty similar to Bob's. Neither Alice nor Bob has copied the other's enhancements, so neither has violated the other's copyright in the enhancements. Whether that could be proved in court is another matter, of course, but since the original work is licensed under creative commons the question unlikely to arise in court. Would Alice be prevented from coming up with enhancements to her own game if other people could prove they thought of and released the idea first? No. Copyright does not protect ideas. It only protects a particular expression of those ideas from being copied. Theoretically, if two authors come up with identical 500-word descriptions of something and can establish that each did so independently, neither has a claim against the other. The practical problem there, of course, is that it would be impossible to prove such a thing. Could Alice outright claim Bob's "Adapted Material" because he developed it on her original work? Assuming that in publishing his adaptations Bob followed the terms of the creative commons license with respect to the original work, Alice's only claim would be that he copied her adaptations without following the terms of the license. If Bob can show that he did not do so, her claim would fail. In a comment, you wrote: Suppose Alice went ahead and intentionally, somehow provably ripped off Bob's "Adapted Material" because she liked the content so much, does Bob reserve any rights on his adaptation, or is Alice able to commercialize the work that Bob did in extending her original work? If we assume that Bob complied with the license of the original material, we know that he licensed his adaptations under "the identical terms," so Alice would be able to use Bob's adaptations under those terms for non-commercial purposes. Since the assumption here is that Alice provably copied something of Bob's, I think it is fairly clear that she would be liable for damages if she exploited that material commercially without paying royalties.	Depends where you are At common law, theft (or more generally, larceny) requires an intent to permanently deprive the owner of possession. However, many jurisdictions have removed this element from the crime. For example, s118 of the new-south-wales Crimes Act 1900 says: 118 Intent to return property no defence Where, on the trial of a person for larceny, it appears that the accused appropriated the property in question to the accused's own use, or for the accused's own benefit, or that of another, but intended eventually to restore the same, or in the case of money to return an equivalent amount, such person shall not by reason only thereof be entitled to acquittal.	Here is an excellent (and extensive) explanation of jurisprudence regarding the "good faith exception" to the admissibility of evidence found due to an error. In short: Yes, the contraband found in Unit B would be evidence admissible in court. (Of course, evidence found in Unit B would only support charges against whomever had a nexus to that property. If the owner of Unit C had no access to Unit B, then evidence in Unit B would not per se implicate him in a crime.) Law enforcement will not return seized property if it believes the property is "contraband." As an example, in Pennsylvania a person can petition a court for return of property seized by law enforcement: Rule 588 requires the petitioner to establish entitlement to lawful possession of the property, but the motion will be rejected if the State successfully argues that the property is contraband, or "derivative contraband" (which has been defined in case law to mean there is "a specific nexus between the property and criminal activity").
What does "severability" mean in the following context? Parties A and B signed a contract governed by New York law. There were three "conditions precedent" for the contract to take place.None of these conditions precedent had been fulfilled on the signing date, but the contract gave the parties a customary seven days to "true" these conditions. Seven days passed and the three conditions precedent remained unfulfilled. There is a "severability" clause in the contract. The text reads "If one or more provisions of this agreement is found unenforceable under applicable law, the balance of the agreement shall be interpreted as if such provision were excluded, and shall be enforceable in accordance with its terms." Does the lack of fulfillment of the "conditions precedent" mean that there is no contract? Or does "severability" mean that the rest of the contract is enforceable even though the key terms and preconditions have not been met?	A severability clause means that any clause in the contract which is itself illegal, or which would make the contract illegal, or otherwise cannot be enforced according to the relevant law, is instead excluded from the contract as if it didn't exist. This is an extremely common clause, especially where the contract is used in the same form across multiple jurisdictions. The law of these jurisdictions may differ e.g. in the ability for consumers to opt out of class action against harmful effects or for companies to provide no guarantee of longevity in a product. This clause does not change the prerequisites, requirements, rights or obligations under the contract. The conditions must still be met for the remaining terms to have force.	The question somewhat misstates the concept of estoppel in a legal sense. Estoppel does not mean that one is prevented from changing one's opinion. Estoppel means that when one gives a third party cause to rely on one's position, by word or conduct, one cannot then adopt an altered position and use it to legally attack that third party. For example, if one has invited a person onto one's land, one cannot turn around and sue them for trespass. In the case in the question, the Board hired counsel to give them an opinion, which was given. Two years later, a contrary opinion was offered, along with a recommendation for action, which was not followed. No third party was induced to rely on either opinion to its detriment. No estoppel seems relevant. And by the way estoppel is an equitable defense that would be raised by the third party, not unlike the defense of "clean hands". If the board acted on the first advice to its detriment, and thinks that their counsel was negligent in not having gotten the advice correct the first time, they might possibly have a case for legal malpractice, but only if they can get experts (other lawyers) to say that their counsel was in fact negligent , and also prove that this did in fact harm them. If they didn't act on the advice, harms seems less likely, although the details would matter a lot.	The CEO, with his lawyer have tried to convince me that this only apply to current client and any past clients that I have work on. Is this true? No. It will be true only if they make that clarification in the clause or a properly added amendment. The clause currently has no indication that it is limited to "current client and any past clients that [you] have work[ed] on". The CEO's & lawyer's refusal to amend the clause so as to make it consistent with their attempts [to persuade you] would be a red flag. Their inconsistent representations to you suggest that they are not planning to honor the covenant of good faith on which all contracts are premised. Should I expect the CEO to offer a fair contract or is this something you read and negotiate? You should require a contract that seems fair to you. And by "to you" I mean that it has to be in line with your expectations regardless of the average conditions in the labor market. Negotiations are not binding. They are merely a preamble to a contract, and that contract is binding. This is why you should reject a contract that falls short of your requirements. Some clauses are unlawful and/or void and unenforceable as unconscionable or for contravening legislation (unlawful clauses can and do arise even if drafted by attorneys). Thus, although you might not have to worry about those clauses in particular, the company's mere attempt to include them in a contract should alert you of the high risk of ending up with other abusive terms & conditions which are binding and enforceable nonetheless.	Some jurisdictions provide for statutory warranties on fitness and merchantability of goods. The effect of these exclusion clauses will vary between jurisdictions, so I will briefly examine two different effects of law with respect to supply of goods. For the United States, certain warranties are implied in the sale of a product, provided for in the Uniform Commercial Code § 2-314, (1) Unless excluded or modified (Section 2-316), a warranty that the goods shall be merchantable is implied in a contract for their sale if the seller is a merchantwith respect to goods of that kind. Under this section the serving for value of food or drink to be consumed either on the premises or elsewhere is a sale. (2) Goods to be merchantable must be at least such as (a) pass without objection in the trade under the contract description; and (b) in the case of fungible goods, are of fair average quality within the description; and (c) are fit for the ordinary purposes for which such goods are used; and (d) run, within the variations permitted by the agreement, of even kind, quality and quantity within each unit and among all units involved; and (e) are adequately contained, packaged, and labeled as the agreement may require; and (f) conform to the promise or affirmations of fact made on the container or label if any. (3) Unless excluded or modified (Section 2-316) other implied warranties may arise from course of dealing or usage of trade. The Uniform Commercial Code § 2-315 states that: Where the seller at the time of contracting has reason to know any particular purpose for which the goods are required and that the buyer is relying on the seller's skill or judgment to select or furnish suitable goods, there is unless excluded or modified under the next section an implied warranty that the goods shall be fit for such purpose. This means that the warranties in § 2-314 will generally apply to products that are sold, unless excluded as per § 2-316 UCC § 2-316 (2) Subject to subsection (3), to exclude or modify the implied warranty of merchantability or any part of it the language must mention merchantability and in case of a writing must be conspicuous, and to exclude or modify any implied warranty of fitness the exclusion must be by a writing and conspicuous. Licenses that specifically exclude implied warranty are sanctioned by the UCC, and therefore would be considered in the United States. UCC §2-106 defines a sale as passing of title from the seller to the buyer for a price. States may have additional laws that may affect the interpretation of the UCC. For example, Ark.Code Ann. § 4–1–201(32): (29) "Purchase" means taking by sale, lease, discount, negotiation, mortgage, pledge, lien, security interest, issue or reissue, gift, or any other voluntary transaction creating an interest in property. However, Neuhoff v. Marvin Lumber and Cedar Co., 370 F.3d 197 (1st Cir.2004) held that windows provided free of charge to replace defective windows did not come with implied warranty. However, not all jurisdictions allow the exclusion of implied warranty. For instance, consider Australian Consumer Law. (Part 3-2, Division 1): 54 Guarantee as to acceptable quality (1) If: (a) a person supplies, in trade or commerce, goods to a consumer; and (b) the supply does not occur by way of sale by auction; there is a guarantee that the goods are of acceptable quality. (2) Goods are of acceptable quality if they are as: (a) fit for all the purposes for which goods of that kind are commonly supplied; and (b) acceptable in appearance and finish; and (c) free from defects; and (d) safe; and (e) durable; as a reasonable consumer fully acquainted with the state and condition of the goods (including any hidden defects of the goods), would regard as acceptable having regard to the matters in subsection (3). 64 Guarantees not to be excluded etc. by contract (1) A term of a contract (including a term that is not set out in the contract but is incorporated in the contract by another term of the contract) is void to the extent that the term purports to exclude, restrict or modify, or has the effect of excluding, restricting or modifying: (a) the application of all or any of the provisions of this Division; or (b) the exercise of a right conferred by such a provision; or (c) any liability of a person for a failure to comply with a guarantee that applies under this Division to a supply of goods or services. (2) A term of a contract is not taken, for the purposes of this section, to exclude, restrict or modify the application of a provision of this Division unless the term does so expressly or is inconsistent with the provision. 67 Conflict of laws If: (a) the proper law of a contract for the supply of goods or services to a consumer would be the law of any part of Australia but for a term of the contract that provides otherwise; or (b) a contract for the supply of goods or services to a consumer contains a term that purports to substitute, or has the effect of substituting, the following provisions for all or any of the provisions of this Division: (i) the provisions of the law of a country other than Australia; (ii) the provisions of the law of a State or a Territory; the provisions of this Division apply in relation to the supply under the contract despite that term. What the above sections mean : (54) there are implied statutory warranties (64) that cannot be excluded by contract, (67) and applies even if the proper law of a contract is not Australia. It is important to note that these do not depend on the existence of a contract (see 54(1)); gifts are covered, though I am unaware of any case law on this. In addition, title (s51) and non-infringement ("undisturbed possession") (s52) must be guaranteed by the supplier and cannot be excluded. In addition, the mere existence of this statement, purporting to limit or remove guarantees that cannot be limited or excluded, puts the supplier in breach of s29 as they are making a "false or misleading statement in connection with the supply, possible supply or promotion of goods or services". This is a criminal or civil offence and can be punished by fines of up to $1.1 million for a body corporate and $220,000 for a person other than a body corporate plus injunctions, damages, compensatory orders and other remedies. However, a simple "To the extent permitted by law ..." at the start would make this legal. So, does it have an effect? Sometimes. But not always. And at least in the United States, there are specific requirements if you want to exclude implied/statutory warranty.	A typo in a contract does not ever void the contract. If the typo changes the meaning of the contract from what was actually intended, then it is up to a judge to interpret the contract and whether it is reasonable that a person would assume its intended meaning. In your example, it is obvious that the word "least" was meant to be there and not "lease" - as the alternate word makes no sense in context - so a judge would not void the contract or release you from your 30 day obligation (which is probably even granted to the landlord by local laws regardless of whether it was stated in the contract). Even misspellings of people's names or addresses on a lease do not void a contract if you have already paid or taken up residence. If any of these situations were brought to court, the judge would just amend the contract to a corrected version that would then serve as the contract between the two parties, replacing the version with the typo. This is known as contract reformation.	A promise that a court would not enforce by injunction can still be valid consideration and be part of a valid contract. Failure to carry out such obligations would lead to some measure of money damages, most likely. On the other hand, provisions specifically barred by law, or against public policy, such as a promise to commit a crime, are void from the start, and form no part of a valid contract. Such provisions may be treated by a court as if they had just been left out, or if they were essential to the contract, or formed the sole consideration, the whole contract might be considered void. If a term is too vague for a court to determine if it has been violated or not, the court may try to clarify it, or may just ignore it. Just what it would mean for a tenant to "undermine the leadership" of a landlord is not clear to me, at least. That might well be held to be "too vague". As to "not complain" it may be that a tenant has a legal right to make official complaints, which cannot be waived by contract. Or it may not, depending on the local laws.	B and C have a contract with A In return for paying 3 months rent, B and C will remove A from the lease. This has all the required elements to be a contract. B and C have fulfilled their obligations and A hasn’t. B & C could sue A for damages. They would need to prove that there was such an agreement and that they agreement was a legally binding contract. Is this agreement written down? Was it witnessed by impartial third parties? What evidence of this agreement do you actually have? If A says they agreed to X, yet B & C say they agreed to Y: what evidence exists to show who is right and who is wrong? Failing to fulfill the obligations of a contract is not fraud. For there to be fraud, B & C would have to prove that A never intended to comply by the terms of the agreement. Given that the terms of the agreement are somewhat ambiguous, this would be very difficult. This seems to be more of a case where [Hanlon's Razor]: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." That is, A's actions are more likely to be the result of a misunderstanding (by A, or B & C, or both) than a deliberate plan of deception. The landlord is not involved - they removed A from the lease at the request of A, B & C; they’ve done what they’re required to do.	Possibly If the texts are sufficiently precise that they constitute offer and acceptance then they would create a contract notwithstanding that “some documents” were never provided. First, your offer must have been sufficiently clear that it was open to acceptance by a simple “yes” or “ok”. Given that you had a lease, a simple offer to have another one would be enough as “on the same terms” is implied. Second, she must have accepted your offer unconditionally. “Yes, I’ll put together some documents to sign” is an unconditional acceptance even if the documents never appear. “Yes, I’ll put together some documents to sign first” or “Yes, I’ll put together some documents with the terms” aren’t. The first is a conditional acceptance and the condition wasn’t met. The second is a rejection with an intention to make a counter-offer that never eventuated. Third, real estate is heavily regulated. There may be specific requirements (such as a particular form of contract, or that it be witnessed) that mean there is no binding lease even though there would be a contract at common law.
Cybersquatter posted my domain for sale after I queried it - can I still file a UDRP? I'm in a situation where a cybersquatter holds a domain name that I have trademarked. My company "Example Ltd" is based in the UK, and we've been established under our brand name for over 30 years. Our brand "Example" is a unique made-up word, ie: you wouldn't find it in a dictionary. We hold the trademarks for our brand name "Example" in many countries, including the UK and the USA. We've held it in the UK for over 10 years, but were only awarded USA trademark a few months ago. We discovered recently that someone in the USA has registered "example.com" about 17 years ago. We own "example.co.uk", "example.fr", "example.com.au" and many other ccTLD's in this format. I contacted the owner of example.com and opened negotiations for the domain, asking if he would consider selling to us, but he indicated he wouldn't consider less than $60,000 USD. We decided to file a UDRP (legal claim) for the domain name and leave it to solicitors to claim the domain. However, I've suddenly received an email from the owner saying that he's listed the domain name example.com for sale on Godaddy as a premium domain for about $60,000. My question is, can I still file a UDRP now that the domain is listed for sale? As a premium domain, I presume it's still owned by the original owner, hence we can take him to court if need be? The price is extortionate and we own the IP, so I presume we can still claim it as cybersquatting? Look forward to advice, keen to know if anyone has been in a similar situation.	If anything, I think posting it for sale and notifying you is more evidence of bad faith. File a claim - it can't hurt, and the quicker you let ICANN know there's a dispute, the better. It doesn't cost anything to file. https://www3.wipo.int/amc-forms/en/udrp/eudrpcomplaint.jsp (It costs a hearing fee of $1500 - $4000 if it gets that far, but file the claim as soon as possible.) https://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/	No If they have prior usage then they have the trademark already and are the only ones who can register it. Trademarks arise through use - registration is not required.	No, it is not illegal in UK to use proxies. No, it is not like the tor concept. No, the ISP does not slow you down (they mostly throttle detectable p2p connections), but if you use public proxies, many of them will be unacceptably slow. Note: for things like facebook, a proxy is utterly useless. You already donated your private data to them, there's nothing to hide.	To examine this further and answer your question, we need to look at Copyright (and fair use) as well as Defamation. Alas, I am unsure as to how taking legitimate headlines from around the world and attributing their source is 'fake news' - but I'll accept that it's 'fake news' for the purposes of exploring this topic. A lot of the potential (or motive) for a person or company to litigate against you will be context specific and detailed to how you have used their work and portray their journalists and characters - misquotes etc. As an exception to British copyright law, fair dealing is governed by Sections 29 and 30 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, which outlines three instance where fair dealing is a legitimate defence: If the use is for the purposes of research or private study; If it is used for the purposes of criticism, review or quotation; Where it is utilised for the purposes of reporting current events (this does not apply to photographs) However, where you may come into problems is: A statutory definition for fair dealing does not exist; it will always be a matter of fact, degree and interpretation in every fair use case. Nor is there a percentage or quantitative measure to determine fair dealing. The Intellectual Property Office lists the key factors used to determine the validity of whether a particular dealing with a work is fair as follows: Has the use of the work impacted negatively on the market for the original work? If the creator or owner has lost potential revenue through the re-use of their work, it is not likely to be fair. Was it reasonable and necessary to use the amount of work that was taken? Also: Fair use for parody, caricature or pastiche The UK copyright law on fair use of works for the purposes of creating a parody or pastiche is also listed in Section 30A, Schedule 2 (2A) of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. References to all here. Guidance from the Intellectual Property Office (IPO) states that fair use needs to be “fair and proportionate” and does not protect an individual from any other rights an author may have. Those other rights may involve claiming defamation if this material creates fake news and uses the names of real journalists or companies etc - and if they allege that your AI fake news has caused serious harm in any way to their reputation - they could sue you for breach of the Defamation Act 2013. All of this is entirely contextual however as to how your AI might display or make fake news and how Google caches it and displays it - and if it could be portrayed as 'real' or believable for example. You are also doing this at a time where 'anti fake news' law is evolving... and even though you say it's fake news for AI experiment purposes - it's a growing field of concern for many. (see here) Copyright law is a vast and evolving area - and nothing is clear cut. It really depends if a major news company didn't like what you were doing and took exception to it and issued challenges on many areas of law based on that.	First, read the definitions of defamation and libel be sure you understand them: Defamation \| Wex Legal Dictionary \| Cornell. Yes, posting to Twitter and Reddit is publishing, and people can post provably false facts on those services and defame someone in a civil law sense. But Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (Electronic Frontier Foundation) mostly protects those services from defamation claims based on statements made by users of such a service. (Things are different if the case is criminal as a result of clear threats of violence, terrorism, etc.) ...what are the steps for them to exact damages in a civil court case? Find a lawyer, convince him/her to take the case, and file suit. if you don't know the person's real name, your lawyer will have to sue "John Doe" and point that out in the suit (and subpoenas) with the alleged Twitter handle or Reddit user name. How would a person compel Twitter/Reddit/etc to disclose the ISP information on their account? Read the various legal aspects of each service, i.e. Twitter Legal FAQs and User Agreement - Reddit and others. Your lawyer can explain that you can only try to compel them to disclose the IP and the ISP used with a subpoena during your lawsuit. How would a person compel an ISP to disclose the subscriber information (address, name) on the IP address? Since most ISPs protect their customer data, you will probably have to subpoena the ISP during your lawsuit. But your ability to do this can depend on if the ISP is a private company or a government entity, such as a university. State laws may come into play. Is obtaining the ISP subscriber's information enough to bring a lawsuit against them? Would they able to argue they didn't post the messages and bear no liability, even if it originated from their network? If it originated from an open wifi hotspot, would the proprietor bear responsibility at this point? Yes, you can sue an individual with such information; but there's no guarantee you'd win. Sure, because they can claim anything, such as someone else was using their computer or IP. No, owners of hotspots are generally not liable, and they protect themselves with TOS you agree to when you use the hotspot. Can the extensive legal costs of pursuing the case to it's conclusion be added to the damages sought easily? Legal costs can possibly be added, depending on jurisdiction. But seeking damages and actually winning them through a jury verdict are completely different things.	If you use the reviewer's code, or code derived from it (e.g. if you just changed a variable name) then they own the copyright on that part of the software. If the reviewer describes a solution which you implement, or if you re-implement the code from scratch while taking ideas and methods from the reviewer's code, then you own the copyright on that code. However if there are only a few ways to implement something in code then the code is not creative and hence cannot be copyrighted. For example the regular expression in the question you link to is (as far as I can tell) the only correct solution to the problem: any programmer addressing the problem will have come up with that RE. In this the position is akin to a database of phone numbers: while the collection may be copyright (depending on whether selection or arrangement required creativity), the fact that Alice Jones has the number 012345 is not copyrightable, and neither is the alphabetical arrangement of names. Where it gets messy is the boundary between the two. The requirement to detect 4 or more repeated digits in a credit card number could be implemented in a number of ways, but whether there are enough of these to qualify any particular solution as "creative" would be a matter of fact for a court to decide.	This is a live political issue. Currently, the various datasets are incomplete and have known accuracy issues. Considering a particular parcel of land: It might not be in the Land Registry at all. About 85% of land in England and Wales is registered, and less in Scotland and Northern Ireland. Scottish registered land might only appear on the paper "Register of Sasines", as opposed to the more recent electronic database, or potentially in even older county-specific sasine registers. The owner might be a company, partnership, trust, etc., rather than a natural person. The ownership and control of that company (etc.) can be hard to trace. Companies House data is not verified; companies can be incorporated overseas; the trusts register is not publicly searchable; things can be muddled. Raw data might not show that a dozen properties, each owned by a single company that owns nothing else, are in fact ultimately controlled by a particular person of interest. Different people may own the freehold, or a leasehold, or have various other forms of ownership or control. Even a long-term tenancy may be of interest for database purposes. Because of continuing interest in anti-money laundering, tax evasion, and general accumulation of wealth, there have been plans to have a new "register of beneficial ownership". Such a register would record, for each plot of land, the name of the human beings who actually own and control it in the end. In the anticipated structure, each of those people would have an identifying number, and so we would get your proposed reverse index where you could look up a person and see what they owned. The register introduced by the Economic Crime (Transparency and Enforcement) Act 2022 is the "Register of Overseas Entities" (ROE). However, as the name suggests, it only covers companies/partnerships/etc. from outside the UK. It's operated by Companies House. Overseas entities who have dealt in UK land since 1999/2014/2022 (depending on which part of the UK the land was in) have to list their beneficial owners. Because this is new, it is also not very complete yet: it only went live on 1 August 2022 and no penalties apply until the deadline of 31 January 2023. In Scotland, the "Register of Persons Holding a Controlled Interest in Land" (RCI) is meant to do the same but not just for overseas entities. It is live since 1 April 2022 and the initial registration period ends on 1 April 2023, so again it may not be very complete just yet. There will likely be more political tussle over potential creation of a more extensive UK-wide register. Until that exists, this is a known problem with the extent of current data. You can get a partial view but even that will be frustrating when it comes to the most interesting chunks of property.	First of all derivative works are not exactly "illegal". They are fully legal if the owner of the copyright in the original work has given permission. If no permission has been given, they may be copyright infringements. But they may fall under an exception to copyright. Under US law, the most common exception is "fair use". See this question and answer for more on fair use. But particularly relevant in this case is that a parody is usually a fair use, although as in every fair-use decision, there is pretty much no clear-cut, hard&fast rule on what is and is not fair use. In the UK and much of the EU (or maybe all of it, I am not sure) there is a somewhat similar concept known as "fair dealing". It is also an exception to copyright. So it is possible that such works fall under fair use, fair dealing, or another exception to copyright, or that the rights-holder has given permission. Secondly, copyright infringement is a tort, not a crime, under most circumstances. It is enforced when, and only when, a copyright-holder chooses to take action, sending a take-down notice or copyright complaint, of filing suit for infringement. Some rights-holders choose as a matter of policy not to take such actions, thinking that such derivative works actually benefit them. That is their choice to make. Some rights-holders don't have the time or money to track down and take action against most infringements, and will only act if they think the derivative work will in some way cost them a lot of money or harm their reputation. Some rights-holders may just not have heard, yet, of specific possible infringing derivative works. As for Acta2, it has not yet been approved, the Wikipedia article linked in the questions says: In order for the text of the directive to become law in the EU, it must be approved by the European Council on 9 April 2019 The article also mentions significant continuing opposition. If it is approved, it is not clear, to me at least, how it will affect sites hosting such content, nor how it will interact with the copyright law of individual EU nations. If approved, it will no doubt take some time before enforcement is widespread. And of course it will only apply when EU law applies. If both site and author are outside the EU -- say if both are from the US -- it seems that it could not apply.
How much must a prison inmate protest against the incorrect actions of prison officials that erroneously benefit the inmate? Based (loosely) on a recent event here in Ontario: https://www.thespec.com/news/crime/2020/08/18/do-not-approach-milton-prisoner-released-by-mistake-into-community.html Sam has been correctly convicted of a serious criminal offence. He's been sentenced to 5 years, all appeals have been exhausted, and he's 12 months into his sentence. So he's surprised when the Correctional Officers tell him, one morning, that he is to be released immediately. Sam knows of no reason that he should be released. He decides to just do as he's told, gathers his possessions from his cell and from storage, and is processed out the door, and walks away. A few hours later it becomes clear that a different prisoner was supposed to be released. Much confusion ensues, and authorities explain that they are "actively looking" for Sam. To be clear, Sam did not take the place of another prisoner that was to be released. He did not somehow arrange for an incorrect order to come to the prison. Because of some purely internal Corrections accidental paper-work foul-up, the prison received proper instructions to release Sam specifically, and they did. So, assuming that Sam is located quickly, has he committed any additional offence? Should he have protested his release, and insisted on staying in prison?	There's only one crime that could be applicable in this case, section 145 (1) of the Criminal Code: 145 (1) Every person who escapes from lawful custody or who is, before the expiration of a term of imprisonment to which they were sentenced, at large in or outside Canada without lawful excuse, is guilty of (a) an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term of not more than two years; or (b) an offence punishable on summary conviction. While the term "lawful excuse" isn't well defined in Canadian law, and its interpretation varies from crime to crime, it certainly includes obeying what ultimately amounts to being an order to leave the prison. If there's any doubt about this being a valid excuse for the prisoner, the same doubt would apply to same excuse any prison guard would have for helping the prisoner to "escape". A person has no right to be imprisoned, and so has no basis to insist remaining imprisoned or to protest their release. Being released early from prison isn't a crime, and can happen legitimately for a number of reasons. On the other hand, remaining in the prison after being ordered to leave would be trespassing at least.	As in some other jurisdictions, what most people think of as "false imprisonment" is categorized as kidnapping in Massachusetts, codified at Chapter 265, Section 26: Whoever, without lawful authority, forcibly or secretly confines or imprisons another person within this commonwealth against his will, or forcibly carries or sends such person out of this commonwealth, or forcibly seizes and confines or inveigles or kidnaps another person, with intent either to cause him to be secretly confined or imprisoned in this commonwealth against his will, or to cause him to be sent out of this commonwealth against his will or in any way held to service against his will, shall be punished by imprisonment in the state prison for not more than ten years or by a fine of not more than one thousand dollars and imprisonment in jail for not more than two years. Whoever commits any offence described in this section with the intent to extort money or other valuable thing thereby shall be punished by imprisonment in the state prison for life or for any term of years. Separate from the criminal offense, Massachusetts courts also recognize civil actions for false imprisonment.	Does the law or judge ever make exceptions for events such as this? From a legal standpoint, your friend is at high risk of being found in contempt and thus be sentenced to imprisonment. Your friend should have called 911 rather than violate the protection order under pretext of consoling her. Asking from the standpoint of whether judges ever do this or that is pointless. The answer would be "yes, they make exceptions" even in scenarios which are plain aberrant. However, a judge's departure of the law quite often is not a reliable standpoint for understanding the law, but the result of his/her ineptitude and unfitness for judicial office.	Defendants cannot switcheroo whenever they want. There are good reasons why this is almost never done. The lawyer in any of these scenarios is violating an ethical duty of candor to the tribunal, if it is done without court permission (which is unlikely to be granted), even if the client suggested or insisted upon the idea. The lawyer would be responsible for his or her client's actions by cooperating in it, rather than calling out his client in open court over the objections of the client to prevent the switcheroo from working, as the lawyer would have an ethical obligation to do. I would not really consider this to be a gray area. The relevant ethical rules and the related official commentaries to them are quite clear, even if they are not absolutely perfectly clear. Those rules create an affirmative duty of an attorney to prevent his or her client from misleading members of a tribunal (either a judge or a jury or both). Cooperating with this scheme could (and likely would) result in professional licensure related sanctions ranging from a private censure to disbarment for the lawyer, just as it did in the linked 1994 case. Also, while a "not guilty" verdict was entered in the 1994 case, the prosecution would have a good chance of success if they demanded that the judge declare a mistrial, and also a good chance of avoiding double jeopardy limitations in this situation, because the mistrial arose from the actions of the defendant trying to bring about the situation. On the other hand, if this trick worked so well that the prosecutors came to the conclusion that their primary witness linking the defendant to the crime was wrong and that the defendant was not actually the person who committed the crime, the prosecutors would have an ethical duty to not attempt to prosecute the individual whom the prosecutors now believed to be factually innocent (the analysis is actually a bit more complex than that, but that is the gist of it). The defendant and the attorney could (and likely would) also each be held in direct, punitive contempt of court by the judge for this conduct, allowing them to be summarily punished by imprisonment or a fine to an extent similar to a misdemeanor violation, on the spot, without a trial other than an opportunity to explain themselves to the judge in a sentence or two each, since it would be conduct in violation of the good order of the court and disrespectful of its rules and decorum conducted in the actual courtroom in the presence of the judge. Each could easily end up spending several months in jail on the spot for that stunt and perhaps a $1,000 fine each, if the judge was sufficiently displeased. There would be a right to appeal this contempt of court sanction, but the contempt of court punishment would almost surely be upheld on appeal in these circumstances. In a case where the criminal defendant faces extremely severe sanctions if found guilty, such as the death penalty or life in prison, and the defense attorney was a self-sacrificing idealist or close family member of the criminal defendant, one could imagine the defense attorney and client deciding that the professional and contempt citation sanctions were worth being punished with, in order to save the life of the criminal defendant, if they also were convinced that this trick would work so well that the prosecutors would be persuaded of the criminal defendant's innocence sufficiently to not insist on retrying the criminal defendant in a new trial. This would be somewhat analogous to an intentional foul in basketball, but with much higher stakes. But, this would be an extraordinarily rare situation in court, because the punishment for this "intentional foul" in the courtroom are much more severe, and because the likelihood of it producing a beneficial result is much smaller. It isn't hard to understand why a successful switcheroo feels morally justified. It prevents a witness whose testimony would have been much less reliable than it actually would have been from being used to convict a criminal defendant who might conceivably be factually innocent. And it might be very hard to discredit the testimony of that witness in any other way in order to prevent a wrongful conviction of the criminal defendant. Eye witness misidentifications are one of the leading causes of wrongful convictions, and are especially common in death penalty cases because jurors are "death qualified" making them more pro-prosecution than a typical jury. Preventing innocent people from being convicted of crimes is one of several important values of the criminal justice system, and this is the instinct that probably motivated the dissents in the professional misconduct process in the 1994 case. But, the court system also strongly values candor on the part of attorneys, and likewise values not having the court systems be used to trip up witnesses who may sincerely think that they are telling the truth even if they are mistaken about the accuracy of their testimony, in a deceptive manner. In this situation, the latter candor consideration usually prevails, because the rules prohibiting this kind of conduct and scheme, which admits no "moral justification" or "necessity exception", are quite clear. In the same vein, a prosecuting attorney can be sanctioned (and has been on at least one occasion in Colorado) for not being truthful in communications to third parties, even when the lies are used to peacefully defuse a potentially deadly hostage situation. For attorneys, the duty of candor and truthfulness really knows no exceptions. Cops, in contrast, however, are allowed to lie in many circumstances to secure confessions or stop criminals.	Lying in itself ("of course you will get a wifi signal here") is not a crime. However, if you have proof that the lies were intended to benefit your landlord at your expense ("You won't sign the lease unless there's wifi? No problem") and that they actually did so ("You've signed the lease, it's too late to back out"), he may be guilty of fraud, which is a civil wrong and may be a crime. You would be well advised to consult a lawyer before going amy further, since there are probably ten people believing themselves to be victims of fraud for every one who actually is so in legal terms. The lawyer will also probably tell you that the best you can hope for is restoration to the state before the lies (in my example, the lease is cancelled and you get your deposit back), though the authorities will look at prosecuting the landlord.	At half a million I would expect it is qualifies as "felony or other crime" - the U.S. Constitution (Article IV Section 2) requires that: A person charged in any State with Treason, Felony, or other Crime, who shall flee from Justice, and be found in another State, shall on Demand of the executive Authority of the State from which he fled, be delivered up, to be removed to the State having Jurisdiction of the Crime.	It is the job of the judge to instruct the jury about the law. If Texas had pattern instructions I'd look up what the instruction is for this matter, but you don't, so I don't know what the judge would say. But it is the judge's sole prerogative to instruct the jury in the law. If the question is a "commitment question", then it is an improper question and should be disallowed, see Stendefer v. State. The question "Would you presume someone guilty if he or she refused a breath test on their refusal alone?" is such a commitment question, and is disallowed. Similarly, "If the evidence, in a hypothetical case, showed that a person was arrested and they had a crack pipe in their pocket, and they had a residue amount in it, and it could be measured, and it could be seen, is there anyone who could not convict a person, based on that" (Atkins v. State, 951 S.W.2d 787). An improper commitment question could be of the type "could you refrain...": Let us assume that you are considering in the penalty phase of any capital murder case, okay? And some of the evidence that has come in shows that the victim's family was greatly impacted and terribly grieved and greatly harmed by the facts․Can you assure us that the knowledge of those facts would not prevent you or substantially impair you in considering a life sentence in such a case (Penry v. State, 903 S.W.2d 715). One way in which a commitment question can be legal is if it asks basically "can you uphold the law?", for example "can you consider probation in a murder case?", or "are you willing to consider mitigating circumstances". The wrong answer to those questions will lead to a for-cause dismissal. The third question is flagrantly improper, the first is rather improper, and the second probably is. If the question can be framed in terms of a candidate's willingness to follow the law, then it should be legal.	also, what is "cannot be punished on account thereof because they lacked criminal responsibility due to the intoxication or if this cannot be ruled out"? I can not understand This means that if a person, while drunk, does soemthign that would otherwise be a crime, but the person cannot be charged because s/he was too drunk to know that s/he was committing a crime, such a person can insted be charged with having become intoxicated, and given up to the same punishment that would have been given for conviction for doign the unlawful act. For example, if a person damaged property while under the influence of alcohol (drunk), it might be impossible under German law to prosecute for the crime of intentionally damaging property, because one could not prove that the person knew what s/he was doing, and knew that it was criminal. In such a case the person could be charged with having intentionally or carelessly become drunk, but the penalty can't be more than the penalty for having damaged property would have been, nor can it be more than five years. As a practical matter, I think it very unlikely that the police would seek to impose a fine if they didn't issue any ticket or other paperwork at the scene, nor mention any such intention. However, they might be legally able to do so.
Is normally illegal kink legal if consensual My wife is older than age of majority and can freely give consent. She has a specific kink of wanting to be upskirted in shops. If I have her consent, can I do this without getting in trouble? If she revokes her consent during or after recording upskirt, will I get in trouble? (for example get consent, then recording, then revoke consent while recording) This question only needs to be answered under Canadian law, but I also want to know how it is dealt in other countries where it is normally illegal (TIL upskirting is not illegal everywhere).	In the UK, the law was recently changed to outlaw non-consensual upskirting – without consent is crucial. Canada does not appear to have such a specific law, but the Voyeurism law covers some of that ground. What you are not allowed to do is: surreptitiously, observe[] — including by mechanical or electronic means — or make[] a visual recording of a person who is in circumstances that give rise to a reasonable expectation of privacy, if (a) the person is in a place in which a person can reasonably be expected to be nude, to expose his or her genital organs or anal region or her breasts, or to be engaged in explicit sexual activity; (b) the person is nude, is exposing his or her genital organs or anal region or her breasts, or is engaged in explicit sexual activity, and the observation or recording is done for the purpose of observing or recording a person in such a state or engaged in such an activity; or (c) the observation or recording is done for a sexual purpose. This blog article looks at the difficulty of knowing where one has an "expectation of privacy", since this is a new law with little case history behind it. R v Jarvis seems to be it as far as case law goes. The court allows that many things may go into a reasonable expectation of privacy for this law. Relevant considerations may include (1) the location the person was in when she was observed or recorded, (2) the nature of the impugned conduct (whether it consisted of observation or recording), (3) awareness of or consent to potential observation or recording, (4) the manner in which the observation or recording was done, (5) the subject matter or content of the observation or recording, (6) any rules, regulations or policies that governed the observation or recording in question, (7) the relationship between the person who was observed or recorded and the person who did the observing or recording, (8) the purpose for which the observation or recording was done, and (9) the personal attributes of the person who was observed or recorded. This list of considerations is not exhaustive and not every consideration will be relevant in every case. The line that the Canadian court drew is extremely fine. There is no absolute exemption for consensual acts, instead the courts would engage in a holistic balancing act. The fact that consent was included as a mere factor suggests that consent is not a safe harbor.	If you recorded the clip, you have copyright on it, and distributing it (which includes posting it) without your consent is copyright infringement. However that is not a crime. You could sue, but that would be expensive and not quick. You could, if this is in the US, send a DMCA takedown notice. That this clip was recorded in your apartment or other dwelling would only matter if an invasion of privacy claim would apply. That depends on which US state is involved. In most states if it is available at all it applies only if the content would be "highly offensive to a reasonable person". Also, that is again a civil suit, not a crime.	In the United States, You have no expectation of privacy in public. Anything you can see from a public place, you can take a picture of, even if the "victim" is in their own home but has the blinds open. If you are standing on a public sidewalk or street, you would legally be able to take a picture with certain exceptions. An exception to this would be: if with just your eyes you can see into a private home, you can take a picture of that, but if you require a telescopic lense with some sort of IR adapter to "see through" blinds. That MAY be considered illegal. For real world examples of this question, check out PINAC. Another example is "Creepy Camara Guy", https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vs6iLtl0BAw. This guy basically goes around recording videos of people in public in a VERY obnoxious way. But he is within his legal right. (Note: Video unavailable: "This video is no longer available because the YouTube account associated with this video has been terminated.")	I'm not sure a case of harassment could be made out (it would depend on the circumstances in which you purportedly did those things or threatened her, except for touching her. Sexual assault The Sexual Offences Act 2003 defines sexual assault as: (1) A person (A) commits an offence if— (a) he intentionally touches another person (B), (b) the touching is sexual, (c) B does not consent to the touching, and (d) A does not reasonably believe that B consents. (2) Whether a belief is reasonable is to be determined having regard to all the circumstances, including any steps A has taken to ascertain whether B consents. To your questions: What is the law on a 16 year-old doing the things listed above with a 14 year-old? Same as the above, except what would happen if it was made out that there was not consent? For sexual assault, it is presumed that if the person is between the ages of 13 and 16, they do not have the capacity to consent. That is - if there is no proof of consent, you are guilty of the offence, if the requisite mens rea - intent - to touch them can be proved. For everything else - it might amount to harassment but that is probably a stretch, I don't see the elements being made out. However, there are certain limits to what people can consent to - you can't consent to someone murdering you in most jurisdictions, for example. ... what would be the best way to go about disproving (in a court scenario) that I did all of these things? You do not have to disprove that you did these acts - it is the job of the prosecution to adduce evidence beyond reasonable doubt that you have done so. You can present evidence that satisfies an evidentiary burden that you did not do these acts, such as not being able to do so (by being in another place), or not intending to do the act. However, you would need to prove that you had consent and believed she was 16 or over to stand a reasonable chance of escaping conviction for the above crime, if prosecuted. As Martin has said - you need to get a lawyer for the right answer here.	There is no way to know for absolute sure. The statutes do not address the question, so one would look at the case law. There appear to be about a dozen wiretapping cases that made it to the court of appeals in Maryland, and none of them involve implied consent (e.g. where it is announced prior to recording that the call may or will be recorded – prior is mandatory). The probability is high that implied consent suffices, since the legislature did not specific require express consent and consent is not generally taken to mean express consent. One can and should hire an attorney who will give you a professional and considered (but not infallible) opinion, if it really matters.	You are right that this is probably a private space; you are wrong in thinking it is your private space; it isn't. The space belongs to your employer and they can do whatever they want with their space unless there is a law that says they can't. As to what type of "hidden surveillance" is allowed that depends on your particular circumstances including what state and federal laws apply and the employment contract you are covered by. As a starting point, if this was happening in Australia then: If you gave permission, all would be legal If you did not give permission: it would be illegal to record anything taking place across a public telecommunications system (i.e. phone tapping) it would be legal for anyone to make an audio recording (not phone tapping) of any conversation to which they were a party it would be legal to make a video recording without sound.	'Is it legal?' could mean one of two things. Does it break the criminal law; could I be arrested? There is no law criminalising photography or filming in a private place (assuming you're not doing something amounting to harrassment, or making something inherently illegal like child pornography). The act of filming per se is therefore not illegal in a criminal sense. However, the proprietor of a private place can ask you to stop filming or demand that you leave; if you fail to comply then you will be trespassing. Trespass is not a criminal offence (although the police will undoubtedly remove you if called). However, if your intent was to intimidate, obstruct or disrupt activity within the premises, you could be charged with Aggravated Trespass under s68 Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994. Could the owner, or someone else, have a civil claim against me? This is more difficult to answer. Trespass is a tort, so the owner could in theory have a claim against you if you were filming against his wishes. However, he would have to prove some measurable amount of damage, and this is why few trespass cases come to court. The occupants of the premises may be able to sue if you breach their right to privacy (Article 8 ECHR, incorporated into UK law by the Human Rights Act 1998); however, a court will balance this against your Article 10 right to freedom of expression. A court will consider all circumstances: for example, if you were filming in the toilets of a nightclub, the occupants' right to privacy may well outweigh your right to freedom of expression. A copyright owner may have a claim against you if you include their work in your film; for example, if you film inside a nightclub and substantial parts of songs are captured on your film, this may give rise to a claim. I am not a lawyer. Don't rely on free advice from strangers on the Internet.	In Texas, sex offenses are defined in Texas Penal Code § 21.01, et seq., and rape and kindred offenses are defined as sexual assault § 22.011 and aggravated sexual assault § 22.021. None of those laws prohibit the conduct described (assuming adults who are not in a teacher-student relationship with full mental capacity), nor do they prohibit the video as long as there is no intent or threat to disclose it. Of course, not recognizing that it is the same person both times in an in person meeting when they have sex is highly implausible.
How can a community based not-for-profit be sued? This question Is normally illegal kink legal inspired me to ask this. The Metro Vancouver Kink Society is getting sued. In a short summary of events, one member of MVKS was accused of acting inappropriately and was officially shunned from the community. In retaliation, he sued the MVKS. Now that there's a lawsuit, many people who wanted to remain anonymous are now known to be part of the MVKS. How can a non-profit community based group even get sued?	From their website: Metro Vancouver Kink is an incorporated, non-profit society. That is, they are a corporation and corporations are legal people, capable of suing and being sued just like natural people are. The lawsuit alleges defamation which a corporate entity can do by making untrue statements that damage someone’s reputation. Based on the linked article, I can’t see that this is “retaliation”; the statements made are, if untrue, almost certainly defamatory and the defamed person is legally entitled to be “made whole” as far as possible. Incorporation is a method of shielding the members of the corporation from the corporations liabilities, legal or otherwise. From the article, it appears the allegedly defamed person is also suing the directors of the corporation - directors are usually legally shielded unless they have breached their duties as directors. One final point, not-for-profit entities still make profits or losses (called surpluses and deficits) and holds assets and liabilities just like a for profit business. Indeed an entity must at least break even over the long term if it wants to survive and make surpluses if it wants to grow. The difference is that a non-profit cannot return those surpluses to its members the way a company can; it has to use them for the purposes for which it was established or for defending lawsuits or paying out damages.	That's the entire point of a summary proceeding. You're allegedly found committing an offence, that isn't worth the court's time to hear but nevertheless requires some penalty. The only way to "unambiguously deny liability" is by requesting a hearing and denying liability in the notice of this. The court doesn't care what you say to everybody else, it cares what you say on its record. The reasoning is, if you're so sure you're not guilty of an offence, why haven't you sought to argue this in court? And if you weren't committing the offence, why did the informant serve the infringement notice in the first place? The act is not silent at all on this. If you don't request the hearing and serve such notice by the date required, you are liable to enforcement action - whether you deny liability out of court is irrelevant.	You are deeply confused, probably by the blogs of a conspiracy theorist (perhaps discussing the Sovereign Citizen Movement mentioned in the comments), whom it would be helpful for you to reference. In fact, people with and without lawyers claim common law rights in the ordinary courts of the UK every day, in the lion's share of civil lawsuits. For example: There is a common law right to sue for damages when someone breaches a contract by not paying a bill that they owe. A defendant, meanwhile, has a common law right to defend against such a suit on grounds, for example, that the debt has been paid or that the debt is not owed because there was no agreement to pay in the first place. The substantive right of an owner of real property to evict a tenant who breaches a lease arises at common law, even though statutes spell out the process for enforcing that right. Furthermore, the way that ownership of real property is established (i.e. through a chain of title involving purchases by deeds) likewise arises at common law. The defendant meanwhile has a common law defense to a claim for rent for the remainder of the period in a lease after an eviction for failure of the landlord to mitigate damages if the landlord does not make a reasonable effort to find a new tenant. The right to sue someone who negligently caused an accident that injured you is a common law right.	According to EU case law, everything in your scenario is legal except if Example Site is hosting the image without authorization and Pirate Site is a for-profit site, then Pirate Site is presumed to be violating Article 3 of the Copyright Directive on communication to the public (in this scenario, Example Site is also trivially violating Article 2 on the right to reproduction). In Meltwater, Case C-360/13, the court ruled that browser cache and on-screen copies fell under the temporary reproduction exception, Article 5(1) of the Copyright Directive. This means that the visitor is not infringing copyright (IPKat reference). In BestWater, Case C-348/13, the court ruled that embedding content was itself not a communication to the public when that content was hosted with rightsholder authorization, and so did not violate Article 3. This means that Pirate Site is not infringing on communication to the public rights (it is also not creating a copy itself, so is not breaking Article 2) (IPKat reference). When content is not hosted with authorization, the situation is quite a bit more nuanced. GS Media, Case C-160/15, is the controlling case. Here, the court ruled that if a link (note it doesn't even have to be embedded/hotlinked) is posted by a for-profit site, that site is expected to have done its due diligence to ensure the linked content is hosted legally. Therefore, it is presumed to be violating Article 3, i.e., the burden of proof is on the link posting site to demonstrate that it had done its due diligence in verifying the legality of the linked content. So in this scenario, Pirate Site is presumed to be infringing on communication to the public rights (IPKat reference - WARNING: slightly NSFW image here, Playboy was one of the parties to the case).	My lawyer answers my question, thinking he is giving legal advice to a non-client when he is actually answering a client's question. But if you read the FAQ, posts at law.stachexchange are not legal advice. In fact, questions that are so specific as to risk becoming a request for legal advice are routinely closed. But let's go further: The issue at hand is not the one your lawyer is hired to help you with. He is not your lawyer for that issue. Even if we considered the relationship through law.stackexchange legal representation, the conversation would not be privileged. You are posting in a public forum, and expecting reply in the same way. You are free to waive the privilege of communication with your lawyer, and you are doing that by using this way of communicating with him. At this point, the only thing your lawyer would have done would be voluntarily giving for free some info that he could have billed you for. What exactly would be the issue here? It is exactly what pro bono is for. The only way to breach confidentiality would be if your lawyer were to convey things that you said to him confidentially to the public, but here it would not be relevant if the OPs author were already his customer or not.	Yes a company can be sued (since anyone can sue anyone). But in order to win a lawsuit, you have to have damages as a result of some action, AND you must prove that the action was done with intent to harm or was otherwise negligent. So following your website example, a lot of things would have to happen: The website would have to be hacked. If the passwords are encrypted instead of hashed (which still qualifies as "plain-text" once they email it to you), the hacker would have to figure out how to decrypt the passwords. (Which a good hacker could probably do.) The hacker would have to take those passwords and do something with them that causes damage to their owners. Even if all of those things happened, you would still also have to prove negligence on their part which would be pretty difficult to do because the flaw that was hacked would be the focus of negligence discussions moreso than what was stolen. That being said, if your goal is simply to get them to fix the problem, rather than receive monetary damages, then you could still sue for an action to be taken. You'd have to pay by the hour for the attorney since they wouldn't have a chance of winning monetary damages. But in all likelihood the website owner, upon seeing the lawsuit, would fix the problem before it gets to court, so I could see that having the desired effect. That is if you think it's worth the cost of filing the lawsuit in the first place. Perhaps you could save yourself the cost of an attorney and just threaten to sue if they don't fix the problem.	In practice, you get sued not for doing things that are illegal or similar, but for doing things that upset someone with money to sue. In addition, it's very nice of them to let you use pictures of most of their shoes, so you should be nice and respect their wishes for red shoes as well. If you use photos of the red shoes, there's a risk that you are taken to court and even if you win, it will cost you a lot of money. And a lot of goodwill. You'll never be allowed to use photos of their sandals or shorts. So don't do it. The company should be advised to be more careful what they write when they give someone some permission.	It is any law protecting me from the people that distrubute a video of me falling the stairs and shared without my permision? No. Your permission is not necessary for distributing or watching that video. The recording was from your workplace, where your entitlement to privacy is quite limited unlike few settings such as (1) your attorney's office in the course of obtaining legal advice for which the disclosure was needed, or (2) your home. Even if such an entitlement existed, your decision to share that recording with the person who was with you generally constitutes a waiver of your right to privacy regarding that incident. The waiver would apply even if California had some legislation akin to the EU's GDPR. Your description nowhere indicates that that person had a statutory or equitable duty of confidentiality. It is also highly doubtful that you would wish to block the distribution of the video if people instead of mocking you expressed something pleasant or encouraging to you. people who I don't even know their names come to me to comment about the video and joke about not falling again. That is not unlawful in and of itself. Since the matter does not involve a protected category such as sex, race, religion, or disability, pursuing a claim of hostile work environment would be quite a stretch. It would also be futile because any relief would not cover outsiders who watch the video and feel like joking about it. The notion of harassment entails a pattern of conduct (meaning that a person engages twice or more in that conduct) that causes a reasonable person to feel annoyed or concerned for his safety. Even if someone engages makes a few jokes that cause you to get annoyed, any petition for restraining orders seems unlikely to succeed. Sooner rather than later, the jokes will get old and people will move on.
What happens if bad lawyer advice causes irreparable harm? Let's reduce the question to Canadian lawyers in immigration practice. Bad advice can cause loss of residency, lifetime ban and more. What's your recourse?	If the lawyer was negligent, you can sue Note that negligence requires considerably more than just being wrong . Professional advice (including legal advice) requires assessment of risks and strategies and advising the client of these so they can make informed choices about their options. There is plenty of scope to make mistakes, however, a lawyer who does what a reasonable lawyer (not an expert lawyer) should do has not been negligent. You cannot sue for anything done or said by the lawyer in court - this is a public policy thing to stop disappointed litigants from suing their lawyer if they lose.	If the patent lawyer "hears about" such failed patents from clients, and then uses the client's work and modifies them into successful patent filings, that would seem to be a clear conflict of interest, just as a business lawyer cannot use info learned from a client to make his own business deals, unless the client grants an OK. But if the patent lawyer just hears through shoptalk, or through communication by, perhaps, patent examiners that the lawyer works with, I don't see any conflict of interest, although as the comment by Eugene Styer suggests, there is likely to be enough prior art to make the patent invalid.	If you innocently took the oven glove by mistake there is no possibility of criminal consequences. Now that you know it is not yours, you must return it as soon as possible. You may be liable for the losses caused by taking the glove, and that could extend as far as some fraction of the cost of a replacement glove if they have already replaced it. You cannot (legally) hold his glove hostage for the return of your desk. Deciding which glove is which is tricky. Given the cost of new oven gloves, I would go round with both and ask him which is his. Even if he takes the nicer one which isn't his, you are only down a few dollars. The messy hall should be a separate question (and risks being closed as asking for specific legal advice - I think you need your own paid-for lawyer for that).	The consequences for the US are perhaps better addressed at Politics; if you're really interested in those consequences, you can re-post this question there. For the police officer shooting a diplomat, the officer may be charged under state law, whatever is normal for an incident of this type; it doesn't matter whether the person is a US citizen or a diplomat or any other kind of alien, regardless of immigration status or lack thereof. If the person is a diplomat, however, the officer is also liable to be prosecuted under federal law, namely 18 USC 1116, which makes it a crime to kill, among others, a "foreign official"; the definition of that term includes any person of a foreign nationality who is duly notified to the United States as an officer or employee of a foreign government or international organization, and who is in the United States on official business, and any member of his family whose presence in the United States is in connection with the presence of such officer or employee. The characterization of the response "just been revoked" as "clearly legal" is inaccurate; a police officer has no power to revoke diplomatic immunity. In fact, only the diplomat's own country can waive this immunity. The United States cannot do so; it can only expel the diplomat.	Law SE is not for direct legal advice. You're in the middle of a contract dispute that has turned acrimonious and need to find legal help. Google for free or low cost legal aid in your area. If this "point person" has mentioned a lawyer or made legal threats, you do need legal help.	Your kid is not in trouble; he's a minor. You're in trouble. A criminal case for the charges a prosecutor would bring, i.e. destruction of property (the data) or for a relevant cyber or computer crime (malware, etc.), and/or a civil case for damages due to the destruction of the data would both hinge on one point: the concept of intent. See intent - Wex Legal Information Institute and Civil Law vs. Criminal Law: The Differences \| Rasmussen College. Did you knowingly intend to cause damage or data loss with the structure of the name? It's pretty clear you did. The structure of a name that can invoke an SQL command is not in any sense a standard name in spelling or format or punctuation. So how would you convince the jury or judge that you had no intent when you named your kid? The possible poor design of a data system that didn't sanitize inputs is no defense. Saying the door was unlocked so I assume the homeowners didn't care if I trashed their house will get you laughed into jail or on the hook for a stiff civil judgement.	Legal Services Society is a non-profit organization created by the BC Legislative Assembly through this act, created in order to serve the legal needs of certain classes of society, defined vaguely with reference to "a reasonable person of modest means". Accordingly, they have rules regarding who they can and cannot serve. and they are constrained financially. With vast demands on their resources and little by way of resources, prudent triage is called for. That is, when you show up, you shouldn't expect to talk to a senior attorney (or an attorney). From what I can determine, you cannot expect to get your problem solved right away. It is also not clear that your problem is within the scope of what they do (criminal, incarceration, serious family matters, immigration). "Giving legal advice" is something that only a few people are legally allowed to do – lawyers, who have you as their client. If the person were an attorney, they still couldn't give you legal advice until the appropriate relationship is created (and they have the relevant facts). The person you met with may be a paralegal or a law student. Under the law (sect. 8 of the act), you cannot sue them for damages because of their actions, except if carried out in bad faith. The waiver might be a bit redundant, but it is a wise idea to tell people that you can't sue them. If you want to know what you can expect from the lawyer, this publication will be helpful, though it is generic and not specific as to your particular issue.	There is a legal concept of de minimis: the idea that some offenses, civil or criminal, are too small to be worth prosecuting. For example, a photograph of a city scene that incidentally captured part of a copyrighted billboard in one corner of the image infringes the copyright on that billboard. But if the copyright holder were to sue, it's virtually certain the suit would be thrown out due to the minimal nature of the infringement. Technically speaking, yes, what you describe is a crime. But any prosecutor who tried to bring charges to that effect is likely to be chewed out by the judge for wasting everyone's time. (Incidentally, assuming the reporter and property owner are US citizens, the crime is failure to cross at a designated crossing point (19 USC 1459, a customs offense) rather than improper entry (8 USC 1325, an immigration offense).)
Extortion, bribery or hush money? Hypothetical: someone (Party A) hit or stole from another person (party B), and then a report was made to the police. Party A confesses to the police, but then offers money to the police detective (who accepts), and brings monetary offer agreement to victim person as offer to influence actions of victim person to remove responsibility of legal duty/ criminal element. Questions: 1) What crimes have been committed? 2) Which parties are at fault or liable? 3) How could Party A sue faulty party or parties for described actions.	What crimes have been committed? The initial assault (hit) or theft (stole) by A. Bribery by A and the detective. Which parties are at fault or liable? See above. How could Party A sue faulty party or parties for described actions. Party A, as the perpetrator, can't sue anyone. Party B can sue party A for the assault or the theft as applicable. They have no cause of action on the bribery. The state can prosecute A for assault or theft and bribery. The state can prosecute the detective for bribery.	I will assume that your question pertains to the United States. In other jurisdictions, different rules could apply. Context matters. The usual penalty for spoliation of evidence (the technical term for what you describe) in a civil case is a judicial determination or jury instruction that the evidence destroyed would have established the relevant part of the other side's case had it not been destroyed. In all of these cases, your failure to take affirmative action to preserve the evidence once you knew that there was a bona fide likelihood that you would be sued could be held against you by making an adverse determination that the evidence would have been unfavorable to you and possibly also money sanctions. You could not be held in contempt of court for this if these events happened before a case was commenced. In a criminal case, where you are a defendant, you have an absolute right to not incriminate yourself and do not have to take affirmative action to preserve evidence, although this right is limited to criminal cases and your failure to preserve evidence can still be held against you in a civil case. Certainly, in situation 4 you are a potential criminal defendant, so the 5th Amendment protection would apply. In situations 1 and 2, where the precautions were not put in place to facilitate a crime, the 5th Amendment would protect you if you were a potential criminal defendant, but suppose that you are a bystander like a third party ISP representative. If you were a third party, at a minimum you would have to be put on notice of the police need for the evidence, would probably have had to have had the police ask you for the evidence, and of course, would have to be aware that the destruction was imminent and have the power to prevent that destruction. If all those conditions were present, you might be guilty of obstruction of justice (there are precedents for inaction knowing of the consequences in the fact of a police question amounting to obstruction of justice). In situation 3, this kind of action pretty much amounts to being an accessory to some crime before the fact (unless someone was successfully deceived by a very elaborate story) and would likely make anyone involved part of a conspiracy to commit the crime that the destruction of the papers would facilitate. While the papers themselves might have been evidence of a crime or civil wrong, the destruction of the papers might itself be considered part of the crime, regardless of what could be established regarding the actual content of the papers.	First of all, there are 3 crimes here: the hit and run committed by you the accessory after the fact crime committed by your friend the "attempt to pervert the course of justice" (different jurisdictions call it different things) committed by you and your friend. Second, the lawyer is your friend's lawyer - they have no client privilege towards you. Third, your lawyer cannot help you break the law - any attempt to get them to do so by say, attempting to pervert the course if justice, is not privileged.	The law of Washington is probably typical. Under RCW 9A.56.110, "Extortion" means knowingly to obtain or attempt to obtain by threat property or services of the owner, and specifically includes sexual favors. By RCW 9A.56.130(1), A person is guilty of extortion in the second degree if he or she commits extortion by means of a wrongful threat as defined in *RCW 9A.04.110(25) (d) through (j). Then looking at the relevant definition of threat (please note that there is a numbering error in the statute, that should be (28), I don't know if they will fix it), it says (28) "Threat" means to communicate, directly or indirectly the intent:... (e) To expose a secret or publicize an asserted fact, whether true or false, tending to subject any person to hatred, contempt, or ridicule; or (f) To reveal any information sought to be concealed by the person threatened; Second degree extortion is a class C felony. It is not first degree extortion, since that requires the threat to be (a) To cause bodily injury in the future to the person threatened or to any other person; or (b) To cause physical damage to the property of a person other than the actor; or (c) To subject the person threatened or any other person to physical confinement or restraint; Washington does not include a category of rape by extortion, though I've heard rumors that there is such a crime in some states. (It is not rape by forcible compulsion, second degree rape, because forcible compulsion is defined as "physical force which overcomes resistance, or a threat, express or implied, that places a person in fear of death or physical injury to herself or himself or another person, or in fear that she or he or another person will be kidnapped": that is, there has to be actual or threatened physical force)	There is no clear rule on this matter, but there is a reasonable prospect for using an entrapment defense in this case, when deliberate deception is employed. There are two tests for entrapment: the subjective test and the objective test. The former focuses on the defendant's state of mind: whether the defendant is predisposed to commit the crime without law enforcement pressure. The latter is where the officer uses tactics that would induce a reasonable, law-abiding person to commit the crime. It depends in part whether the jurisdiction recognizes one of these defenses. An example of objective entrapment: "A reasonable, law-abiding person could be tempted into committing prostitution for a substantial sum of money like $10,000." Similarly, applicable to this question: A reasonable, law-abiding person could be tempted to undertake a pleasurable action having been assured that the action is actually legal. Where the subjective test applies: The fact of asking about the legality of an action is evidence that the defendant was not predisposed to commit the crime.	The criminal case will only punish the perpetrator, it will not give any compensation to the victims. So if you are the victim of a crime, and the perpetrator is capable of paying compensation, you would go for a civil case to get compensation. There's also the fact that in a civil case, there is less evidence required, so the perpetrator may win the criminal case (not found "guilty beyond reasonable doubt"), but lose the civil case. In many cases, the perpetrator is not wealthy enough to make a civil case worthwhile. If some lowlife stabs you in the street, you might very well win a civil case, but would end up getting nothing because the person has no money. So taking them to court would only cost you money.	It might or it might not be fraud. The outcome will depend on how the facts and evidence are interpreted at trial. A more general version of this question is: If two parties discuss and orally agree to X; then sign a contract that states they agree to Y, what are the parties bound to? X? Y? Or something else? In your version, X is a fraudulent statement. And Y is an obfuscated writing. One party will argue fraud. The other will argue not fraud on the basis that all the facts were disclosed in writing. The party alleging fraud will carry the burden of proof. The standard of proof will be preponderance of evidence (more than 50%). Generally speaking, written evidence outweighs oral evidence if not accompanied by substantiating facts. Substantiating facts could be: emails or other written correspondence, a prior history or pattern of making false claims to others regarding this investment, the respective behavior of the parties after the agreement was made or anything else that corroborates the oral testimony presented at trial.	In general, the perpetrator can be sued by anyone who suffered harm as a result of his actions. The fact that he's also being prosecuted criminally doesn't change that, nor does it matter whether or not the victim is a "celebrity". The perpetrator could, for instance, be sued by any or all of: the victim himself, for his pain and suffering and loss of earnings the victim's club, for the financial loss due to the player not playing the victim's medical insurer, for the cost of his care. However, even if any of these plaintiffs win their case and are awarded some huge sum of money, it doesn't help them if the perpetrator doesn't have the money. They can only actually collect what the perpetrator has, and possibly some fraction of his future earnings (which are not likely to be very much if he is in prison). So unless the perpetrator is quite wealthy, it's unlikely they would go to the trouble and expense of a lawsuit.
How to get legal confirmation that a book is not copyrighted? Check if a book is in the public domain? asks how one can research whether a book has fallen in the public domain. Is there a way to go one step further, to protect oneself, either getting some official guarantee that it is not in the public domain that can be used in a courtroom, some official list (e.g. maybe a law university keeps a list which would be legally recognized), or perhaps insurance?	The closest that you can come to an official list is the registry maintained by the US copyright office. That tells you which copyrights have been registered, and does not tell you much about items not on the list. But, if a work is registered (and the copyright has not expired, which you can calculate), you know it is not in the public domain. The question is a bit odd, because I don't see how you could ever need to prove legally that a random work is not in the public domain. Copyright is inherent in the act of creating a work and requires no additional actions, under current law. If you know the date of creation of the work, you can figure out whether the work is old enough that its copyright has expired. If you know that the work is "prepared by an officer or employee of the United States Government as part of that person’s official duties", you know that it never was protected. These are the main sources of "being in the public domain" under US law, but the law doesn't actually talk about "public domain", it says when things are or are not protected by copyright. A third source for being "in the public domain" is a "public domain" license, there an author says something sounding like "anybody can use this work as they see fit". CC0 is one attempt to emulate the concept of "public domain", by waiving rights and granting permission. Still, the work is protected by copyright if not in one of the two actual public domain categories. Also, under 17 USC 203 such a license can be terminated under certain conditions (during a period between 35 to 40 years after creating the work, approximately).	1) I saw that no where during registration you actually tell what your work does, you only fill up details, how exactly is it protecting you if you don't specify? For example I have a computer program/website that do something, how exactly the copyright protects you if you did not specify about it? A copyright protects a particular single expression of an idea and versions that are derived from that particular expression. When you copyright software you have to provide approximately 50 pages of printed code so as to make it possible to distinguish your code from someone else's and you generally deposit a full copy with the Library of Congress. The ideas in the computer program are not protected. You only protect the exact language of the code in the computer program and other programs that use that exact language as a starting point. If someone reverse engineers a way to achieve the same process or outcome with different code language (or even comes up with exactly the same code language without ever looking at the language used in your code) then their software does not infringe on your copyright. To protect the ideas in a computer program you need a patent. 2) If I am a non-us citizen, do I need to select in State "Non-US", or leave it blank on "Select"? Because it allows me to complete registration with either. State "Non-US" refers to where you are located, not to your citizenship. If you are located outside the U.S., then you select "Non-US" and if you are located in a U.S. state, but are a non-citizen, you select the state where you are located. The answer does not affect the validity of your copyright. It is used for economic statistics and to determine where the copyright office should locate its own offices to be maximally useful to the public.	Copyright expires 70 years after the original writer breaths his/her last breath, after that it becomes public domain. And all works published before 1923 are in the public domain in the US. This means that the inheritors of the rights cannot sue you for infringement because there is nothing to infringe. If the music is not in public domain you will need to contact the rights holders and negotiate the rights to use the music. This can also be a company that has the right to sublicense the content to others. This is often the way radios and DJs get the right for the music they play.	Recipe books can be, and often are, protected by copyright. If the individual recipes are by others, this would constitute a collective work or compilation. See this recent answer for more on the rights protected for a collective work. The selection of which recipes to include would be a creative element, protected by copyright, and could not be copied or closely imitated without permission. However, division into groups by type of dish would be a "natural and obvious" arrangement, and not protected. So would alphabetical or chronological arrangement within a group, or over all. A "non-obvious" order of recipes would however be a protectable element. An individual recipe may be protected by copyright, but this protects less than one might think. Copyright does not protect facts or methods. This means that the list of ingredients is not protected, nor is the general list of steps of preparation. Only the exact wording of the recipe will be protected. Creating a new collection of recipes based on several different previously published collections of recipes (whether from the web, books, magazines, or other media) and making one's own selections of which ones to include that is significantly different from any of the previous collections would not violate the collection copyrights of any of the previous collections. If the actual recipes were rewritten so that any creative expression from the originals was not copied, then it seems that no copyright infringement has occurred. Most recipes, after all, are not fully original but are modified from older ones. There is no set figure for how many recipes could be copied from a given source before this becomes infringement. That would be, if a suit was field, a matter for the judgement of the count as to whether the new book was "based on" the alleged source. The more the list in the new work resembles a particular source, the more like a derivative work it seems and the more likely that it would be held to be an infringement. One could always ask for a license from the older source, to avoid any risk of suit, but it might not be available or the copyright holder might demand an excessive fee. Asking for a license risks drawing attention to the new work, as well, and might cause a holder to file suit who otherwise would not.	Yes it does. You can do anything at all with a public domain work, and it is not an infringement of copyright. For the matter of that, one could write a forwards attributes to Justinian or Genghis Khan, who newer wrote any such forward at all, and it would not infringe any copyright, nor any right of publicity. It is possible that such claims would constitute False advertising. But if the claim is "obviously absurd" then such laws usually do not apply. What is "obviously absurd" is a judgement call. I recall seeing books in which a "foreword" is attributed to a fictional character. If such a foreword is attributed to a person who is living, that person might have a right to sue under a publicity right theory. In those jurisdictions where such rights last beyond the author's life, such a suit might be filed by an heir within the time such rights are valid, which varies widely.	This appears to mean that the author, while retaining copyright, is allowing anyone to make copies without asking permission from the author. This would seem to be similar to a CC-BY license, or perhaps more exactly a CC-BY-ND license, as the author has apparently not granted the right to create modified versions or other derivative works. This does not require one who makes such copies to distribute them free of charge, unless there is another provision not mentioned in the question. Amazon, or anyone else, would be free to sell copies at any price they cared to ask. If the author wanted to limit the sales price, that would take another provision, and might not be enforceable.	If a work is in the public domain, then there are no particular requirements on its use; in particular, it can be used on a book cover without a copyright notice, a public domain notice, or any other kind of notice or mark. Wikimedia Commons' public domain template says, "You must also include a United States public domain tag to indicate why this work is in the public domain in the United States." This is a notice to users of Wikimedia Commons, informing them that if they upload a public domain image to Wikimedia Commons, they must include a public domain tag. That's a policy of Wikimedia Commons. It doesn't apply to people using the image outside of Wikimedia.	The text may be public domain in the United States It depends on when it was created/published. The eBook is subject to its own copyright The eBook itself is a derivative work and subject to its own copyright protection. The translation of an ink and paper book into an eBook contains enough artistic choice to trigger copyright protection. If the original is really public domain, you can copy the text but not the eBook.
Import Tax - "made in China" versus "made in Taiwan" Is there any reason for tax purposes a company would stamp made in Taiwan, when the products are actually made in China? Do you pay less tax or VAT when you import them in to the UK? They might do it because it sounds better to the consumer, but I don't think that would be the only reason.	In term of international trade practice , "Taiwan" is technically the "Separate Customs Territory of Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu (Chinese Taipei)" based on the entry agreement of World Trade Organization (WTO) . It's similar to "Hong Kong" even that's a little different in legal term and tax practice.	The usual method is that every country charges you income tax for income that you make while your body is in the country. Big exception is the USA which wants a chunk of every income, and some countries like Germany calculate your tax rate based on world wide income, but charge that tax rate on your income in Germany. "Double taxation agreements" usually have the purpose that if two countries think you should pay tax on the same money, then somehow you only pay once. If you were a US citizen, then being tax-free in Indonesia wouldn't help you at all, because the USA would want full US tax minus zero Indonesian tax. In the UK, you need to check what money you have to pay tax on as a UK citizen, especially in the first and last year when you are still in the UK. For the use of a bank account in which country, ask a lawyer. Especially as making a stupid mistake could be very costly. It may be easier to set up a company in Indonesia and your company pays the company, because it is very unlikely that your UK company wants to learn about Indonesian tax law and risk getting it wrong.	There is nothing extraterritorial about these laws. If a company sells a good or provides a service to individuals based in the EU, then this good or service has to comply with EU laws. This concept is self-evident for physical goods that are produced anywhere in the world and then sold in the EU and the GDPR just applies this concept to services provided over the internet. The same legal concept also holds in all other major jurisdictions. The only thing that makes this more complicated for the GDPR is the actual enforcability of these laws but that is a technical issue not a legal one.	For purposes of determining inventorship, the location the invention was made in is irrelevant. Before the AIA, the location of a publication or other public knowledge was relevant (in the U.S. vs outside the U.S.) The AIA did away with that distinction. Pre AIA 35 USC 102 had two reference to "in this country". Post AIA there is no distinction made as to where the prior art was known or used or on-sale. I think this makes the provisions you are looking at moot, at least in terms of patentability. Before AIA, adding in the space provision would make a use in space a use in the U.S. and therefore potentially prior art. Now it is potentially prior art without any issue of having happened in the U.S. PRE AIA 102 A person shall be entitled to a patent unless — (a) the invention was known or used by others in this country, or patented or described in a printed publication in this or a foreign country, before the invention thereof by the applicant for patent, or (b) the invention was patented or described in a printed publication in this or a foreign country or in public use or on sale in this country, more than one year prior to the date of the application for patent in the United States, or POST AIA 102 [a] person shall be entitled to a patent unless— (1) the claimed invention was patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use, on sale, or otherwise available to the public before the effective filing date of the claimed invention; or (2) the claimed invention was described in a patent issued under section 151, or in an application for patent published or deemed published under section 122(b), in which the patent or application, as the case may be, names another inventor and was effectively filed before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.	Trademarks protect against consumer confusion. Ask yourself if a consumer seeing that image with the "studio" portion removed might think that the altered image represents the same company as the original image. Of course, the answer will be "yes." But in the end it also depends on how the trademark is used. You've used the original image in the question; have you violated the trademark? No. Do you violate Tesco's trademark when you say "I went shopping at Tesco"? No. Do you violate their trademark when you sell food using the name "Tesco"? Yes. A distinctive graphic design such as this will also be protected by copyright, so you will also have to consider whether your intended use infringes copyright.	Invoices often provide more information than a receipt about the product or service purchased, including the amount of tax paid. The information on a receipt may not be enough to substantiate a deduction or tax credit claimed by the business. This is particularly important in countries like the United Kingdom with a value-added tax. Suppliers who are registered for VAT must issue VAT invoices which describe the goods or services, and specify the applicable rate and total amount of VAT charged. Purchasers who are registered for VAT are entitled to claim back the VAT charged by the supplier as input tax, but must retain a VAT invoice as evidence that the expense included VAT.	Your VPN scenario is why you have to show the banner to everyone. If you somehow knew beyond any doubt that someone was not in the EU, then you would not have to show a banner, but because you can't verify that, you should always show the banner. Doing so also protects against accidentally violating a similar law in another country; the GDPR is the best-known privacy law, but it is far from the only one. It's good practice to ask for people's permission before collecting their information anyway.	I know in general freelance work is not taxed Your “knowledge” is wrong. In general, all income is taxed. Some jurisdictions may exempt certain income derived from hobbies that are not businesses but this is by no means universal.
If someone is accidentally killed by someone who is texting and driving, what is the penalty and charge? If someone is texting and driving and a pedestrian walks out in front of them on a side street and dies, what will the driver be charged with and what is the penalty?	If you are texting while driving and you kill someone, you can expect to be charged with vehicular homicide or manslaughter with an aggravating factor. The crime can potentially carry a penalty as high as any other manslaughter charge that arises from a gross indifference to the safety of others.It could be as high as 20 years in some circumstances. That said, it's usually much less. The penalty for such a conviction will differ based on the circumstances and the remorse/attitude of the defendant; the judge has wide discretion in sentencing. The charge may differ by state from vehicular homicide, to manslaughter, but the fact that you intentionally engaged in a distracting activity is an aggravating factor that gives rise to these type charges, where otherwise you may have been able to avoid the accident or limit the injury caused. In the state I practice in most, an 18-year-old was convicted just a couple of years ago for vehicular homicide, texting while driving, and negligent operation. He was sentenced to nearly 5 years, all but 1 suspended. He was 18 and he killed someone. In MA, texting while driving is its own offense, as it is in CA. In nearly every state in the union, texting while driving either is illegal under its own statute (or one is pending in legislature), or it is prima facie proof of reckless driving if you cause injury or death. In Santa Ana, just this past August, a 23-year-old CA woman killed someone texting while driving. After a first mistrial, due to a hung jury, she was finally convicted of manslaughter and inattentive or distracted driving causing injury or death as an aggravating factor. She got a similar sentence. The NTSB has recently released a report finding that more injury occurs in the 16-30 age group from texting while driving than drunk driving, causing nearly 3,000 deaths last year and nearly 300,000 injuries. There is no doubt with these statistics why nearly every state has either already regulated/banned this practice or has legislation pending. See these texting and driving statistics.	Maybe I'm reading Walsh wrong, but it seems to me to be saying that Stout might apply in some cases, but it doesn't in that specific case. I think you are indeed reading it wrong. In the Walsh case, the court says: We have not had occasion to decide the question up to this time, but now that it is presented, we not only reiterate the doubt which we expressed in the McAlpin case (supra), but we think that the question of the defendant's negligence was erroneously submitted to the jury in the Stout case, and that we ought not to follow it as a precedent. It's clearly repudiating Stout here, and not just as it applies to that case. It literally says they think it should not be followed as precedent.	This varies greatly by state, but the pedestrians "right of way" is quite a common misconception. Pedestrians do not always have the right of way, but you're also not allowed to just run them over if they're in the middle of the street. That's why states have jaywalking laws, and a lot of people don't realize that they can be ticketed for it - because it's a huge safety concern for a pedestrian to walk in the street outside the designated areas. The NCSL provides a Pedestrian Crossing 50 State Summary that outlines the laws regarding pedestrian crossing. Particularly, there are two lines that frequently repeat throughout all the states: Pedestrians may not suddenly leave the curb and enter a crosswalk into the path of a moving vehicle that is so close to constitute an immediate hazard. Pedestrians must yield the right-of-way to vehicles when crossing outside of a marked crosswalk or an unmarked crosswalk at an intersection. Bottom line: if there is a pedestrian randomly in the middle of the street somewhere, you are fully obligated to attempt to not hit them with your vehicle. Feel free to curse them out (if that's your thing) because in most states they are themselves breaking a law. If an accident can't be prevented due to a pedestrian's actions, then the pedestrian is fully at fault and you will not be held responsible in any way.	The apportionment of fault will be highly case specific, based on ordinary principles of negligence. In one example, the fault was apportioned with 60% of the fault to the late left turner and 40% of the fault to the driver advancing imprudently into the intersection on a green light. See Pierce v. ING Insurance, 2006 NSSM 31 (my annotations and emphasis): [11] I believe that Mr. Pierce [the left-turning driver] was late in entering this intersection. I do not accept that he could not have stopped on the amber which he asserts. However, I am not prepared to find that he is solely responsible at law for the collision. [12] As stated above, I am unable to conclude with precise exactitude which signal light was on when Mr. Pierce [the left-turning driver] entered the intersection. I can conclude that the amber light had ceased and the green light for Mr. Williams [the through driver] had turned on at some point prior to the collision. The intersection is a well known intersection and given Mr. MacKinnon’s evidence of the relative speed of Mr. Pierce’s vehicle and what I understand to be the distances involved, I cannot accept that the signal light was green and turned to amber as Mr. Pierce entered the intersection. [13] On the other hand I am struck by two inescapable facts. First, the fact that Mr. MacKinnon who was stopped next to Mr. Williams did not proceed through the intersection because he knew it would not be safe to do so. While to some extent I take Mr. Boyte’s point that Mr. MacKinnon was, because of his experience with the intersection “hyper aware” to the prospect of drivers being late, I cannot entirely dismiss the fact that he obviously exercised prudence in not proceeding. The fact that Mr. Williams did not see Mr. Pierce’s vehicle is not an answer. In fact, just to the opposite in my view. [14] In my opinion, there is clear a duty on drivers stopped at an intersection to ascertain that the intersection is clear before proceeding once a light turns from red to green. Had Mr. Williams discharged this duty, the collision could well have been avoided. Your scenario is even more stark—not just a single late left turner, but an entire line of late left turners, readily apparent as an obstacle to safe advance. I would not be surprised if a judge were to attribute even more than 40% fault to the driver entering on the green. The Court of Appeal for British Columbia has even said (Pirie v. Skantz, 2016 BCCA 70, para. 14): ... where a through driver ... should have become aware of the left-turning driver’s own disregard of the law in circumstances that afforded him a sufficient opportunity to avoid the accident through the exercise of reasonable care, the through driver may be found wholly or primarily at fault for the accident.	In most states you are required to pull over to the side of the road and come to a stop for any vehicle displaying flashing red and/or blue lights, whether oncoming or overtaking. If you don't you are guilty of a moving violation.1 If the vehicle with the lights then pulls in behind you the same law forbids you from moving your vehicle. So that's the law for being pulled over by an unmarked car. If you are concerned that you were stopped in this manner by someone not authorized to do so (police impersonators have been known to do this) you should call 911 and get the dispatcher to confirm whether the apparent emergency vehicle is legitimate. In general, if you fear for your safety, you can stay in your car and ask to be escorted to a known police station before exposing yourself. E.g., here's the advice of one Ohio State Highway Patrolman: If the area where you stop looks desolate, Miller said you don't have to stop there. In fact, he said, "Proceed to that well lit area or a public building, the fire department, hospital." [B]efore you even stop, if you don't feel safe, "Use your cell phone to dial 9-1-1 and talk to the dispatcher, let her know what's going on, give your location and have her guide you as to what she wants you to do." There are some jurisdictions that restrict the use of "unmarked" cars by police.	You will still have to pay A ticket can be ammended if the state so chooses (they can look up what color and model your car is). The car is probably on video. The officer can testify if they wrote your car info down somewhere else. And if they identified you inside the car as the violator, the car's color hardly matters. The idea that minor mistakes or omissions on tickets can get you off is a myth. From an actual lawyer	You can't sue her for not having insurance. You sue for the damage you suffered. You can name her as a defendant alongside her son on the theory that she contributed to the accident by letting her son use the car, and then let the judge sort out who gets landed with the liability. Depending on the rules in your jurisdiction you might have to pay her travel expenses and/or lost wages if the judge decides she wasn't to blame (and the same for her son, but that sounds like a slam-dunk). However you might be better off going for victim restitution. That way the order gets made as part of the criminal case against the son. Less hassle for you, and the state authorities are responsible for actually getting the money out of them. Edit: It turns out that Idaho has the Family Car Doctrine in its law, so the mother is legally liable for her son's accident (thanks to ohwilleke for the pointer).	In England and Wales, under section 2 of the Suicide Act 1961 (as amended by section 59 and Schedule 12 of the Coroners and Justice Act 2009) it's a criminal offence to do an act capable of encouraging or assisting someone to commit suicide. I think that applies to Scotland too, and there is similar law in Northern Ireland. Encouraging suicide is also a criminal offence in some other common law jurisdictions, e.g. in Australia. While in other common law jurisdictions, if there isn't such a law, the person might instead be prosecuted for manslaughter - or not at all. The minimum, maximum and recommended penalties may well differ between jurisdictions. I don't know what you mean by "vengeance rampage" but I'm not aware of any jurisdictions where it is lawful for a person to cause harm to someone for revenge. States tend to reserve for themselves a monopoly on the use of force.
What types of contracts (that do not create a duty of care) can make legal actions criminal? A few questions (mostly about copyright) have me wondering if it's possible to enter into a legal contract which would make an action criminal when the same action would be perfectly legal had one not entered into the same contract. To narrow the question down, I'd like to exclude contracts which establish a duty of care. So, to be clear, I am asking about contracts which do not that create a legal responsibility for another person's well-being (physical or financial).	An obvious example would be a contract that gives possession of something to someone else. It's normally legal to use some reasonable amount of force to protect or prevent trespasses against property you own, but if you give possession of that property to someone else you can lose that right. For example, you can use force remove a guest who refuses to leave real property you own, but can't use force to remove a tenant even if they broke the terms of your contract. In most jurisdictions you'd need to get a court order and have the police use force if necessary remove the tenant.	For a contract (including ToS) to be valid, one of the things it must have is "legality of objects". That is, if the contract purports to require anything that is unlawful in the jurisdiction then (barring a severance clause) it is not a contract. In common law countries, the starting point is that people are free to contract for and about anything they like - a contract is simply a mechanism for exchanging value between the parties on whatever terms they wish. However, judges and legislatures have decided that there are some things you cannot trade and some terms that are unconscionable or against the public interest and these vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction*. For example, a contract is not legal in any jurisdiction if its terms seek to exclude the intervention of the courts - this is against public policy. So for example, a binding arbitration clause requiring the parties to accept a private arbitrator's decision as final excludes the courts, yes? Well, in Australia, yes, such clauses if used in a contract between parties with different bargaining power (like a Telco and its customers) are invalid because they prevent the weaker party pursuing a class action. However, they are perfectly legal in the United States because the SCOTUS has determined that the customer can persue litigation after arbitration is finished so this doesn't impede the courts. These are essentially the same laws interpreted by the courts so that they have totally opposite effects. So this might lead you to think that you'll put one in - it'll be OK in the US and Australians will represent such a tiny share of your market that you don't care if I can't enforce my ToS there. Except, if your website is visible by Australians, you have just exposed yourself to a government fine of up to AUD 5,000,000 (say USD 3,000,000) per day for breach of Australian Consumer Law. As a general guide (which is very stereotypical), US jurisdictions are the most permissive in the rights they will allow their citizens to give up: the US attitude is that everyone is free to make the best deal they can. European jurisdictions are the least permissive in this regard: most European countries follow a more social welfare state model and the citizen needs protecting from themselves. Commonwealth countries tend to be more in the middle.	This would be entirely dependant on the jurisdiction. The things that would need to be legal to make this transaction legal are: Is the sexual act legal? Is gambling legal? Ongoing consent by both parties To make this an enforceable contract, in addition you would need: Sexual acts to be valuable consideration, basically, is prostitution legal? The fundamentals of a binding contract: intention, legality of objects etc.	No Common law jurisdictions read contracts objectively - that is if it unambiguously states what the parties agreed to then that is what the parties agreed to. If that includes selling your offspring into slavery or mortgaging your organs then so be it (such terms would be void for illegality but if they weren’t illegal then what it says is what happens). Terms can be implied into contracts but only in limited circumstances: implied by statute. A statute can imply a term if a contract doesn’t. A statute can also override an explicit term with the statute’s term. implied by custom. Customary usage in an industry or market can be implied into a contract. implied by past dealings. If the parties have repeatedly entered into contracts, terms may be implied by their past conduct. implied at law. Specific categories of contracts can assume implied terms, for example, property leases imply that the tenant will have quiet enjoyment of the premises. Such terms can be overridden by explicit terms. implied by fact. Such terms must be reasonable and equitable; necessary to give business efficiency to the contract. For example, the contract will not work effectively without the term; so obvious that it ‘goes without saying’. An impartial bystander in the position of the parties should be able to assume that the term is part of the contract; capable of clear expression; and not contradict any other terms of the contract. If there is no clause permitting the host to cancel the contract, there is no basis for implying one: the host cannot cancel the contract. If they do they are repudiating the contract and the other pa try can sue for damages.	Yes. Contracts do not excuse a site from obeying the law, and the law requires sites to obey court orders. "It violates my contract with a third party" is not a valid reason to disobey a court, and disobeying a court order is contempt. On the other hand, contract law (at least in the U.S. and U.K.) says that contracts that violate the law or public policy are invalid, and so you could not win a breach of contract suit if the defendant could not legally comply with the contract. Now, a contract might require the company to attempt all possible legal ways to get the court to revoke its order, or to avoid the order in the first place (for instance, if Google does no business in China, a U.S. court might not excuse them from a contract because they capitulated to the Chinese government). However, when push comes to shove, private contracts are lower priority than court orders.	Can the HOA compel payment? Yes, at least from the standpoint of unjust enrichment or quantum meruit. That is because the resident obtains some benefit(s) from the HOA's activity & expenses, such as the maintenance of common areas and other items that advance the common good of the community. However, a drastic or arbitrary increase in invoices might not be enforceable, especially if these are unreasonable. The HOA would need to persuade in court that the resident accepted or would have knowingly and willfully accepted such drastic change. HOA bylaws: Are they enforceable absent a contract? If by bylaws you mean something other than bills, the question would depend on the substance & scope of those bylaws as well as the HOA's/resident's jurisdiction. It is noteworthy that a written & signed contract is oftentimes unnecessary. There is the notion of "implicit contract" to refer to rights and duties that can be inferred from the parties' conduct and the expectations that can be inferred therefrom. This notion of implicit contract is common in situations where there is no written document that reflects the parties' intent in the relation they willfully enter.	Yes Quite a large chunk of the legal system deals with those general concepts. 27 - pretty much all contract law deals with when and how you must discharge your obligations 28 - ditto, although if it’s not owed until tomorrow … 29 - there are laws against criminal conspiracy 30 - making false accusations can be a crime and can give rise to defamation	Signing as a witness will not generally make you liable on a contract. But, if you sign as a witness to something that you did not in fact witness, you could be liable for fraud or negligent misrepresentation is someone suffers harm as a result of you untrue statement that you witnessed the document being signed. Update: Usually you would be sued for whatever damages are caused plus pain and suffering plus punitive damages (the latter two limited in some states but not others in a variety of ways). It would probably be a crime as well if you had criminal intent, but it would be very unusual for a prosecutor to agree to prosecute an isolated case like this unless it was part of a larger criminal enterprise. A criminal sentence would usually depend on the amount of harm done and would often be a minor felony leading to a year or two in prison but states vary greatly on this.
Does pre-trial detention exist only because of a resources constraint? A lot of people are talking about alternatives to cash bail recently, which made me wonder, why does pre-trial detention exist in the first place? My layman's understanding of pre-trial detention is that it's a kind of "buffer" or a necessary evil. The root problem appears to me that we don't have enough judges, public defenders, etc. to get everyone to trial immediately, so we have to hang onto them until a slot opens up. Bail exists because of flight risk, so if in some world there were no need for pre-trial detention, we wouldn't need bail or any alternative. Is my understanding essentially correct? In other words, does pre-trial detention exist because of a resources constraint? Or is there some more fundamental reason why we have this intermediary step between arrest and trial? My question is coming from a US-based context, hence my lead-in about "cash bail". However, I'm curious about pre-trial detention in general, regardless of whether bail is used or what form it takes.	Even if unlimited resources were available, in order to have a fair trial, the prosecution and defense both need time to prepare their cases, research the law, conduct investigations, gather evidence, interview witnesses, seek out experts, order forensic tests, etc, etc. And there will be pretrial motions that have to be prepared, argued, and judged. You have to figure out what's going to happen to the defendant during that time, be it detention, release, bail, or some other alternative. Shortages of personnel obviously exacerbate the delays, but even without that issue, it's not like the courts could try every defendant on the spot. That would be something like the Wild West, or the Dark Ages; certainly not what the modern world considers justice.	While it is from a different jurisdiction, the following goes to the heart of the matter: Arrest, when used in its ordinary and natural sense, means the apprehension of a person or the deprivation of a person's liberty. The question whether the person is under arrest or not depends not on the legality of the arrest, but on whether the person has been deprived of personal liberty of movement. Directorate of Enforcement v Deepak Mahajan, (1994) 3 SCC 440 at ¶46 (SC of India) In your example, the police officer has been deprived of "personal liberty of movement"; if they can still speak there would be no legal impediment to them placing the person who arrested them also under arrest. It would then be incumbent on both parties to deliver each other into lawful custody. The citizen would need to seek out a law enforcement officer to do this; the police officer has already done so, being their own law enforcement officer. After this, comes the paperwork.	In addition to the general considerations of (1) who is allowed to use non-deadly physical force to maintain order in a shop (which I think that one could do if "deputized" by the property owner or to protect the property of another as well), and (2) the use of non-deadly physical force to make a citizen's arrest (which many of these scenarios would justify as the disorder would be a crime if committed by an adult), (3) I suspect that there is also some point at which a bystander may intervene to prevent harms associated with an unsupervised minor being at large and in need of supervision. Generally speaking, intervention with the minimum reasonable non-deadly physical force to prevent property damage, or an assault, or a threat, is going to be permissible. As to the third reason: for a mentally normal ten-year-old that might be a stretch; for a four-year-old or a clearly impaired older child it might not. One could approach the child, say, "where's your mom or dad", "do you have a babysitter or sibling around?", "what is your name?", or "are you lost?" and detain the child until a satisfactory answer is provided or a suitable authority arrives, to prevent the problem of a child being lost, abducted or hurt by the child's own actions. It would be quite hard for a parent, guardian or babysitter to complain about this kind of conduct when the child was unsupervised and is released as soon as you confirm that this really is a responsible adult or older minor who is responsible for the child. It would be important in doing so to not secret away or isolate the child, to try to determine the location of the child's caretaker, to refrain from doing anything that would harm the child, and to seek assistance from an authority within a reasonable time. Typically, if no caretaker appeared, a cop would come and the cop would oversee the situation until a social worker could come. For example, Colorado has the following statute that would apply once a cop arrived (omitting lengthy provisions that apply to newborn children): § 19-3-401. Taking children into custody (1) A child may be taken into temporary custody by a law enforcement officer without order of the court: (a) When the child is abandoned, lost, or seriously endangered in such child's surroundings or seriously endangers others and immediate removal appears to be necessary for such child's protection or the protection of others; (b) When there are reasonable grounds to believe that such child has run away or escaped from such child's parents, guardian, or legal custodian and the child's parents, guardian, or legal custodian has not made a report to a law enforcement agency that the child has run away from home; . . . (1.3) A child shall be taken into temporary custody by a law enforcement officer without order of the court when there are reasonable grounds to believe the child has run away from the child's parents, guardian, or legal custodian and the child's parents, guardian, or legal custodian has made a report to a law enforcement agency that the child has run away from home. (1.5) An emergency exists and a child is seriously endangered as described in paragraph (a) of subsection (1) of this section whenever the safety or well-being of a child is immediately at issue and there is no other reasonable way to protect the child without removing the child from the child's home. If such an emergency exists, a child shall be removed from such child's home and placed in protective custody regardless of whether reasonable efforts to preserve the family have been made. (2) The taking of a child into temporary custody under this section shall not be deemed an arrest, nor shall it constitute a police record. A child is considered neglected or dependent under circumstances including the following (provisions related to drug or alcohol abuse by parents omitted): § 19-3-102. Neglected or dependent child (1) A child is neglected or dependent if: (a) A parent, guardian, or legal custodian has abandoned the child or has subjected him or her to mistreatment or abuse or a parent, guardian, or legal custodian has suffered or allowed another to mistreat or abuse the child without taking lawful means to stop such mistreatment or abuse and prevent it from recurring; (b) The child lacks proper parental care through the actions or omissions of the parent, guardian, or legal custodian; (c) The child's environment is injurious to his or her welfare; (d) A parent, guardian, or legal custodian fails or refuses to provide the child with proper or necessary subsistence, education, medical care, or any other care necessary for his or her health, guidance, or well-being; (e) The child is homeless, without proper care, or not domiciled with his or her parent, guardian, or legal custodian through no fault of such parent, guardian, or legal custodian; (f) The child has run away from home or is otherwise beyond the control of his or her parent, guardian, or legal custodian; I don't have easily at hand legal authority authorizing a third-party who is not a law enforcement officer to take custody of a dependent or neglected child until a law enforcement officer arrives, but I strongly suspect from the context that this is allowed either under common law, or a statute that I have not located, or some legal fiction (e.g., that the citizen is implicitly deputized by the law enforcement officer after the fact), or simply as a matter of custom and ordinary practice not codified in any authoritative legal source.	There is a special type of law enforcement officer, called a "bailiff" who is charged with maintaining order in a courtroom, and often, a bailiff is a direct subordinate of a judge who must follow the judge's orders. Judges can also issue special kinds of court orders, called "writs" which are a direction to a law enforcement agency generally to take certain action. But, in these cases, the law enforcement agency is effectively an "independent contractor" in relationship to the judge with considerable discretion regarding precisely how and when a writ is carried out. Somebody in the law enforcement agency to which a writ is directed is required to take action, but no individual law enforcement officer is personally compelled to comply with this order. The quote in question is not a statement about the legal authority of a judge, however. It is a statement of "realpolitik". The judge can't physically force or threaten law enforcement to do what they are told to do by a judge. The cops have the guns, not the judges. Instead, the judge relies upon law enforcement obeying the judge's orders because that is what law enforcement officers do. It's right in the job title. But, if law enforcement chose to ignore judges, in general, there is very little that judges could do about that (and in some countries, law enforcement does routinely ignore judicial directions). Some forms of executive branch authority to defy judicial orders is even legally codified, most starkly in the case of the pardon power.	Everyone physically present in the US is protected by the US Federal constitution. (In some cases persons not physically in the US also have protection from the US constitution. When that applies is too complex for this answer.) Most of the rights protected by that constitution are available to anyone present, whether citizen, lawful immigrant, lawful visitor, or a person in the US without lawful authority. A few rights, such as the right to vote and to run for public office, are limited to citizens. If a person was arrested but not informed of his or her Miranda rights, then statements made to the arresting officers (or later interrogating officers) would not be admissible in court, unless an exception to the Miranda rules applies, which is unlikely. I can't say if this happened in the particular case mentioned in the question. In general, in the area of criminal procedure, there is no difference between citizens and others subject to US jurisdiction (accredited foreign diplomats normally have immunity). A few crimes can only be committed by citizens (or others owing allegiance to the US) such as treason. A few crimes, such as unlawful entry to the US, can't be committed by citizens, as citizens automatically have a right to enter. But criminal procedure and constitutional rights affecting criminal procedure, are the same for all in the US, citizen or not. (Oh, there are special laws for minors, but that isn't a matter of citizenship.)	Edit: I didn't notice a that this question was tagged for Canada; this answer is based on U.S. law. "Must you stop walking" and "can the police detain you for leaving" are different questions. Must you stop? I'd expect a lot of variation from state to state, but there are definitely situations in which you must stop. In Ohio, for instance, an officer who "reasonably suspects" that that you have committed, are committing, will commit, or have witnessed the commission of violent felony, is permitted to stop you and ask for your name, address and date of birth, and it is a crime to refuse to provide that information. R.C. 2921.29. But at the moment the officer asks you to stop, you're in a tricky position. If you haven't done anything wrong, you'd be inclined to think that the officer has no basis to stop you and that you're justified in walking away. But if someone just called the police and said someone fitting your description just robbed a store two blocks away, the officer has reasonable suspicion that you committed a violent felony, but you have no way of knowing that. This sort of thing happens pretty much all the time. In the absence of that reasonable suspicion, though, Ohio courts have repeatedly held that it is not obstruction for you to just walk away (or even run!) from the officer. Can the police detain you for walking away? Obviously, if you're in a situation where it is a crime to not answer questions, the police can detain you because they just watched you break the law. But what about when you're within your rights not to answer? The police can still detain you with a Terry stop when they have a reasonable and articulable suspicion that you are committing a crime, or that you just did, or that you're about to. And they can continue that Terry stop until that suspicion is confirmed or dispelled, or until they can't reasonably expect to get anymore information by detaining you. Based on the facts you described, it seems unlikely that they could legally detain you based on your termination of the conversation. Still, I imagine that there could be circumstances where they might stop someone, ask questions, and then reasonably suspect that the person was engaged in a crime based on his decision to walk away, especially if the person hasn't explicitly invoked his Fifth Amendment right to silence.	SCOTUS has at least three times found that it is necessary for a defendant to be present at the beginning of a criminal trial in order to satisfy the Constitutional mandates regarding due process. So the simple answer is that a defendant must be present during a criminal trial because without his presence no trial can begin. However, once a trial has begun FRCP Rule 43 itself (section c) allows for the absence of the defendant. Among the provisions: The defendant can waive his right to be present simply by voluntary absence. The defendant can also waive his right by disruptive behavior in the court.	Yes, both duress and necessity remain viable defenses. The contours of these defenses will vary from state to state, but many states use the Model Penal Code. MPC § 3.02(1) lays out the necessity defense, which it calls justification: Conduct that the actor believes to be necessary to avoid a harm or evil to himself or to another is justifiable, provided that: (a) the harm or evil sought to be avoided by such conduct is greater than that sought to be prevented by the law defining the offense charged; and (b) neither the Code nor other law defining the offense provides exceptions or defenses dealing with the specific situation involved; and (c) a legislative purpose to exclude the justification claimed does not otherwise plainly appear. MPC § 2.09(1) lays out the standard for duress: It is an affirmative defense that the actor engaged in the conduct charged to constitute an offense because he was coerced to do so by the use of, or a threat to use, unlawful force against his person or the person of another, that a person of reasonable firmness in his situation would have been unable to resist. So MPC § 2.09 does not explicitly make imminence a requirement for the duress defense, but it adopts an objective standard, which permits the jury to factor in that consideration. A "person of reasonable firmness" would be less able to resist robbing a bank if the threat was to kill their child in 30 seconds than if the threat was to kill their grandmother in 50 years, during which the defendant can call the police to investigate the threat and the odds are good that granny dies anyway. I'd guess most duress cases fall somewhere in the middle, so it becomes a question for the jury whether the threat was serious enough and imminent enough to merit justification.
Misidentified Copyright Takedown I'm a full time youtuber and I recently received a copyright takedown that I am 99.9% sure is either a mistake or outright fraud. I went through youtube's system to dispute the claim, but it was rejected twice. The company filing the claim is listed as 'UMPG Publishing' (VCPMC_CS), and they are claiming ownership of "Hallo Main Theme Cover". (the actual copyright notification has this odd misspelling of Halo as "Hallo") Halo and all of it's music is owned and published by Microsoft, and on their official website they state that it is okay to use the content from their games in youtube videos. (https://www.xbox.com/en-US/developers/rules) The claim also reports it as a "Cover" instead of as the actual song which is very odd. I also looked on the UMPG music catalog for anything related to the Halo OST and found nothing: https://www.umusicpub.com/us/Digital-Music-Library/search/Hallo I feel like I have every reason to doubt the validity of this claim, but if I file a counter notification I am opening my self up to a lawsuit. But I also don't think I can afford to just concede either. I post videos rather infrequently and spend up to a month working on each one. This video has already pulled a million views and if I just let this go I'll lose a lot of money. I'm not certain what I should do. All my attempts to contact the company by phone or email have failed. What kind of trouble would I be in if I file a counter notification and they come after me?	You are correct that you are inviting a lawsuit if you file a counter-notice. You are also correct that it might be a clerical error. Your attorney is the guy who recommends a best course of action for you. Part of the ensuing trouble would be the bill from your attorney. If the copyright holder wins in court, they could recover from you based on actual damages, statutory damages, and profits under 17 U.S.C. §504. The first is how much they lost (e.g. via sales or licensing fees) from your infringement. The second is a fixed amount ranging from $200 to $150,000, depending, provided that the work is registered. It is more likely that your case would fall in the $200 category, given a mistaken belief that you had permission as innocent infringement. The last is about whatever profits you made from the infringement that exceeds the copyright holder's losses. Incidentally, under the relevant provision, 17 USC 512(g)(2)(C), they will restore your material shortly after receiving the counter notification, unless its designated agent first receives notice from the person who submitted the notification under subsection (c)(1)(C) that such person has filed an action seeking a court order to restrain the subscriber from engaging in infringing activity relating to the material on the service provider’s system or network. Notice that all that YT has to have done is received notification that a lawsuit was filed. The other party does not have to prove to the provider that they filed a lawsuit.	From the perspective of US law: Scenario 1: Removing the watermark is perfectly legal, obviously. You own the copyright. Scenario 2: Abandonware is not really a thing in the US when it comes to copyright (and the Wikipedia article you linked says this.) Even if the company went out of business, the copyright almost certainly went to somebody - the former owners, the creditors, etc. As far as the Internet Archive goes, they are taking advantage of an exemption in the DMCA's anti-circumvention provisions, along with the copyright exemption found in 17 USC § 108. But both of these exemptions require you to be a "library or archive" to take advantage of them, and you are not a library or archive, so you cannot take advantage of either. As a practical matter, if the software is really abandoned it's unlikely that anyone will actually come after you for infringement, but that's not quite the same as it being legal - you could be on the hook for up to $150,000 in statutory damages per work infringed, if the owner does sue you. You could attempt to claim fair use, of course. If the image is abandoned you might get a favorable result on factor 4 of the fair use test (the effect on the market for the original) since there's no market if nobody can find the owner. But it would depend on the other factors; that alone wouldn't get you fair use. Scenario 3: I'm not sure where you get the idea that downloading a copyrighted image to your desktop is somehow protected. It isn't automatically legal to save a copy of something just because it's on the Internet. And the existence of a watermark may indicate that someone wanted to prevent the file from being copied. The website containing the image will likely have terms of use, which may indicate whether or not you're allowed to make a copy. For example, Stack Exchange's TOS says in part: Subscriber may download or copy the Content, and other items displayed on the Network for download, for personal use, provided that Subscriber maintains all copyright and other notices contained in such Content.	Yet I publicly wear shirts with copyrighted designs all the time. I'm unclear about this; do you mean T-shirts you have made yourself using copyrighted images or T-shirts you have bought? If the former then it is a prima facie breach and you could be sued by the copyright holder. You would probably not be as it would be impracticable. If the latter then there are 2 possibilities: The manufacturer/distributer/retailer chain all hold valid licences to put the image on a T-shirt and display it in the usual way so there is no breach involved. The manufacturer/distributer/retailer chain does not hold a valid licence in which case there is a breach and the copyright holder would target, say Wall-Mart rather than you. what about displaying ... works of art in my yard? Notwithstanding that it can be viewed from a public space, your yard is not public; therefore this is not public display.	Online file converters are legal: there is no law that prohibits a person from making a program available and executing online, including creating output in the form of a file. It is possible that some person may illegally copy copyright-protected material then use a website to modify that material, in which case the question of vicarious liability for copyright infringement could arise, so we appeal to the DMCA safe harbor provisions to see what the website must do. First, the owner of copyright must submit a properly constructed takedown notice to the website. Crucially, the notice must contain sufficient information that the website operator can find and take down the item(s) in question. Assuming that the complainant can supply the "where is it" information, then there is a notice and counter-notice routine where the uploader is informed and can deny the accusation – the website operator doesn't evaluate the merits of the claim, he only sees that the formalities were observed. If the operator follows the rules, he cannot be held vicariously liable. If the link does not expire and if it is somehow promulgated, the technical potential for being a contributor to copyright infringement becomes very real, but it puts the operator in no worse a legal position than Youtube. So the question is not just related to OCILLA, it is entirely covered by that law. Questions of how users or website owners are "supposed to" act don't figure into this. If the website owner does not comply with those provisions, they have no access to the safe harbor provisions, and they can be sued. However, the website itself remains legally "permitted" (there never was a prohibition of such a website).	No. The Creative Commons license seeks to promote recognition of the original author's work through attribution, but does not provide the same framework for enforcement that the DMCA would. The proper approach in cases such as the deleted Wikipedia article and subsequent reuse would be to provide a courteous notice to Wikipedia of your original publication and ask to be listed as the original author or be provided attribution. In the absence of relief there, then what rights you have would be determined by the Wikipedia Terms of Service. Since, and I am assuming here, that you are not generating billions of dollars on the original publication in royalties, seeking to bring a DMCA type enforcement on a Wikipedia article dispute would be like trying to swat a fly with a sledgehammer. (or more commonly in divorce, two people having hearing and spending thousands of dollars on attorney's fees fighting over a blender -- they are free to do it, but they would have been much better off buying 500 new blenders...) Keeping perspective and providing a courteous letter is probably your most cost efficient first step in situations like this. And in all areas of law, just remember, you catch more flies with honey than you do with salt. (meaning taking the courteous approach usually affords better results than a scalding letter breathing hell-fire and brimstone) In followup to earlier comment: Presuming you would be covered by the World Intellectual Property Organization Treaty on Copyright of 1996 (as a U.S. Citizen you would be), and your copyright is on file with the United States Copyright Offices (same presumption) as prerequisite to suit, then there is nothing that prevents you from invoking the protections under general copyright law and under the DMCA (inlcuding the Takedown provisions). Note: these are not the only prerequisites to taking action, but instead the minimum critera to qualify, and note this does not pass on the wisdom of doing so (there are often significant consequences to improperly invoking previsions of certain acts).	Copyright law requires permission of the rights holder to e.g. post material. The terms of that permission could be very complicated, as seen in royalties contracts with publishers, but they can also be simple. If someone asks "can I post your video on my website" and you say "Sure, as long as you give me credit", then they can post the video on their site as long as that say something like "This video was made by Jake" or something like that. There is no exception to permission where permission is retroactively withdrawn just in case it turns out that one can make money off of the video. However: you gave That Guy permission, and that does not mean that the hundreds of Other Guys have permission. So you can pursue all of the Other Guys and demand that they take the video down, or require some payment to get your permission.	I gather that Fischer can claim copyright on its written form of public-domain music because the company adds interpretive markings to its sheet music, and those markings themselves constitute creative content? They can probably also claim copyright on editorial content. For example, a piece may have multiple sources that do not agree with one another, and the editor's choice of how to reconcile these inconsistencies is subject to copyright. Even the layout and typography or engraving are subject to copyright, so if the score is nothing but a faithful transcription of the composer's only manuscript, making a photocopy of the score is infringement. In that case the only contents of the sheet music covered by copyright would be whatever unique musical markings Fischer adds, and not the notes set down by the original composer? The notes themselves are not protected by copyright if the composition has passed into the public domain, but to make a score that does not infringe the copyright in the Carl Fischer edition, you would have to find another source. A copy made by hand might be okay because it would not reproduce the layout and other graphic design elements. Is there any reliable way to determine which elements of a work like classical sheet music are covered by a copyright claim, other than to infringe and have the claimant reveal that at trial? You can consult the sources that the editor used. Anything that isn't in the sources is editorial and therefore protected. If you can't find out what sources were used, find all the sources you can. Anything that's present in a source that is old enough to have passed into the public domain is in the public domain.	Unless the game is out of copyright, e.g. chess, snakes and ladders, Go, or checkers, your software would probably be considered a derivative work of the copyrighted game and an actionable infringement. The fact that you do not monetize it is not a defense. You would need written permission in the form of a license agreement from the copyright owner to do this legally. The penalties for violating copyright laws in this way could be punishingly serious.
Focus on arson in New Mexico Constitution -- why? typo? In the State Constitution of New Mexico, Article II Section 24 Rights of Crime Victims, all the victims' rights are listed specifically for "a victim of arson" (see https://law.lclark.edu/live/files/7714-new-mexico). Why? Was this a typo that never got fixed? Did arson previously mean something more general than starting a fire? Did they want to particularly protect against arson for some reason? I assume that in reality other crime victims have similar protections, but why the focus on arson? Thx!	The language is worded broader: "A victim of [list of crimes] or that victim's representative shall have the following rights as provided by law:" The list is seemingly alphabetically, and covers besides arson injuring people, also aggravated arson & battery, misuse of explosives, negligent use of a deadly weapon, murder, [two other types of homicide], kidnapping, [various types of sexual misconduct], [two types of hit and run], [two types of child endangerment]. That is a closed list, that gives the victim or his representative (estate or legal guardian) the rights enumerated after.	If you say something twice, eventually they’ll be in conflict Law codes are vast. They deal with many things and sometimes, as here, they deal with the same thing twice. If they duplicated themselves, rather than cross-referencing, every time the law was changed, every single instance would have to be tracked down and changed. Admittedly, that is not as big a problem with digital codes (but still not infallible and definitely time-consuming) but when these would have to be found by hand, it was damn near impossible. Written this way, change it once and it’s changed everywhere. My first boss taught me that. The fired was engineering rather than law but the principle is the same.	It's a bit of an oversimplification. You're correct that there is a federal law against murder, 18 USC 1111. However it applies only to a murder committed in the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States. This covers situations like crimes committed on federal lands such as national parks or federal buildings, or crimes on US-flagged ships at sea, aircraft in flight, or in space. It does not apply to "ordinary" crimes committed at most locations within the US. 18 USC Chapter 51 covers a few other situations, such as murder of a federal officer, foreign diplomat, by incarcerated or escaped federal prisoners, US nationals murdering each other while abroad, and so forth. The idea is that these restrictions keep the laws within the enumerated powers of Congress as stated in Article I Section 8 of the US Constitution. A federal statute covering all murders throughout the US would probably be unconstitutional for this reason. So while what he says is not strictly correct, it is true that in the vast majority of cases, murders are covered by state laws and not by federal laws. Even if one was to agree with Ramaswamy that medical abortions are a form of murder, even still, no federal murder law currently on the books would apply to a typical abortion, except under very unusual circumstances.	I'd take the city council's advice and realize that you could be charged with a crime. Their job is to know the local laws and put them into place, as well as know how those laws relate to state law. As for state law, the Revised Statutes of Missouri, RSMo Section 574.115 Making a terrorist threat says: 574.115. Making a terrorist threat, first degree — penalty. — 1. A person commits the offense of making a terrorist threat in the first degree if such person, with the purpose of frightening ten or more people or causing the evacuation, quarantine or closure of any portion of a building, inhabitable structure, place of assembly or facility of transportation, knowingly: (1) Communicates an express or implied threat to cause an incident or condition involving danger to life; or (2) Communicates a false report of an incident or condition involving danger to life; or (3) Causes a false belief or fear that an incident has occurred or that a condition exists involving danger to life. 2. The offense of making a terrorist threat in the first degree is a class D felony. 3. No offense is committed under this section by a person acting in good faith with the purpose to prevent harm. A fake gun turret on a porch in the public view that tracks people who walk by could be interpreted as making a terrorist threat because it (3) Causes a false belief or fear that an incident has occurred or that a condition exists involving danger to life. And, it's probably safe to assume your turret has the "the purpose of frightening ten or more people." The fact that the gun turret is on private property doesn't mean much; it is in view of the public and your intent is for it to be seen by the public and you want to invoke fear in the public members who walk by. And it's not going to be seen by the council as some sort of security; threats are not security. If you did put up such a turret, and the state didn't take action under 574.115, and there is no local law on the books that applies, the council can easy put one in place at their regular council meeting with a simple motion and vote. Since you already asked the council, they may already be considering such a law. And, depending on the county, the council could invoke a law addressing threats to the public that has more severe penalties that the state law, because Missouri is a home rule (Wikipedia) state.	"Public space" is not a relevant criteria when considering trespass or other crimes/torts against property. The relevant criteria is who owns it and what they allow you to do on it. All land in the USA is owned by someone. That someone may be a government; that does not make it a public space - Camp David is owned by the US government; it is certainly not public. The owner of the land can decide (subject to the law) who has access to their land and in what circumstances. If they erect a fence then they are saying "You cannot access my land here" - if you ignore this then you are trespassing. This is true even if there are legitimate ways to access the land i.e. there is a place where there isn't a fence; to avoid trespass you would have to access the land from there. If you think of this in terms of a public building like a courthouse you are free to enter through the unlocked front doors but not by climbing through a window. The trespass is in the act of crossing the fence - that is the act that you have been implicitly denied permission to do. Being on one side or the other is not trespass. For the specific image that you show it is quite likely that those roads are owned by different people - the highway is probably owned by the state while the cul-de-sac is a local government road.	I see lots of possible issues here, including: Will the Apprendi decision be given retroactive effect? Were the constitutional issues raised at the time of trial, and if not will a court permit them to be raised later? Will a court agree with the law review publication? Will the facts in your case be sufficiently similar to the cited case? Beyond those, in a section 1983 suit many public employees have qualified immunity unless the legal point was already "well established" when the violation occurred. To pursue this you will need to work with a lawyer skilled in this area. No one on this forum can possibly given you a reliable answer as to whether you have a reasonable case.	TL;DR: It's controversial, but it looks like it also protects the rights for the individual. A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. While the exact explanation is a matter of opinion, it reads like it's a subject, a reason and a right to the subject. Your question is essentially whether or not the subject is a group, an individual or both. The definition of "Militia" can be multiple things though, due to the age of the 2nd Amendment it changed over time and wasn't very exact to begin with. "the Militia ... civilians primarily, soldiers on occasion." "the Militia comprised all males physically capable of acting in concert for the common defense." "And further, that ordinarily when called for service these men were expected to appear bearing arms supplied by themselves and of the kind in common use at the time." In a militia, the character of the laborer, artificer, or tradesman, predominates over that of a soldier." "the militia system ... implied the general obligation of all adult male inhabitants to possess arms." . This site explains it quite well in my opinion. "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." The first two phrases are related to each other. The fact that the third phrase is separated from the verbal phrase by a comma indicates that the verbal phrase has more than the third phrase as its subject. The abbreviated grammatical construction actually renders the meaning of the Second Amendment as: "Neither a well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, nor the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall be infringed." So what does the Supreme Court think about the explanation? Current Supreme Court case law defines the Second Amendment (second part) as protecting from infringement by the federal and state governments, the right of the individual to keep and to bear a weapon which is part of the ordinary military equipment or which use could contribute to the common defense. Three cases are cited: U.S. v. Planned Parenthood v Casey (120 L. Ed. 2d 674 (1992)) U.S. v. Verdugo-Urquidez (108 L. Ed. 2d 222 (1990)) U.S. v. Miller (83 L. Ed. 1207 (1939)) According to the SAF the Justice Department includes individuals to be protected by the 2nd Amendment. The Justice Department’s enlightened interpretation of the Second Amendment as an individual right was hailed today by the firearms civil rights organization that has supported a key Texas case that led to a federal appeals court ruling upholding the individual rights concept. And: “Today’s constitutional scholars, including Prof. Laurence Tribe, confirm that the Second Amendment is an individual right,” LaCourse continued. “For years, our own Justice Department has been deaf and blind to such scholarship, and the Fifth Circuit ruling forced the government to face the facts. Solicitor General Olson and Attorney General John Ashcroft deserve credit for their courageous reversal of four decades of constitutional denial.” While the above is biased, it does state the opinion of non-trivial parties.	What you describe is essentially a Warrant Canary, which is legally murky. From a functional point of view, it is breaking the non-disclosure requirements of the NSL by omission. Proponents of warrant canaries would point to case law such as West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette and Wooley v. Maynard to suggest that the Free Speech clause of the First Amendment restricts the government from compelling speech. New York Times Co. v. United States could also be read to prevent the prior restraint unless the existence of the NSL was successfully argued to be "crucial military information".
Could the Swedish government require a VPN to start logging user activity? This question is basically the same as this question, but for Sweden instead of the United States Could the US government force a VPN provider to start logging? If the government asked a VPN that was operating in Sweden to start logging user data, would the VPN operator be obligated to do so?	A VPN operator has to follow the laws in the country where they operate. If the laws in Sweden say that a VPN operator must keep logs of user activity, then they have to keep logs of user activity. If it makes you feel better: There are two kinds of VPN operators. Those that say they log, and those that lie about logging.	Since your consent is not required in Texas, revocation is irrelevant. Restrictions of use of recordings flow from the legal nature of the recording itself, so there is no provision saying, for example, that only one party needs to consent for just recording, but all parties must consent to make any use of the recording. Since these laws were devised to regulate the practice of wearing a wire and collecting evidence of crimes, requiring consent from all parties would be counterproductive to the purposes of the law. You could try drafting a contract where you pay people to not record you (anybody who doesn't sign, you shouldn't talk to them), but enforcement could be tricky, so I would not try a DIY contract: get a lawyer. You would have to show that you were harmed by them making an unconsented recording. It should be in the form of a contract where you give something of value in exchange for something of value, which is a thing typically enforced by the courts. Also bear in mind that even in an all-party state, if you know that you are being recorded, you cannot just say "I do not consent", you have to stop talking. Continuing to talk when notified that there is or may be a recording constitutes implied consent, which is why on the phone companies often announce via recording that the conversation may be monitored, and they do not ask "Do you consent". By not hanging up, you consented.	It is probably illegal under Indonesian law for you to launch a cyber-attack on a website that you believe violates Indonesian law, just as it is illegal for you to shoot a person for fraud. The Indonesian government reserves the right to judge guilt or innocence, and to mete out punishment, within Indonesia. It is definitely illegal under US law, also UK law and so on, to launch a cyber-attack on a website for some reason, so you can be prosecuted under the laws of that nation. You should then be concerned with the Law on Extradition (1979), noting that there might be a treaty but also Indonesian law allows extradition on the basis of the interest of Indonesia (as judged by government officials). Indonesian nationals do not enjoy immunity from extradition (as is the case in some countries). There is no extradition treaty between Indonesia and the US; there was one between the UK and Indonesia but I cannot determine whether it is still in force.	No, you do not need to show a privacy policy just for running a publicly accessible server, as long as any traffic data such as IP addresses is only used as strictly necessary for providing the service requested by the user. The background here is that while GDPR is a very general law, the ePrivacy directive (ePD) provides more details for telecommunication and information society services, which also includes SSH servers. Per ePD Art 6, traffic data may be used (1) for the purpose of the transmission/service or when the data has been anonymized, (2) for billing purposes, or (3) for marketing or value added services, when the user has given their consent. Information about the processing is only required under ePrivacy for cases (2) and (3), but not for processing that is strictly necessary. Now the tricky question is under what circumstances you can log (failed) log-in attempts or use tools like fail2ban. One argument is that such measures are strictly necessary to ensure the security of the communication, but these measures are evidently not necessary for performing the transmission in the sense of ePD. There are a few ways to resolve this: necessity has to be interpreted more broadly, and security measures are indeed necessary. For example, ePD Art 6(5) mentions fraud detection, without authorizing it explicitly. an IP address is effectively anonymized in the sense of the ePD since you do not realistically have means for linking the IP address to any particular person. This is a fairly weak argument, but could be supported by GDPR Recital 26 which defines anonymous data. Counterpoint: IP addresses are online identifiers which are explicitly included in the definition of personal data in GDPR Art 4(1). an IP address is not just traffic data that falls under the ePD, but also personal data that falls under the GDPR. When the IP address is merely used to make a transmission, it is not processed as personal data and only ePD concerns apply. But when we process it to ban the IP, it is processed as personal data under a legitimate interest. This processing does not fall under any of the categories from ePD Art 6, so that only GDPR concerns apply. These include a requirement to inform the data subject about the processing at the time in accordance with GDPR Art 13, which could be satisfied by displaying a link to a privacy policy in the course of the login process. For a legitimate interest argument, it also depends on the expectations of the typical data subject. Since some security measures such as security logs are normal and should be expected, a legitimate interest argument is likely to be strong. I think this is the correct conclusion, even though the “it's not traffic data, or at least doesn't fall under the ePD” argument is quite weak. It hinges on the assumption that security measures are not “value added services”. This fits the intent of the ePD, but not the actual definition of value added services. In any case, you do not need to ask for consent unless you're required to obtain consent e.g. under ePD Art 6(3) or because your processing of personal data relies on consent as the legal basis per GDPR Art 6. It also has to be noted that ePD has no immediate effect, but has to be implemented by each EU member state in national law. These laws can provide more specific guidance.	Not that I am aware of. A person who 'owns' a domain is entitled to utilize that domain including for the purposes of receiving emails. With physical mail, it is a crime in most countries to intentionally interfere with mail that is not addressed to you. For example - Australia. However, this is statute law and as such does not extend to emails - even if it did, if you own the domain then you are the person to whom it was addressed. I note that you seem to misunderstand "confidential" - this only arises in the context of a special relationship between the person transmitting the information and the person receiving it. Usually this is a contractual obligation between A and B but it can be imposed by law (e.g. doctor-patient, banker-client, lawyer-client, GDPR etc.). If A sends confidential (as between A & B) information to C, C is under no general obligation to keep it confidential if C has no relationship of confidentiality with A or B. If C discloses it and B suffers damage, B sues A for breach of confidence (or the government prosecutes A for breaking the law); B has no case against C. For your situation, where B has allowed A to send the information to an obsolete address then B has contributed to the breach to an extent that B would be extremely unlikely to succeed in a suit against A.	Is it actually necessary for businesses (such as a Small Town News USA Inc) that do not reside in EU to care about GDPR? Only if they offer goods/services to or monitor behavior of people in the EU (Art. 3(2)). Note that: having a commerce-oriented website that is accessible to EU residents does not by itself constitute offering goods or services in the EU. Rather, a business must show intent to draw EU customers, for example, by using a local language or currency. If it is then how (and by whom) would compliance be audited and/or enforced? Supervisory Authorities will care of it.	The GDPR only mentions cookies once (Recital 30). (It says that cookies are personal data if they are associated with natural persons.) As far as cookies go, nothing has really changed since 2002, and the exception granted in the EU cookie directive Article 5(3) is still valid: This shall not prevent any technical storage or access for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network, or as strictly necessary in order for the provider of an information society service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user to provide the service. If your site complies with the 2002 directive today, it will be GDPR compliant. All the "EU Cookie Law Compliance" plugins I've checked out let the admin configure the site to comply with the 2002 directive, and most let you choose between implicit consent (which is, and still will be, OK if you or third party services do not use cookies for profiling or to collect personal data), soft consent, or hard consent. The latter is however mandatory if you or third party services use cookies to for profiling or to collect personal data. However, if at least one of your cookies are used for profiling (and if you use Google analytics, you are), or if they are used to collect personal data, the exception from explicit consent quoted above does not apply and implicit consent (i.e.: "continued use of the site amounts to implicit consent to the use of cookies") has never been legal for the site. So while nothing has changed since 2002, there is a lot of misinformation about cookies floating on the Internet, and a lot of sites have their cookie banners set up wrong. You may want to do a new cookie audit for your site to verify that you comply with existing legislation.	It is the data controller's responsibility to respond to data subject requests. If you provide a B2B service, you are most likely a data processor who only acts on the controller's behalf, on the controller's explicit instruction. This will depend on your contract with the controllers, your customers (see Art 28). Typically a processor would merely forward any data subject requests to the controller. Only if you are contractually obligated to serve data subject requests would it be possible for you to respond directly. If a processor were to fulfil a data subject request on their own initiative, that would arguably be a GDPR violation. However, the processor has to assist their controller with compliance per Art 28(3)(e), e.g. by implementing an admin interface through which the controller can service GDPR requests. The core issue here is that controllers and processors have slightly different obligations in order to be GDPR compliant. Controllers owe compliance to the data subjects, but processors only act on the controller's behalf and owe compliance to their controllers – they have no direct relationship with data subjects. Assuming you were a controller, then yes, I would assume you would have to decrypt any data that you are able to decrypt in order to fulfil a data subject request. Access requests can only be denied if: Art 12(5): they are “manifestly unfounded or excessive” (which the controller has to demonstrate), or Art 15(4): the access would “adversely affect the rights and freedoms of others”. Art 11(2): the controller can demonstrate that they are actually unable to identify the data subject so no data subject rights in Art 15–20 apply. A request is not automatically excessive just because it will require substantial CPU time, this exception is more often triggered when data subjects request the same data very frequently (e.g. every week). You are not required to provide or search data that you don't have access to (e.g. E2E encrypted data). Your use of per-field encryption is a very strong security measure (depending on how keys are managed). But GDPR is not about achieving maximum technical data protection, but merely requires appropriate safety measures (see GDPR Chapter 4, especially Art 32). Asymmetric encryption of small fields within a database is unlikely to be appropriate, taking into account the cost of processing and the data subject's ability to exercise their rights. A different security measure to ensure that every business only sees the correct data would be through testing and code review of your SQL queries, and full disk encryption of the server storing the database. In practice, asymmetric encryption is most often just used to encrypt a symmetric key, which is then used for the actual data. But which measures are appropriate also depends on the risk to data subjects – your approach could make sense for very sensitive data. Art 14 does not play a role here. It is about transparency of processing: that you need to (a) notify the data subject that you're processing their data, if feasible, and that you (b) provide information about this processing, usually in form of a privacy policy. Art 14 is the pendant to Art 13, which applies when data is obtained directly from the data subject. The Art 15 right to access and the Art 20 right to data portability are distinct from the right to be informed. In any case, it is the controller's responsibility to fulfil these rights.
Do police have a civil duty to do their job? If someone steals my car and the police refuse to respond, and in fact prevent me from taking action to recover the car. Can police be sued for not doing their job? I.e., if I spend millions of dollars on a breach of trust case, will I win?	No. The police have no affirmative legally enforceable duty in the U.S., to the general public, or any particular person who invokes their assistance, to take action to enforce the law. The leading case on point is Town of Castle Rock v. Gonzales, 545 U.S. 748 (2005) (full text here). In this case, despite the urgent requests of the beneficiary of a Colorado domestic violence restraining order and the warning that a violent crime was imminent, the police in the Town of Castle Rock blew the woman off, and did nothing to prevent ex-husband who had illegally abducted her three daughters from murdering them even though they could easily have done so. The conclusion of the majority opinion by Justice Scalia states that (some citations and footnotes omitted): We conclude, therefore, that respondent did not, for purposes of the Due Process Clause, have a property interest in police enforcement of the restraining order against her husband. It is accordingly unnecessary to address the Court of Appeals’ determination that the town’s custom or policy prevented the police from giving her due process when they deprived her of that alleged interest. In light of today’s decision . . . the benefit that a third party may receive from having someone else arrested for a crime generally does not trigger protections under the Due Process Clause, neither in its procedural nor in its “substantive” manifestations. This result reflects our continuing reluctance to treat the Fourteenth Amendment as “ ‘a font of tort law,’” . . . but it does not mean States are powerless to provide victims with personally enforceable remedies. Although the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment and the Civil Rights Act of 1871, 17 Stat. 13 (the original source of §1983), did not create a system by which police departments are generally held financially accountable for crimes that better policing might have prevented, the people of Colorado are free to craft such a system under state law. Despite this concluding statement, there was a very solid argument that the law of the State of Colorado at the time had already been intended to do just that, but was not and would not be given effect. This U.S. Supreme Court case dealt with claims under federal law. There is no affirmative constitutional right to reclaim a stolen car or try to prevent your car from being stolen by a private individual, even if you have a legal right to do so under state law. So, you can't bring a federal civil rights action to enforce a deprivation of that right. The situation is even worse under state law, where police have absolute immunity from liability for all tort claims (i.e. roughly speaking, lawsuits to enforce rights other than contractual rights), unless it comes within a specific exception (of which are there are several) for cases of ordinary negligence such as car accidents when just driving around and not having emergency lights illuminated, or failing to clear ice from a sidewalk on police department property. Their boss may not take kindly to their indifference, but that is a purely discretionary issue for their boss in the context of an employer-employee relationship (often further limited by civil service protections for public employees and/or protections as members of a law enforcement union). The primary exception, not applicable in the example in the question, is that law enforcement officers have certain obligations to protect people who are in law enforcement custody from harm. This obligation is stronger prior to a criminal conviction, and is weaker after someone has been convicted of a crime and is serving a sentence of incarceration for that crime. If you brought a lawsuit of the type described in the question, you would probably lose the case on a motion to dismiss filed swiftly after you filed your lawsuit, and there is a very good chance that you would be compelled to pay the legal fees of the people whom you sued. Comparative Law Footnote Incidentally, while this rule of law is widely shared in countries with "common law" legal systems derived from English law, it is not the case with nearly the same degree of clarity in "civil law" legal systems based upon the civil codes found in Continental Europe such as France, Germany, Spain and Italy. Almost all countries in Latin America, most countries that are not former British colonies in Africa, and most countries in East Asia and Southeast Asia, are civil law countries. In civil law countries there generally are both statutory obligations and human rights law obligations for which the government or government officials can have liability for willfully refusing to enforce criminal laws. But even there it is, as a practical matter, difficult to enforce this obligation and is possible only in the most stark circumstances (such as the one described in the question where there is open defiance of this obligation without any understandable and legitimate contravening reason for failing to act).	You do not contact the District Attorney's Office, the Police do that. You call your police department and they will dispatch a car to you. Meet with them and tell them the case. They will take the report back and get it to the D.A.'s office. The D.A.'s office will decide if there is a case or not. If they find there is a case, they will contact you for the next steps. It starts with a phone call to the police.	What do I do? Contact the police, and henceforth make sure that all your interactions with the business owner are in writing. That evidence will facilitate the police investigation in this fact-intensive matter. Can I actually be arrested? Yes, you are at risk of getting arrested regardless of whether you eventually prove the business owner is the one who broke the law. Hence the importance of contacting the police before it proceeds on the basis of his fraudulent accusations. The business owner has committed crimes including --but not limited to-- forgery, larceny, and attempted extortion (People v. Ramos, 34 Misc.3d 914, 920 (2012) and Matter of Spargo, 68 A.D.3d 1242 (2009) reflect that also the attempt of extortion leads to being charges and convicted, respectively). The timing of events could be indicative of the extent to which the business owner's criminal conduct was premeditated. For instance, it is unclear whose idea was keep the vehicle in his company's name notwithstanding that you had not acquired the company yet. If it was his idea, this will tend to weaken his denials of mens rea (given his subsequent course of action). Likewise, it is unclear what dissuaded you from purchasing the business. You need to assess whether he lured you in order to get your money for the car, and thereafter cause you to change your mind about the business.	In general, people have less expectation of privacy in cars than in their homes. To challenge a search and/or seizure under the Fourth Amendment, a person must have standing - the right to sue (that is, you must have had a reasonable expectation of privacy in the place where the search happened; if you didn't, no standing - can't claim your privacy was violated if you had no privacy). The US Circuit Courts are split on the issue of unauthorized rental drivers and whether they have the same reasonable expectation of privacy as the authorized driver of a rental car would have. Some Circuits allow the unauthorized driver to challenge a car search if the authorized driver gave them permission. Some Circuits look only at the agreement and if the driver isn't authorized on that, they're out of luck. The 6th Circuit is more case-by-case, with a presumption that driver can't challenge the search that can be overcome based on the facts. (All this info from US v. Haywood, 324 F.3d 514) There's a current case before the Supreme Court (argued January 9, 2018), Byrd v. US, on this very issue. This SCOTUSblog page has a lot of information on the case. Edited to add: Texas is in the Fifth Circuit, which follows the rule that unauthorized drivers don't have standing to challenge a search/seizure even with the authorized driver's permission to drive the car; unauthorized drivers of rental cars don't have a reasonable expectation of privacy because they lack a possessory interest in the car and/or they're violating the rental agreement. Basically, even though it seems the cops' stop of the car would've violated the Fourth Amendment if he were the authorized driver, since this happened in Texas, he's not going to be able to challenge the stop. IMO, this is incredibly unjust especially when the cops admitted there was no probable cause, so hopefully the Supreme Court makes this rule obsolete and allows unauthorized drivers to exercise their Fourth Amendment rights. Some law review articles on the topic of unauthorized rental drivers: "Hertz and the Fourth Amendment" "Resolving a Three-Way Circuit Split"	Despite the lengthy background, the only question seems to be: Can a police officer lie about a consequence of a traffic violation they charge you with? As a matter of constitutional law in the United States, that answer is generally "yes." States can impose more limitations if they like. Only a small minority of states actually do so. Incidentally, an attorney, such as a deputy district attorney, is not allowed to lie about the consequences of a traffic violation, or anything else (even in extreme circumstances like a hostage situation). This violates the rules of professional conduct applicable to all attorneys. This sounds like a classic "driving while black" situation and is probably involves unconstitutional discrimination by a government official, although proving that in an individual case is virtually impossible.	It depends on the jurisdiction (naturally). The answer for Washington is "No, not exactly". RCW 9a.83.030 states that "The attorney general or county prosecuting attorney may file a civil action for the forfeiture of proceeds". The police can seize real property, but must file a lis pendens regarding the property. The bar that has to be cleared for forfeiture is "probable cause". The Institute for Justice has an extensive analysis of civil forfeiture, especially with a state by state summary (they aren't positionally neutral on forfeiture, but they are legally respectable). Then after a inevitable judgment (90 days if the judgment is sooner), the property is transferred. Notice is to be "served within fifteen days after the seizure on the owner of the property seized and the person in charge thereof and any person who has a known right or interest therein, including a community property interest", so they would notify Bob (assuming they know Bob is the real owner). Or, if Bob learns of the seizure that "If a person notifies the seizing law enforcement agency in writing of the person's claim of ownership or right to possession of property within forty-five days of the seizure in the case of personal property and ninety days in the case of real property, the person or persons shall be afforded a reasonable opportunity to be heard as to the claim or right". It is possible that Bob's property could be taken (nothing prevents it), especially if Bob's hands are unclean.	In theory its only a crime if you know, or reasonably suspect, that it is stolen. The fact that you have to ask means that you have some level of suspicion, so that's not good to start with. In practice merely being investgated by the police will bring you a world of hurt long before it gets to trial. How much can you afford to spend on legal fees, and will you be able to make bail?	"I don't know" is a better answer than most, but you should only say that if it's the truth. The three most important rules to follow when being questioned by a police officer are as follows: Do not lie. Do not incriminate yourself. Be cooperative (to the extent that you're not lying or incriminating yourself). "Do you know why I pulled you over?" or "Why do you think I stopped you?" are perfect opening questions for law enforcement to ask because there is no good answer. Any answer you give puts you at a disadvantage for the rest of the stop because you've tacitly accepted the officer's assumption that you did something wrong. The best response would be to simply reply back with their own question. "Why did you pull me over, officer?" If you say it right, it's rational, polite, and cooperative without actually answering anything. Your position from the very beginning should be that you did nothing wrong (even if you know that you did). It's the officer's job to make the case. It's not your job to help them.
Can I use a registered trademark in a software to indicate a file type? I develop a software that contains a file viewer. For the sake of usability I would like to indicate also the "file type". Let's assume I display a Photoshop file. Am I allowed to refer to the file as "Adobe Photoshop File"? Technically I use a trademark in my application which I don't own. I am just wondering what my options are here. Thank you!	Under United States law: Using a trademark solely to refer to files compatible with a trademarked program would be allowed under the doctrine of nominative fair use. The Ninth Circuit sets out the three-part test for nominative fair use in New Kids on the Block v. New America Pub, 971 F.2d 302 (9th Cir. 1992): "[T]he product or service in question must be one not readily identifiable without use of the trademark" "[O]nly so much of the mark or marks may be used as is reasonably necessary to identify the product or service" "[T]he user must do nothing that would, in conjunction with the mark, suggest sponsorship or endorsement by the trademark holder." Simply referring to the name of a trademarked program to describe its file format (and not doing so in a way that suggests "sponsorship or endorsement by the trademark holder," such as slapping a "Certified Adobe Photoshop Compatible" sticker on the box or something like that) would meet these requirements. The International Trademark Association elaborates a bit on the doctrine and gives some examples here.	Your question lacks some details. So you registered a domain name, and later find someone else used that domain name (in the past) for a hobby website? Then no, you don't need to worry about it. If that person has a current trademark on the name used in the domain name, and your website provides/sells products or services in the same area, then you could have a problem. But that doesn't sound like it's the issue.	You infringe a trademark when you use it in a way that allows confusion between your goods and services and their goods and services. Trademarks are limited by geography (although global brands are ... global) and industry. You can use the word “apple” to sell, say, apples or plumbing services, but not computers or consumer electronics. You can also use the trademark Apple to identify goods and services made by Apple - because that’s what a trademark is for. You can’t use it in a way that people could be confused that your goods and services are their goods and services or are related to or endorsed by them.	The images as displayed are quite similar, similar enough that one could violate the copyright of the other. But that is not enough to know if there was in fact a copyright infringement. There are several possibilities: Although using different names, the developers could in fact be the same company. One developer might have obtained permission to use the image from the other. Both images might be based on the same 3rd-party image which both are using with permission. Both images might be based on a public domain image. Copyright is only infringed if a protected work, or a derivative version of the work, is used without permission from the copyright holder. Without knowing who the rights-holder is, and if permission has been obtained, one cannot know if an infringement has occurred. There is no independent or 3rd-party entity that checks for copyright infringements. By the way, the similarity here is close enough that there might also be an issue of trademark infringement. But again, infringement requires use of a protected mark without permission, and so some of the same possibilities arise. (The source of a trademarked logo doe not matter. On the other hand there cannot be trademark infringement unless the mark has been registered, or actually used in commerce. If the same image is used on products in very different industries, say games and hammers, there may or may not be infringement.)	is contract text itself subject to copyright? What are my options? It largely depends on the originality of your contract. C & J Management Corp. v. Anderson, 707 F.Supp.2d 858, 862 (2009) points to multiple references against preclusion of "a copyrightable interest in a contract". But you would need to prove that your competitor copied "original elements" of your contract including "a minimum degree of creativity and originality required to support a valid copyright". See Donald v. Uarco Business Forms, 478 F.2d 764, 766 (1973). Your post provides no information that would help identifying or ruling out this issue in your matter. Without realizing, you might have paid dearly for boilerplate language that your lawyer copied from somewhere else. Indeed, there is so much regurgitation and copy/pasting in the legal "profession" (judges included, as is notorious in judicial opinions they release and in the similarities --verbatim-- among the procedure law of many, many U.S. jurisdictions). That regurgitation is not bad in and of itself, though, since what matters is the expeditious administration of justice and the protection of your rights, rather than obtaining creative expressions authored by some lawyer. You might end up wasting valuable energy and money if you went after the competitor for something like this without first assessing the extent of originality in your contract. Focus instead on the much more detrimental fact that your competitor "plays dirty in general".	The software being free and open source has no impact on whether it infringes any patents or violates any copyrights. Copyrights attach to fixed representations of creative work in a tangible medium (e.g., the actual code and graphical elements of the software in question). As long as you aren't copying the copyrighted work of someone else, you should be in the clear. So, if you write your own code from scratch, or rely on code that you're allowed to use (e.g., "free" software with a permissive license that allows it to be used freely), you should be fine. On the other hand, if you copy a chunk of code that you aren't allowed to use, and then change the variable names so that it's superficially different, you're likely violating someone's copyright. Patents are a much more difficult question. To determine whether you would infringe any patents, you would have to read the independent claims of every patent that might be related. If you perform all the steps of any one of those claims, then you are infringing that claim (and therefore, the patent in which it is found). Unfortunately, this is much easier said than done. First, it may be difficult to search for all the potentially relevant patents, and once you've found them, there may be far too many to read. Second, claims are written in a type of language that is specific to patents, and someone without experience in patent law may not understand them correctly. Finally, the terms in the claims may not take on their plain English meaning, but rather may have been defined by the language in the rest of that patent, so it's possible that you might incorrectly think you were in the clear based on a misunderstanding arising from that. All that said, it may be best to go ahead with implementing an idea and then waiting to see what happens. Chances are that the implementation will arguably infringe some patent in some way, no matter what's done. But chances are also high that there will never be any worrisome enforcement action taken against it by a patent owner, simply due to the difficulty and expense associated with enforcing patent rights.	No It says right on the page you linked: These downloads are not public domain, as they are parts of content that has already been licensed and distributed. Although using these downloads may be permissible as long as the project itself falls under the rule of "Fair Use," it is ill-advised to use these downloads for any project intended for profitable gain or commercial advertisement, unless otherwise stated by Kyutwo.com.	All of your works would be considered to be a derivative work. This is because your work, is based on the work of someone else's. A good test for this to see if something is a derivative work is to see whether the new work can effectively exist without the original. Most copyright laws worldwide are similar, thanks to the Berne Convention for copyrighted works. Since derivative works are normally a right that is exclusive to the copyright holder, you can't make such works without permission (generally through a license or expiry of copyright). So now, let's take a look: The Mona Lisa was made hundreds of years ago. It's definitely in the public domain. You're in no breach of copyright laws here. Yes, of course. Microsoft retains copyright on their icons, and possibly trademarks as well. However, they may have trademark guidance that allows you to use their icons - as long as you follow it. Likely the same as microsoft - you can assume it's similar for most large companies. Code is copyrighted as a literary work - the layout and visual aspect is copyrighted as an artistic work. That artist retains copyright, unless you obtain the work with a license, or the copyright is expired. If you create a derivative work, you infringe on their rights.
What residents are required to do while living in the USA What's missing from the list below? All the online resources seem devoted to immigration requirements. Regardless of how you came to live in the USA, what are subsequent required actions that essentially every resident must deal with? (If it's not detailed on this list, you'll probably never be concerned with it, eg, gun registration laws and other situations that don't apply to most residents. ) Even if you obey all state and federal laws and therefore are otherwise left alone, these are items essentially everyone still gets poked with regularly: Federal requirements If I'm a paid employee, I must contribute a portion of each paycheck to Medicare, Social Security, and federal tax withholding. I must file a federal income tax statement each year or meet required exceptions. If I'm not a citizen, I must get a visa or green card. If a male citizen, I must register for the draft at age 18. I must reply to inquires by the Census Bureau. State requirements In most states, if I'm a paid employee, I must contribute a portion of each paycheck to worker disability insurance and state tax withholding. In most states, I must file a state income tax statement each year or meet required exceptions. In most states, I have to pay city and/or county tax on many categories of items I purchase. As a child, I must attend school or be home-schooled. As a child, I must be vaccinated or get an exemption. I must pay tax each year on property I own. If I drive a vehicle, I must get a license and pay insurance or a fee/bond. If I own a vehicle, I must register it and pay fees. In some states, I must pay for health insurance or pay a penalty or get an exemption. I must appear for jury duty or get an exemption.	The list is enormous. For example, if subpoenaed to appear in a legal case, you must appear pursuant to the order. If ordered to pay child support, you must pay child support. If you are an executive in a company, you may not act on the basis of non-private information regarding the company. Your comment that "If it's not detailed on this list, you'll probably never be concerned with it, eg, gun registration laws and other situations that don't apply to most residents" applies to a number of things on the list, for example most people are not called for jury duty, probably the majority of people are not subject to property tax requirements. most people do not have to register for the draft. By adding "If X...", you can make these into universal rules – everybody that meets the filing requirements must file federal income taxes. Non-citizens have a few additional requirements, but they are a drop in the bucket compared to the general case, obey the law which applies to everyone.	Whether or not you are a DACA recipient, if you are in the US illegally, the path to citizenship is very narrow, and money will be of little use. It could be used to pay for an attorney who could represent a person that was already qualified, but cannot create qualification. A person might petition for "cancellation of removal" if they have lived in the US continuously for at least 10 years, are of "good moral character", have not been convicted of a crime and show that removal would result in "exceptional and extremely unusual hardship" to the alien's spouse, parent, or child who is U.S. citizen or legal permanent resident". However, there are caps on the number of such cancellations that can be issued (4,000 annually). Also, you don't "apply" for non-LPR cancellation, you petition for it as a defense when you are being deported. If a person is not illegally present, money could help in obtaining an EB-5 visa, where a person invests in a job-creating enterprise that hires at least 10 people, investing a minimum of $500,000 for "targeted" areas or $1M otherwise.	I don't know about that particular case, but you are basically right: In Switzerland, if you want to apply for citizenship, you apply for it in the municipality first. Everybody having the citizenship of the municipality has the swiss citizenship as well. In theory, the canton and the state also have something to say, but that's irrelevant for most applications. This has historic reasons, but going into the details is beyond the scope of this question. Fact is, that every municipality has its own rules, about when and how applications are handled. This has been unified a bit in recent years, but some things still differ. That is for instance, how many years you need to have lived there or who decides your application. There were municipalities (actually most) where the final decision was made using a public vote. This practice was declared illegal by the federal court some years ago, because becoming a citizen is a formal governmental act, and as such a reason needs to be given for turning an application down. This is inherently impossible with a vote. Since that law decision, most municipalities have shifted the responsibility to a committee for citizenship applications. The public can still bring in arguments, but they need to be justified (ie. if somebody knows about the applicant being a wanted criminal somewhere). Consequently, you can now call for a court to check whether the given reasoning is correct and just, if you are turned down.	See https://www.fec.gov/help-candidates-and-committees/candidate-taking-receipts/who-can-and-cant-contribute/, the section on "Foreign Nationals". The Commission stated, in AO 1998-14, that the use of any surname on a contribution check (or similar instrument) would not, by itself, give any reason to inquire as to the person’s nationality. Nonetheless, the Commission advised the committee to take the following minimally intrusive steps to ensure that the contributions it received did not come from foreign nationals: Ensure that public political ads and solicitations directed to audiences outside the U.S. contain a summary of the foreign national prohibition of 52 U.S.C. § 30121. Make further inquiry into the nationality of the contributor if the committee receives a contribution postmarked from any non U.S. territory. Make further inquiry into the nationality of the contributor if the committee receives a contribution indicating that either the bank or the account owner has a foreign address. In all of the these instances, if the contribution is submitted along with credible evidence (for example, a copy of a valid U.S. passport) that the contributor is a U.S. citizen, a U.S. national or a permanent resident alien, no further inquiry need be made. However, if the committee has actual knowledge that the contributor is in fact a foreign national, it may not rely on these documents as a defense. So, if the donor has been informed of the rules and gives a US address, the campaign can assume that they are eligible to donate, unless the campaign has actual knowledge that they aren't. If they give a non-US address, the campaign is supposed to get some other proof of nationality. By the way, that page also explains that the first part of your question is slightly wrong. It isn't only US citizens who are allowed to donate - US nationals (a rather rare category consisting mostly of people from certain US territories) and permanent residents are also eligible.	This article goes into Miranda variants in some detail. The basic answer is that there are no SCOTUS-mandated formal requirements on the warning, and there exist up to 900 variants of the warning. The court only requires clear communication of those rights and appropriate waiver of them. The specific requirements, if any, are set by the jurisdiction. Since this is a constitutional issue, every jurisdiction must satisfy SCOTUS (and not the state's legislature). Some jurisdictions include a statement about providing a lawyer "if and when you go to court", which was found in Duckworth v. Eagan, 492 U.S. 195 to not render the warning inadequate (although it suggests that you only get a lawyer when you go to court). This gives rise to variants in New Jersey, Nevada, Oklahoma, and Alaska (but apparently not in Indiana where the warning originally arose). The city of Seattle policy is stated here. When advising a person of Miranda, officers will include the following statements: “You have the right to remain silent.” “Anything you say can be used against you in a court of law.” “You have the right at this time to talk to a lawyer and have your lawyer present with you while you are being questioned.” “If you cannot afford to hire a lawyer, one will be appointed to represent you before questioning, if you wish.” Officers will establish that the suspect understands in one of two ways: By asking “Do you understand” after each of the four Miranda warnings, or By asking, “Do you understand each of these rights?” after reading all the warnings. Officers may then begin asking questions. If the arrestee makes a comment that causes the officer to believe that the arrestee might be requesting an attorney, officers will ask the arrestee to confirm, with a “yes” or “no” answer, whether the arrestee is requesting an attorney. There is no verbatim text that must be strictly adhered to, and the officer just has to "include the statements". The following section speaks of including an additional clause when "reading" Miranda to juveniles, but the previous section does not say that you have to literally read the warning from a card. Analogously, pattern jury instructions are theoretically read verbatim from a script, and yet they are not (always?, ever?) transcribed into the record exactly as dictated by the jury instruction committee. In general, verbatim language is not legally required, especially in speech.	There are a number of issues here. The question mentions: Taxes, which I presume must be authorized and regulated by the US Constitution, but I don't know the details Not exactly. The states existed before the Federal government. They are not created by the Federal Constitution, nor authorized by it. A number of restrictions on state powers and actions are specified by the Federal Constitution, and a number of others are imposed by Federal law. (the Federal courts have found implied restrictions beyond the explicitly stated ones.) But there is no Federal provision granting states the power to impose taxes, only restrictions on that pre-existing power. States cannot impose taxes so as to violate rights federally guaranteed, or to place unreasonable burdens on the exercise of those rights. For example, states cannot impose different taxes or tax rates on a racial basis. States cannot impose different taxes on residents of other states temporarily present in, or doing business in the state. States cannot impose different taxes on people newly moved there from other states, compared to long-established residents. State taxes must not violate the Equal Protection clause. However, states may choose the type and amount of taxes to impose. They can use sales tax, VAT tax, property tax, income tax, excise tax, flat tax, or any combination that their legislatures pass. Different taxes may be imposed on different professions or kinds of businesses. Does the US Constitution guarantee all citizens have the natural right to conduct their own business affairs? Not as such, no. The Due Process and Equal Protection clauses limit to some extent the ability of a state to prohibit a particular business on a whim. But when a state asserts that a particular business is harmful, and demonstrates a plausible basis for that view, so that the law passes "Rational basis" review, the state can prohibit it, or heavily regulate it, or license it. If so, does a citizen lose the right to legally own and operate a business if they cannot afford requisite state or local business license fees? A state may require a license to engage in a particular occupation, and may require a fee, one-time or recurring, high or low, for that license. In addition, a tax may be imposed on those in a particular business or profession, which is not imposed on other kinds of business. For example, in many states, lawyers must pay an annual license fee, or they are not allowed to practice. So must many other regulated professions, such as hairstylist. One who cannot afford the fee may not engage in the business or profession. The state may waive or reduce fees for those too poor to afford them, but need not do so, and many states do not so so. Similarly, the state may charge a fee for a driver's license, and one who cannot pay it may not legally drive. Likewise, does a citizen lose the right to utilize the court system to petition for a redress of grievances, if they cannot afford the requisite court fees? Many states have provisions waiving or lowering court fees for those who cannot afford them, but in most cases this is applied only in severe cases, say where a person would have to go without food to afford court fees. There have been a few federal cases requiring fee waivers for those who cannot afford court fees, mostly in connection with criminal defendants. There is not currently a general federal rule requiring court access for those who cannot afford court fees. Perhaps there should be. A case could be made that Equal Protection requires this, but Federal Courts have not so held. Federal courts have held that holding people in jail or prison because they truly cannot afford fines, bail, or court fees is an unconstitutional denial of Equal Protection. But states need not waive such fees; they can be deferred and charged should the person earn enough money to (just barely) afford them. Even this rule is not yet invariably enforced, and many state courts routinely ignore it. By the way "petition for a redress of grievances" doe snot normally refer to bringing a court case, but to asking a legislature to change a law, or asking an administrator or executive to exercise permitted discretion in a particular way. And lastly, if a citizen is convicted of a crime or infraction, and the sentence requires the convict to utilize government services (e.g. prison services, probation services, registration services, etc.); under the US Constitution, can state government agencies providing these services legally require the convict to pay fees for these services (e.g. prison service fees, probation service fees, registration service fees), if these fees were not explicitly included in the sentence as fines? Yes it can impose such fees, but usually only when neither the convict nor his or her dependents will be impoverished by such fees, as I understand it. If a state attempts to pass or enforce state legislation dictating such fees, should this legislation generally be struck down as unconstitutional? Such laws will not be held unconstitutional by US Federal courts under the Federal Constitution, unless they are found to violate Equal Protection, Due Process, or other specifically imposed restrictions on the state. For example, fees which were in practice imposed on people of one religion, but not those of another, would be struck down. But a fee imposed on everyone will not usually be overturned. "The law in its majestic equality forbids the rich as well as the poor to steal bread from shops, beg in the streets, and sleep under bridges." -Anatole France	He has to follow the law of the country he is in and those of which he is a citizen. A citizen is subject to their country's jurisdiction wherever they are, however, some laws are only enforced within a nation's boundaries and some have extra-territorial application. 18 U.S. Code § 2423 - Transportation of minors covers the US law (I don't speak Hungarian or Polish so I leave that up to you). It says: (c) Engaging in Illicit Sexual Conduct in Foreign Places.— Any United States citizen or alien admitted for permanent residence who travels in foreign commerce or resides, either temporarily or permanently, in a foreign country, and engages in any illicit sexual conduct with another person shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 30 years, or both. 18 U.S. Code § 2243 - Sexual abuse of a minor or ward gives the age of a minor as anyone under 12 years old and anyone under 16 unless the perpetrator is not more than 4 years older. For your 21+ year old this would be anyone under 16.	Conventional guns are not generally "registered" in America. (Only a few jurisdictions like NYC, DC, and maybe still Chicago, have laws requiring licensing of gun owners and registration of firearms.) The interstate transfer of guns between individuals/owners is regulated by federal law and must be conducted by Federal Firearm Licensees (FFLs). Many states also regulate certain intrastate transfer of guns (e.g., handguns, or transfers to individuals who are not immediate family members). For a fee any FFL local to you can ensure that any transfer is compliant with local, state, and federal law. In general inheritance and transfer between family members is not restricted, so long as the receiver is not a "prohibited person" ineligible to possess firearms. 18 USC §922(a)(3)(A) explicitly allows for the interstate transportation of firearms acquired "by bequest or intestate succession." In the situation described, if you are not a prohibited person, you could "inherit" the gun in Florida without any paperwork and simply mail it to yourself in Virginia (ref ATF FAQ #6). If you are uncertain or want to ensure that no laws are broken in that process, have the gun mailed to an FFL local to where you live, and pay the FFL to "transfer" it to you.
Is it illegal in any western jurisdiction to hold a fraudulently obtained but legitimately issued passport of another country? Are there any jurisdictions in western society where it's illegal to hold the passport of another country which was obtained fraudulently (either through lying or other means)? To be clear, the passport itself was officially issued by the issuing country, so the passport is legitimate, but the details used to apply for the passport were wilfully incorrect i.e. a genuine passport was obtained fraudulently. Would holding this passport be illegal in any western country? I'm not asking about using this passport to gain entry to another country, as that would be illegal under several circumstances. This question arises from a situation described in a Travel SE question, where the original poster in one western country used the real-but-fraudulent passport of a second country to apply for a visa to a third country, and was refused.	UK, Identity Documents Act 2010, false identity documents etc: Possession of false identity documents etc with improper intention (1) It is an offence for a person (“P”) with an improper intention to have in P's possession or under P's control— (a) an identity document that is false and that P knows or believes to be false, (b) an identity document that was improperly obtained and that P knows or believes to have been improperly obtained, or (c) an identity document that relates to someone else. Each of the following is an improper intention— (a) the intention of using the document for establishing personal information about P; (b) the intention of allowing or inducing another to use it for establishing, ascertaining or verifying personal information about P or anyone else. ... Possession of false identity documents etc without reasonable excuse (1) It is an offence for a person (“P”), without reasonable excuse, to have in P's possession or under P's control— (a) an identity document that is false, (b) an identity document that was improperly obtained, ... Such an identity document could be an "an immigration document", "a passport issued by or on behalf of the authorities of a country or territory outside the United Kingdom or by or on behalf of an international organisation" or "a document that can be used (in some or all circumstances) instead of a passport" (e.g. a European country's identity card).	I was told that when you sign something in the UK, then it is your signature, no matter what name you are using. So if you sign a contract with my name, then it's your signature and you are bound by the contract. Things might be invalid because you signed and not me. For example, if you sign a contract selling my car in my name, then that contract is not valid. If some document needs signatures of two witnesses, and you sign with your name, then with my name, then there are no two signatures. As far as I know, signing under a false name is not in itself criminal, but might very well be supporting fraud, for example, and might therefore be illegal. The contract for the sale of my car, signed by you using my name, would very likely be part of fraud and therefore criminal.	england-and-wales Although there's the potential for money laundering the more obvious offence is Handling Stolen Goods contrary to s.22 of the Theft Act 1968 (1) A person handles stolen goods if (otherwise than in the course of the stealing) knowing or believing them to be stolen goods he dishonestly receives the goods, or dishonestly undertakes or assists in their retention, removal, disposal or realisation by or for the benefit of another person, or if he arranges to do so. (2) A person guilty of handling stolen goods shall on conviction on indictment be liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding fourteen years. Note that any criminal liability will depend on one's mens rea (i. e. their guilty knowledge) when obtaining the stolen item. That said - the authorities, after considering all the evidence and circumstances, may prefer to use the recipient as a witness against the person from whom they received the artwork instead of prosecuting them.	In general, signing means you cannot deny the accuracy of the information in the future In general, there is no prohibition on knowingly stating falsehoods under the law. That is, it is not illegal to lie. Exceptions include when you are under penalty of perjury (e.g. on oath in court), when you are making certain declarations to government (e.g. your tax return), you are acting dishonestly to cause gain or harm others (e.g. fraud), etc. However, by signing the document, you may create a legal fact that is independent of the real-world facts. For example, if you sign a receipt for $1,000 then you create a legal presumption that you received $1,000 even if there was actually only $500 in the envelope. You would need some pretty spectacular evidence to overcome that presumption. Now, I don’t know what you are signing that has factual errors in it but, if they are material errors, don’t. Just don’t.	It doesn't really require anything beyond your say-so that it is what you say it is; that would be enough to satisfy the requirement for authentication. From there though, as with any evidence, it's going to be up to a jury to decide how much weight to give the evidence. So the more you can show them to prove that the record is real -- and to knock down any questions the opposing party will raise -- the more likely they are to believe it. So if you just bring a printout that looks like it could easily have been forged, the jury may be thinking about that. If you can bring in a data forensics expert to say the document couldn't have been faked, that's probably going to help. Addendum: As a practical matter, I wouldn't expect this to be much of an issue. Unless you're dealing with a savvy opposing party, the authenticity of e-mails seems to be generally assumed. Courts (1) generally assume that parties aren't perpetrating frauds; and (2) are generally run by judges with little to no technical savvy, who don't realize that one could forge an e-mail, let alone all the different ways it could be done. I've personally entered countless e-mail printouts without them being questioned, even though either party could have just gone down into the e-mail thread and changed what the other side had said earlier in the conversation. To avoid the issue, though, it might be that sending the e-mail to a Gmail account would elimimate the question.	I can’t speak for Indonesia but if you did this in Australia you would be a criminal. You either committed fraud or are an accessory to fraud. You would probably be considered an accessory at and after the fact which means you are subject to the same maximum penalty as if you had committed the fraud yourself - 10 years in jail. In addition, you are liable to repay the money taken, jointly and severally with your ‘friend’. However, if they can only find you, you cannot recover from your ‘friend’ as you were engaged in a joint criminal enterprise. Scams such as you describe are distressingly common and many people fall for them. As such, assuming the court accepted your story (because you might actually be the fraudster and have just made it up) you would be unlikely to get close to the full sentence and if you caught the judge on a good day, might even escape jail. If you are lucky, the jury might acquit, even though, on the facts, they shouldn’t - juries do what juries do. If you’re really lucky the police might decide not to prosecute.	As for a member of the Universal Postal Union, what repercussions will occur for country B? None. Are they allowed to keep stealing stuff at the sender insurer's expense? Well, country B isn't stealing stuff. Bad actors in the employe of country B are stealing stuff. This is a matter for law enforcement in country B. If country B is endemically corrupt as seems to be implied, then it is likely that the bad actors will continue to be bad actors. As for the insurer, they are in the business of selling insurance against theft (among other things) and they will take this into account in setting their premiums. Will they face any penalties (e.g. banned from the Union) that would encourage them to hold their customs to account? All member countries of the UN are entitled to be members of the UPU and it seems unlikely that such minor issues could lead to expulsion from the UN - nation-states that have committed genocide are still UN members after all. Since the UPU appears to produce more upsides than downsides, being one of, if not the single most successful and universally adopted international treaty in history this is just one of the minor annoyances.	The law is not settled and will shortly be before the High Court (sitting as the Court of Disputed Returns) but theoretically: yes! The provision on Disqualification is s44, specifically subsection (i): Any person who: (i) is under any acknowledgment of allegiance, obedience, or adherence to a foreign power, or is a subject or a citizen or entitled to the rights or privileges of a subject or a citizen of a foreign power, shall be incapable of being chosen or of sitting as a senator or a member of the House of Representatives. Which, on the face of it, makes eligibility to sit in the Australian parliament dependent on the citizenship laws of every other country in the world: all 195 of them. Indeed, right now, any citizen of Australia (which is itself a qualification by virtue of s16 or s34), is allowed to live and work in New Zealand, and to vote after a year's residence - that is they are "entitled to the rights or privileges of a subject [but not a citizen] of a foreign power". Therefore, interpreted that way, no Australian is entitled to sit in parliament. Of course, a simple referendum1 could change the Constitution to fix that - except, a referendum must be called by parliament and we no longer have one. Personally, I think it is unlikely2 that the High Court will rule in such a way that would plunge the nation into a constitutional crises by deciding no one can sit in parliament or that who can sit is determined by the laws of foreign nations. Notwithstanding, at present there are 5 MPs who have been referred to the High Court (2 of whom have already resigned), 2 more who will be referred when parliament resumes in September, 21 known to have been born overseas who have not confirmed that they have renounced any foreign citizenship they might have and an unknown number who may have foreign citizenship by descent. Each of the cases is distinct: some were born overseas, some have foreign citizenship by descent, one is a 3rd generation Australian whose mother registered him as an Italian citizen when he was a child (17) and he claims he never knew. How the High Court will rule will almost certainly vary with the particular circumstances but its anyone's guess what they will decide. However, it appears that the drafters of the constitution intended that it should capture all dual-citizens, not just those who sought dual-citizenship by a deliberative act. If a person is found to be ineligible then different things happen depending on if they ware a Senator or a Member of the House of Representatives. For a Senator, the High Court would recount the results of the election - because of the strange way voting works for the Senate, only educated guesses can be made about who would replace whom (especially since the same citizen issue may apply to other candidates on the ticket). For a Member of the House of Representatives, a by-election would be held - because the Liberal/National government has a majority of 1 and 3 of their members are in the gun the results will be ... interesting. 1 Referenda in Australia are not simple. The Australian Constitution is specifically designed to be difficult to change while at the same time granting broad powers to parliament. It takes a nationwide vote and must be carried by a majority of voters nationwide and a majority in a majority of the six states (i.e. 4 or more). Since federation in 1901 there have been 44 referenda of which only 8 have been carried. In is generally accepted that a referendum is impossible to pass unless it has bi-partisan support: and sometimes not even then. 2 And by "unlikely" I mean "impossible" - a conclusion that the constitution must be read in such a way that parliamentary democracy becomes impossible would be contrary to law. Update in light of the High Court’s ruling: No Providing a potential parliamentarian has taken “all reasonable steps” to renounce foreign allegiance they are permitted to serve even if the foreign power refuses to allow them to renounce citizenship. In practice, this means writing to the foreign embassy and renouncing citizenship.
Do the Postmaster's actionsviolate 18 U.S. Code § 595. Interference by administrative employees of Federal, State, or Territorial Governments? According to the US Code Title 18 Section 595: Whoever, being a person employed in any administrative position by the United States, or by any department or agency thereof...uses his official authority for the purpose of interfering with, or affecting, the nomination or the election of any candidate for the office of President, Vice President, Presidential elector, Member of the Senate, Member of the House of Representatives, Delegate from the District of Columbia, or Resident Commissioner, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both. I'm not a legal expert, but as far as I can tell, Postmaster DeJoy is a person employed by the United States government, is using his official authority as leader of the USPS, for the purpose of affecting the 2020 presidential elections by reducing the capabilities of the USPS to process mail-in ballots. Am I missing something here, or are his actions indeed a violation of federal law?	Probably not There's a difference between knowing DeJoy is guilty, and proving he is guilty. The first is a matter of your personal views on epistemology; the second is a matter of law. The statute says an official cannot use "his official authority for the purpose of interfering with..." In other words, in order to charge DeJoy, the government needs evidence that he is making these changes for the purpose of interfering with the election. According to news reports, DeJoy claims his purpose is legitimate: To balance the USPS budgets. He claims the PO is losing so much money that drastic cuts are required unless Congress increases funding. Given that the USPS is running a deficit, it will very hard to prove that DeJoy's explanation is just a smokescreen, that his real purpose is to screw up the election. So, unless there is a smoking gun, it seems likely he would not be charged, let alone found guilty. Note: Edited for clarity in light of comments	Art II, Sec 2, Cl 1 of The Constitution says of the president "and he shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment". The Constitution does not state any further restrictions on the presidential power, and there are no statutory limits, because, as observed in Ex parte Garland, 71 U.S. 333 The power of pardon conferred by the Constitution upon the President is unlimited except in cases of impeachment. It extends to every offence known to the law, and may be exercised at any time after its commission, either before legal proceedings are taken or during their pendency, or after conviction and judgment. The power is not subject to legislative control. Accordingly, presidents have written pardons on and with numerous different writing instruments. Insofar as there are no constitutional restrictions beyond the aforementioned, it is not required that a pardon be signed, or that it be on a tangible semi-permanent medium. It is impossible to know what such a pardon tweet would look like, beyond the limit on length. The one place where a presidential signature is required is under the Presentment Clause, that when presented with a bill that passed the two houses of Congress, "If he approve he shall sign it". Such a signature need not be actually written by the president, it may and often is written by an autopen. The question of the legality of autopen signatures for bills has not been presented to SCOTUS, but the Department of Justice has issued an opinion (July 7, 2005) that it is legal. I have failed to locate a repository of presidential pardons (the actual documents), so I do not know if, so far, all presidential pardons were written down and signed, though I would expect it to be so. The Arpaio pardon was signed (or auto-signed), likewise Obama's final mass-pardon on Jan 17, and previous Obama pardons were, but pre-Obama, DOJ does not provide any document.	You aren't allowed to open it or destroy it. (18 USC 1702). USPS says (at http://faq.usps.com/): If the mailpiece is delivered to the correct location but the recipient on the mailpiece does not reside at the address: Write "Not at this address" on mailpiece. Don't erase or mark over the address. Provide the mailpiece to your mailperson or drop into a Collection Box receptacle. Destroying mail that was not intended for you may be prohibited by US laws. Willfully destroying mail is an act that may be punishable by the Federal Government.	It isn't a double negative, although it is a bit of an usual phrasing. The context that you are overlooking is that the United States Constitution does not say who is or is not allowed to vote because that authority is not vested in the federal government. There is no affirmative right to vote in the United States Constitution, there is merely a right not to be denied the right to vote for certain particular reasons. Responsibility for determining who is allowed to vote is vested in state governments. The right to vote for the House of Representatives is derivative of that decision pursuant to Article I, Section 2, Clause 1 of the United States Constitution which states: The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States, and the Electors in each State shall have the Qualifications requisite for Electors of the most numerous Branch of the State Legislature. The 19th Amendment prohibits state's from denying the right to vote on account of sex, but does not prohibit states from denying the right to vote on account of other grounds not specified in the 19th Amendment, such as property ownership, education, criminal record, possession of identification, etc. When the 19th Amendment was ratified, in 1920, some states (e.g. Colorado) already allowed women to vote, while others did not. Similarly, when the 15th Amendment was ratified some states prevented people from voting based upon race and others did not. And, so on. In practice, the modern trend is for states to enact laws allowing all U.S. citizens age eighteen or over to vote, subject primarily to limitations that vary quite a bit based upon criminal record or incarceration status. But, historically, when the power to set the franchise was vested in the states, race, gender, property ownership, age (in excess of eighteen), poll tax payments, and "civics" tests, have all been used at sometime or another to limit the right to vote. There is, however, some incentive for states not to be restrictive, because certain kinds of restrictions reduce the population of the state under the U.S. Constitution for purposes of allocated members of Congress and electoral votes. This is set forth in Section 2 of the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution (ratified in 1868) which states: Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State. (Incidentally, there are no longer any people who qualify as "Indians not taxed" in the U.S. due to federal legislation that was adopted after 1868.) This set a presumptive baseline that males twenty-one years of age not disqualified by a criminal record are allowed to vote, but with a penalty for not doing so imposed at the state level in apportionment rather than in the form of a prohibition against doing so, before express prohibitions against certain kinds of restrictions of the franchise were adopted in the 15th, 19th, 24th and 26th Amendments. It is also useful to compare the examples of the 15th Amendment (ratified 1870), the 24th Amendment (ratified 1964) and the 26th Amendment (ratified 1971), which are parallel to the 19th Amendment and wouldn't make sense against a backdrop that the population, by default, is allowed to vote. Article XV (Amendment 15 - Rights of Citizens to Vote) The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. and Amendment XXIV (Amendment 24 - Abolition of the Poll Tax Qualification in Federal Elections) The right of citizens of the United States to vote in any primary or other election for President or Vice President, for electors for President or Vice President, or for Senator or Representative in Congress, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state by reason of failure to pay any poll tax or other tax. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. and Amendment XXVI (Amendment 26 - Reduction of Voting Age Qualification) 1: The right of citizens of the United States, who are 18 years of age or older, to vote, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state on account of age. affects 15 2: The Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.	These all seem to be issues with how the local post office is handling your mail (and no doubt that of others). I would start by asking to see the person in charge of that office, and asking that person the same questions that you asked here. I am not sure that, under US law, the "envelope information" of your mail is protected in the way that the contents are.	The US election authorities already record who voted in which elections, and that information is a matter of public record. When I was active in politics some years ago, and at one point a candidate for local office, my campaign and others routinely purchased from the state a "voter list" for each district. This list showed each registered voter, with that person's name, address, age (to the nearest year), party of registration if any, and in which of the last several (I think 10) elections that person had voted. These were delivered in electronic form, and could be sorted and analyzed in whatever way the purchaser pleased. I understand that similar lists are available in every US state, I think from a legal point of view, a picture would reveal no more information than these already-public lists, and since they have not been successfully challenged as unconstitutional, I don't see that the pictures would be subject to such a challenge, unless it could be shown that taking such pictures had a chilling effect, that is, that taking them made certain categories of voters, such as minority voters, less likely to vote. I am not aware of any specific federal or state laws on taking pictures of voters. But if there were a chilling effect, that would probably violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Federal Fourteenth amendment. That clause has been central, or at least significant, in most challenges to voter restrictions, both successful and unsuccessful. But since, as far as I know, no state or other US jurisdiction has tried this, there is no caselaw on point, and one cannot be sure how such a case would be resolved. Whether this would be good policy is a very different question, and where it would be politically acceptable is yet another. Neither of those are on topic here on Law.se, although they might be on Politics.SE.	The Commander-in-chief powers are quite broad. The War Powers Resolution limits his ability to engage unilaterally in military action, by requiring him to report to Congress within 48 hours, and if Congress disapproves, troops must be removed after 60 days. However, this law pertains to armed forces, and would not apply to remotely-launched missiles. Additionally, it is unknown if the resolution is unconstitutional (presidents say it is). No law at all requires POTUS to obtain permission from someone else, in order to engage in a military action. Article 90 of the UCMJ states that it is a punishable offense to "willfully disobeys a lawful command of his superior commissioned officer". The manual also states that An order requiring the performance of a military duty or act may be inferred to be lawful and it is disobeyed at the peril of the subordinate. This inference does not apply to a patently illegal order, such as one that directs the commission of a crime. Murder of a civilian is an example. It also says The lawfulness of an order is a question of law to be determined by the military judge. "Shocking the conscience" is not a grounds allowing disobedience. One can only conjecture how a military judge would evaluate the lawfulness of a presidential order, when there is not a shred of legal evidence that such an order is in fact illegal: I conjecture that the order would be found to be lawful.	The presidential line of succession is governed by the U.S. Constitution, specifically Article II section 1: In Case of the Removal of the President from Office, or of his Death, Resignation, or Inability to discharge the Powers and Duties of the said Office, the Same shall devolve on the Vice President, and the Congress may by Law provide for the Case of Removal, Death, Resignation or Inability, both of the President and Vice President, declaring what Officer shall then act as President, and such Officer shall act accordingly, until the Disability be removed, or a President shall be elected. The 25th amendment reinforces this and says "Whenever there is a vacancy in the office of the Vice President, the President shall nominate a Vice President who shall take office upon confirmation by a majority vote of both Houses of Congress." So, after the vice president, the constitution lets Congress pass laws governing the rest of the succession. This is governed by the Presidential Succession Act. 3 U.S. Code Chapter 1, Section 19 lays out the rest of the line of succession: Next come the Speaker of the House of Representatives (subsection a) and the President pro tempore of the Senate (subsection b) and "then the officer of the United States who is highest on the following list, and who is not under disability to discharge the powers and duties of the office of President shall act as President: Secretary of State, Secretary of the Treasury, Secretary of Defense, Attorney General, Secretary of the Interior, Secretary of Agriculture, Secretary of Commerce, Secretary of Labor, Secretary of Health and Human Services, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Secretary of Transportation, Secretary of Energy, Secretary of Education, Secretary of Veterans Affairs, Secretary of Homeland Security" (subsection d). So you have the Attorney General at number 7. However, the next subsection says the following (emphasis mine). (e) Subsections (a), (b), and (d) of this section shall apply only to such officers as are eligible to the office of President under the Constitution. Subsection (d) of this section shall apply only to officers appointed, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, prior to the time of the death, resignation, removal from office, inability, or failure to qualify, of the President pro tempore, and only to officers not under impeachment by the House of Representatives at the time the powers and duties of the office of President devolve upon them. I think the bolded text answers your question. The Acting Attorney General has not been confirmed by the Senate, so is not in the presidential line of succession. Now there is potentially room to argue that, if the Acting Attorney General has been confirmed by the Senate for some other office (most likely Deputy Attorney General), then they qualify. Of course, there is no case law to clarify this, since the presidential succession has never gone beyond what is listed in the constitution. However, I don't think it's a very compelling argument, particularly for the current Acting Attorney General who was not appointed on the basis of his previous confirmation. (Interestingly, a Bill was introduced to the House in 2003 that would have explicitly removed acting officers from the line of succession. Ultimately, that Bill did not progress.)
Laws blocking the use of dogs to detect the coronavirus at airports? Is there a law or regulation that prevents the use of dogs to detect the coronavirus at airports in the United States as it is done already somewhere else? Do other countries have laws like these which block the use of dogs?	The issue is more likely that there is no law or regulation allowing the use of dogs to sniff passengers in the US for matters not related to crime, whereas Dubai, a monarchy, has a different political system. In general, you have the constitutional right to move about in the U and the right not to be unreasonably seized, a right which may not exist in some other jurisdictions. That right can be restricted in accordance with law, but there has to be some such law. It is not a crime to have covid, or to travel while infected (it is a crime to carry bombs and drugs on a plane). One area where there is some restriction is where there always has been a restriction, namely entry into the US. There is (was) covid screening at certain airports for flights from certain countries. This directive indicates the airport restrictions, but does not explain what screening will take place. The above DHS site says that "the passenger will be asked about their medical history, current condition, and asked for contact information for local health authorities. Passengers will then be given written guidance about COVID-19 and directed to their final destination, and immediately home-quarantine in accordance with CDC best practices". It is not clear whether a mandatory temperature check without even reasonable suspicion of a crime would constitute an unreasonable search (body searches are subject to higher standards than property searches, it seems), and constitutional law surrounding searches has emphasized the primacy of privacy in search law, not the fact of physically entering property of the body. Some airlines and airports offer voluntary temperature checking, so it might be possible if someone has a covid-sniffing dog to offer voluntary sniff testing, especially if it is offered by a private concern and does not have the appearance of government mandate (which would require a law).	HIPAA seems comparable but only applies to medical data, but is there anything more general than that? Not really, at least at the national level. There is no comprehensive national regulation of data privacy in the United States. There are regulations related to health information (HIPAA), to educational records, to tax information, to census information, credit reporting agencies, and to banking records (as well, of course, as to national security information). There are also largely consistent restrictions at the state level related to the juvenile justice process. But data privacy is not a subject of general regulation in the U.S. Instead, the data privacy regulations of the U.S. consist of a patchwork of fragmentary state and federal laws and regulations, superimposed on a significant and not entirely consistent or well developed body of common law precedents such as the privacy torts set forth in the Restatement (Second) of Torts, which some states have adopted fully, some states have rejected almost completely, and some states have adopted in part or with significant modifications. The U.S. Constitutional law of the First Amendment also heavily colors how other legal limitations and authorizations are construed and drafted, because the right to distribute truthful information without restriction has long been considered one of the core protections of the First Amendment, even in the much less vigorously protected area of commercial speech. Some states have more general regulations, and the most important of these is California, both because it is a large and economically significant state, and because it is the home to many of the leading U.S. technology companies, many of which expressly adopt of the law of the State of California in choice of law clauses in their terms of service and contracts. The California law most similar to the GDPR is the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 (CCPA) which gives consumers rights with respect to the use of the personal information that businesses collect about them and the CCPA regulations that provide guidance on how to implement the law. The website of the State of California's attorney general provides some answers to frequently asked questions about this law.	Astronauts are employees of the government and are thus barred from suing in lieu of receiving the government equivalent of worker's compensation. This wouldn't bar a suit against a third-party contractor who made a defective product, but I suspect that their contracts contain a waiver of liability for negligence or defective products given that this is highly experimental technology. Certainly, it would not be homicide as it was an accidental death of someone who consented to the high risk of accidental death involved. The dog would have been the property of the government, and the government wouldn't sue itself for damages to the dog. The harm that comes to animals in legitimate scientific research is not considered cruelty to animals as it is justified by a higher legitimate purpose and not for the intent of gratification of someone who enjoys torturing animals and would have been cleared by a scientific ethics committee in advance.	If I were a federal prosecutor (which I'm emphatically not), I might try to charge you under 18 USC § 32 (a) (5): a) Whoever willfully— [...] (5) interferes with or disables, with intent to endanger the safety of any person or with a reckless disregard for the safety of human life, anyone engaged in the authorized operation of such aircraft or any air navigation facility aiding in the navigation of any such aircraft; [...] shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years or both. Since you clearly know, or believe, that this has the potential to interfere with piloting, which would obviously be a serious danger to people on board the aircraft, I'd argue you would be acting with "reckless disregard for the safety of human life." If your conduct results in anybody's death, then life imprisonment and/or the death penalty are also on the table, under 18 USC § 34.	This article is a useful introduction to restrictions on political advertising in the EU, where §3.4 (p 33) covers Italy. Silenzio elettorale is covered by art 9. of Norme per la disciplina della propaganda elettorale. The statutory situation is not entirely clear to me, but the main controlling fact relevant to the internet question is that AGCOM issues rules. An English legal analysis (from an Italian law firm) is here. Their undernourished analysis of the silence period is Finally, Italian legislation prohibits political propaganda on election day and on the day before. Although AGCOM is not competent for ascertaining infringements of said prohibition, it considers important to call everyone to turn the attention on these provisions. Indeed, they are important to guarantee effective protections of the constituents. As such, in the Authority’s opinion, the prohibition applies to all media. Clearly, the law applies to internet platforms. What is not clear is whether the prohibition as applied to web pages is against "adding content", or does it require the elimination of previously-distributed content and scrubbing of links to such content. Perhaps the matter will be clarified in court one day.	It depends. The police and only the police decide what are and are not police matters. However, although it might not be a police matter, you still have lots of options at your disposal. For example, does your jurisdiction (city, town, municipality, etc.) have an animal control division? i.e., City dog catcher. Most do. If so, I would call the animal control division and file a report. They might possibly do a field visit and take the animal into custody if the animal is still roaming loose. If you sustained bodily injuries, you should get checked by a doctor and have those injuries documented in a medical report. If possible, you could drive by the property and take photos of the unchained dog roaming loose. Then, armed with your evidence consisting of: police report medical injury report animal control report and photographs of the scene You could (with the help of a licensed attorney) file a civil suit against the pet owner. You might be able to win an award for damages, pain and suffering and possibly punitive damages as well (check with your attorney). Also, your attorney could advise you if you might have a cause to move for an enforcement action against the dog and/or its owners that might or might not include having the animal removed from the owners custody or in extreme cases of negligence and bad behavior possibly "put to sleep." Your suit might focus on collecting from the homeowner's insurance policy of the pet owner and you could potentially collect a lot of money with the right set of facts and evidence on your side. You might want to look for an attorney who specializes in personal injury. Most PI attorneys work on a contingency. Meaning they don't charge an up front fee and will only get paid if you win your case or settle. In which case their fee is typically about 1/3 of what you get awarded in settlement or judgment.	The 4th amendment is irrelevant because you consented to being searched as a condition of passing through security - you don’t have to fly. You cannot revoke that consent once x-ray screening or metal detection has commenced i.e. once your bags are checked, your hand luggage is in the scanner or you have entered the metal detector. The relevant issue is whether there has been a violation of the 14th amendment requiring equal treatment. If the ethnicity of your name is the sole reason you were selected for advanced screening then that is clearly a violation of this. However, if it is only one factor among several then it isn’t. However, the problem is that TSA agents are not required to articulate their reasons for selecting you (or anyone else) and indeed, they do not have to have a reason. Therefore it is almost impossible to prove that this has happened. Several cases in the wider “policing” regime have suggested that even if statistically certain groups are disproportionately targeted then that is not evidence of such targeting in a particular case. Further it is not clear if you would even have standing to sue - to prevent this kind of discrimination you have to show that you personally at risk of harm in the future. Clearly this state of affairs is problematical - there is little doubt that airport screening, not just in the USA but worldwide is tainted by this sort of bias. The data shows it as well as plenty of anecdotal evidence - I’m 1st generation Australian with UK and Australian parents, my son’s girlfriend is 2nd generation but her grandparents were Thai: she gets stopped way more than I do. This is bad not just because it’s antithetical to human rights but also because it is demonstrably less effective than purely random screening - where there is bias, that bias can be gamed. This article from a TSA employee states "Behavior Detection Officers (the guys who walk around and watch to see if you look creepy) are useless, and there are widespread rumors within TSA that the BDO program won’t be around for much longer." "The guys" are people and, like all of us, are subject to overt and subconscious bias in deciding what "look[s] creepy". Notwithstanding, security is never “obliged” to “skip” a search even if the reason for that search is arguably illegitimate. You made the travel arrangements and you take the risk that you will not have enough time between flights for this or any other reason.	You cannot stop the claim. But the good news is that claims of jurisdiction by many countries are routinely ignored by many other countries. So enforcement attempts might fall short. I've written things here that might get me into real trouble with the authorities of North Korea if I ever traveled there and if they were able to match my real-world identity with this account. But I don't plan to travel there. Likewise, before I went to Turkey I should probably review what I've written about their government, and then wonder if it is worth the risk. Probably yes, it wasn't very incendiary. But my home country and those I tend to visit (if there is no pandemic ongoing) would not extradite me for what I wrote.
Contempt of Court Outside of the Court Recently the following case has been catching eyeballs where Prashant Bhushan a Lawyer in the Supreme Court has been accused of Contempt of Court by making certain tweets. The Supreme Court has held him guilty and asked for an unconditional apology and given him a deadline for it. The Bench also hasn't asked the person to explain the rationale behind his tweets as well. Many Retired Judges and Lawyers have condemned this as well. This made me wonder can tweets outside of the court about the court which a particular judge may not like be treated as Contempt of Court? Isn't this a part of Freedom of Speech?	Bhushan was convicted of criminal contempt of court. The underlying statute is the Contempt of Courts Act, 1971. The definition of criminal contempt (art. 2(c)) is that (c) criminal contempt means the publication (whether by words, spoken or written, or by signs, or by visible representation, or otherwise) of any matter or the doing of any other act whatsoever which (i) scandalises or tends to scandalise, or lowers or tends to lower the authority of, any court; or(ii) prejudices, or interferes or tends to interfere with, the due course of any judicial proceeding; or(iii) interferes or tends to interfere with, or obstructs or tends to obstruct, the administration of justice in any other manner; The law clearly is not limited to statements made in court. As Justice Mishra said, "Freedom of speech is not absolute to anyone... to me... to Press. There's no problem in being an activist but we have to say this is the line". Statutes prohibiting contempt of court are restrictions on freedom of speech. If heard and upheld by the full court, you will know more about the extent of freedom of speech in India.	tl;dr: Yes, a pardon under German law is only possible for a final court sentence (or other similar sanctions, such as expulsion of a public servant). This is not written down explicitly anywhere. Rather, this rule, like most other rules around pardons, is a matter of historical convention. This is probably because the power to pardon itself is a historical convention (and considered by some to be a violation of modern legal principles), so it kind of stands "outside of the law". Apparently the Begnadigungsrecht (power to pardon) mentioned in Article 60 of the Basic Law is not formally defined anywhere, rather the details are a matter of convention. However, there is a judgement by the Federal Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht), "Zur Frage der Justitiabilität von Gnadenentscheidungen", 2 BvR 552/63. The judgement gives some historical background for the power of pardon, and confirms that there is no formal definition. Additionally, the judgement says: Das Begnadigungsrecht, wie es das Grundgesetz in Art. 60 Abs. 2 kennt, besteht in der Befugnis, im Einzelfall eine rechtskräftig erkannte Strafe ganz oder teilweise zu erlassen, sie umzuwandeln oder ihre Vollstreckung auszusetzen. Es eröffnet die Möglichkeit, eine im Rechtsweg zustande gekommene und im Rechtsweg nicht mehr zu ändernde Entscheidung auf einem "anderen", "besonderen" Weg zu korrigieren. The judgement explicitly mentions "rechtskräftig erkannte Strafe" (final legal decision or judgement) - so this explicitly confirms that the power of pardon is only for changing a (final) judgement. Similarly, the Bayerische Gnadenordnung, §5 says: (1) Der Gnadenweg darf nicht dazu dienen, die nach gesetzlichen Bestimmungen mögliche Anrufung des Gerichts zu ersetzen. Hierüber ist der Gesuchsteller gegebenenfalls zu belehren. My translation: The process of pardon shall not be used to replace court proceedings as given by applicable laws. An applicant for a pardon is to be informed about this when applicable. This, again, confirms that a pardon must not replace or inhibit a court judgement.	If this judge is truly biased, won't the litigants be all the more glad to have a jury of their peers? You are proposing to abandon your duty to others. At trial you serve the community, not the judge. Back on scope for Law SE: If you refuse to serve on a jury, that could be a separate offense or general criminal contempt, for which you (this all depends on your jurisdiction) could get 30-90 days in jail. Edit: like several others have pointed out, I would not expect much trouble if you politely told the court that you felt you would be biased b/c of past connections. Even if the judge doesn't dismiss you, one of the litigants is likely to strike you. P.S. In most states, no one except a prosecutor (sometimes another state employee) can "take someone" to a criminal court. Individuals can only take someone to civil trial, where one cannot be sentenced, only ordered to pay a judgement.	It's complicated. Rule 53 states Except as otherwise provided by a statute or these rules, the court must not permit the taking of photographs in the courtroom during judicial proceedings or the broadcasting of judicial proceedings from the courtroom. This is applicable not just to the Supreme Court, but to all federal courts. Rule 53 applies to criminal cases, not civil suits. Over time, Rule 53 has been expanded. It has changed from merely "photographs" to include television and related cameras. Furthermore, The Judicial Conference of the United States prohibits the televising, recording, and broadcasting of district trial (civil and criminal) court proceedings. Under conference policy, each court of appeals may permit television and other electronic media coverage of its proceedings. Only two of the 13 courts of appeals, the Second and Ninth Circuit Courts of Appeals, have chosen to do so. So courts have the ability to choose whether or not they want to have their proceedings broadcaster/televised. It is technically allowed in the Supreme Court by all other legislation . . . but the decision ultimately rests in the hands of the justices. In the 109th Congress, five bills appeared that would change existing rules, at some level: H.R. 1751 H.R. 2422 H.R. 4380 S. 829 S. 1768 H.R. 4380 and S. 1768 would apply to the Supreme Court; the others would apply to federal district and appellate courts. Both bills would make television coverage is mandatory, unless the justices collectively vote against it. So, once more, the power rests in the hands of the Court. H.R. 4380 is brief, and would be merely an addendum to Chapter 45 of title 28, United States Code. S. 1768 is also brief, and would amend the same statute. Title 28, in all its glory, can be found here (Chapter 45). The proposed additions are noticeably absent, as § 678 is not there. So, addressing some quotes from your question, Are there any reasons against cameras restricted to the Supreme Court, but that don't apply to courts that already allow cameras (such as the UK Supreme Court)? There are no special laws, no. To wit, does the allowance of cameras in other highest courts refute arguments against cameras in the Supreme Court of the United States? Nope. It's purely the decision of the Court. The rationale of the justices themselves against cameras is outside the scope of the law.	Is it true that a suit of defamation could require “very little effort”? No. Definitely not. The Wikipedia article (and understandably the comment on which it is premised) leaves out many details about substantive and procedural law which are essential in US jurisdictions. For instance, the [Wikipedia] item of "1. accusing someone of a crime" is insufficient for the falsehoods to be considered defamation per se. The crime of which one is falsely accused needs to be considered an infamous crime or involve moral turpitude. Under [US] defamation law, a crime is deemed serious or infamous when it is classified as felony or its punishment could exceed one year of prison. The case law cited in Lakin v. Rund, 896 N.W.2d 76 (2016) reflects how this criterion is uniform among US jurisdictions. Another difficult issue in defamation lawsuits is the need to prove the defendant's mental state known as actual malice. Even where there is clear proof of a defamer's actual malice, a plaintiff can be denied justice because of judge's arbitrary choice to side with the defendant (just like with non-defamation lawsuits). For case law from various jurisdictions regarding defamation law and actual malice, you might want to see the citations in my briefs in the SCOTUS here and here. Most of the records in regard to the latter case are available here. Defamation lawsuits are not exempt of having to comply with the procedural laws involved in judicial proceedings either, nor is the discovery, drafting, or legal research any simpler for being a lawsuit about defamation. In the context of the comments that prompted your question here, the "repeated violations" that SE imputed to former moderator Monica would hardly be grounds for a viable lawsuit against SE for defamation per se or otherwise. Here are some reasons: Rejecting a policy of gender pronouns such as the one SE seeks to impose is not considered an infamous crime. There is no legislation to that effect, at least yet. An actual refusal to adhere to that policy hardly involves moral turpitude. Far from involving corruption (i.e., moral turpitude), the controversy about gender pronouns touches on some of a person's deepest beliefs. Thus, the "offense" of opposing such a policy cannot be said to constitute an act of moral turpitude. The previous two items rule out a viable claim of defamation per se. Thus, Monica would have to prove that SE's falsehoods about her (whatever they are) caused her concrete losses (a typical example is lost income) by prompting others to dissociate from her. I am unaware of whether Monica's situation would fit in this scenario. You are right in that a claim of mental distress is not viable either. Note from here or here that in a claim of Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress (IIED) (1) the conduct must be intentional and reckless; (2) the conduct must be extreme and outrageous; (3) there must be a causal connection between the wrongful conduct and the emotional distress; and (4) the emotional distress must be severe Any claims of harassment that might be available to Monica would not be against SE, but against the specific individuals who engaged in harassing her directly. Depending on the methods and severity of the harassment, Monica might be able to obtain injunctive relief --typically in the form of restraining orders-- against those specific individuals. It is noteworthy that not all criticism or heckling at or about Monica would be cognizable as harassment.	A party can ask a judge to recuse at the outset of a case for bias or other reasons (e.g. a family connection to a party). Generally, a judge rules on that motion personally and it is an interlocutory motion not subject to appeal except by extraordinary writ (or the equivalent) to the state supreme court. It is not generally proper to do so during a trial. Moreover, one jeopardy has attached in a criminal trial (which happens when the jury is sworn) if the trial ends prior to a jury verdict for reasons other than those attributable to the defendant, the defendant cannot be tried again on those charges and is functionally acquitted. There are probably some arguable exceptions to this rule in extraordinary circumstances that are not the fault of either party (e.g. if a meteor hits courthouse and kills the judge and some jurors mid-trial, or if it is revealed that the judge committed the crime for which the defendant is being tried). But the threshold for exceptions to the general rule is very high.	Such an order, like all other orders and decisions, is voted on at a conference of justices. Normally all 9 are present and vote, unless one or more is recused. But if one or more happens to be absent, those present vote. A majority of those present an voting is enough for such an order. Dissents from such orders are quite unusual, but any justice may file one if s/he so elects. Reasons for such orders are not normally provided. The usual standard is that such relief is only granted if A) one party will be irreparably harmed by delay, and B) that party has a reasonable likelihood of prevailing on the merits when the matter is finally decided. Presumably a majority of the Justices did not feel that this standard was met. Beyond that, no one can say.	Defendants cannot switcheroo whenever they want. There are good reasons why this is almost never done. The lawyer in any of these scenarios is violating an ethical duty of candor to the tribunal, if it is done without court permission (which is unlikely to be granted), even if the client suggested or insisted upon the idea. The lawyer would be responsible for his or her client's actions by cooperating in it, rather than calling out his client in open court over the objections of the client to prevent the switcheroo from working, as the lawyer would have an ethical obligation to do. I would not really consider this to be a gray area. The relevant ethical rules and the related official commentaries to them are quite clear, even if they are not absolutely perfectly clear. Those rules create an affirmative duty of an attorney to prevent his or her client from misleading members of a tribunal (either a judge or a jury or both). Cooperating with this scheme could (and likely would) result in professional licensure related sanctions ranging from a private censure to disbarment for the lawyer, just as it did in the linked 1994 case. Also, while a "not guilty" verdict was entered in the 1994 case, the prosecution would have a good chance of success if they demanded that the judge declare a mistrial, and also a good chance of avoiding double jeopardy limitations in this situation, because the mistrial arose from the actions of the defendant trying to bring about the situation. On the other hand, if this trick worked so well that the prosecutors came to the conclusion that their primary witness linking the defendant to the crime was wrong and that the defendant was not actually the person who committed the crime, the prosecutors would have an ethical duty to not attempt to prosecute the individual whom the prosecutors now believed to be factually innocent (the analysis is actually a bit more complex than that, but that is the gist of it). The defendant and the attorney could (and likely would) also each be held in direct, punitive contempt of court by the judge for this conduct, allowing them to be summarily punished by imprisonment or a fine to an extent similar to a misdemeanor violation, on the spot, without a trial other than an opportunity to explain themselves to the judge in a sentence or two each, since it would be conduct in violation of the good order of the court and disrespectful of its rules and decorum conducted in the actual courtroom in the presence of the judge. Each could easily end up spending several months in jail on the spot for that stunt and perhaps a $1,000 fine each, if the judge was sufficiently displeased. There would be a right to appeal this contempt of court sanction, but the contempt of court punishment would almost surely be upheld on appeal in these circumstances. In a case where the criminal defendant faces extremely severe sanctions if found guilty, such as the death penalty or life in prison, and the defense attorney was a self-sacrificing idealist or close family member of the criminal defendant, one could imagine the defense attorney and client deciding that the professional and contempt citation sanctions were worth being punished with, in order to save the life of the criminal defendant, if they also were convinced that this trick would work so well that the prosecutors would be persuaded of the criminal defendant's innocence sufficiently to not insist on retrying the criminal defendant in a new trial. This would be somewhat analogous to an intentional foul in basketball, but with much higher stakes. But, this would be an extraordinarily rare situation in court, because the punishment for this "intentional foul" in the courtroom are much more severe, and because the likelihood of it producing a beneficial result is much smaller. It isn't hard to understand why a successful switcheroo feels morally justified. It prevents a witness whose testimony would have been much less reliable than it actually would have been from being used to convict a criminal defendant who might conceivably be factually innocent. And it might be very hard to discredit the testimony of that witness in any other way in order to prevent a wrongful conviction of the criminal defendant. Eye witness misidentifications are one of the leading causes of wrongful convictions, and are especially common in death penalty cases because jurors are "death qualified" making them more pro-prosecution than a typical jury. Preventing innocent people from being convicted of crimes is one of several important values of the criminal justice system, and this is the instinct that probably motivated the dissents in the professional misconduct process in the 1994 case. But, the court system also strongly values candor on the part of attorneys, and likewise values not having the court systems be used to trip up witnesses who may sincerely think that they are telling the truth even if they are mistaken about the accuracy of their testimony, in a deceptive manner. In this situation, the latter candor consideration usually prevails, because the rules prohibiting this kind of conduct and scheme, which admits no "moral justification" or "necessity exception", are quite clear. In the same vein, a prosecuting attorney can be sanctioned (and has been on at least one occasion in Colorado) for not being truthful in communications to third parties, even when the lies are used to peacefully defuse a potentially deadly hostage situation. For attorneys, the duty of candor and truthfulness really knows no exceptions. Cops, in contrast, however, are allowed to lie in many circumstances to secure confessions or stop criminals.
Would injecting employees with thiomersal be an osha violation? The osha limit for occupational mercury exposure is 50 micrograms per cubic meter. Vaccines are way more. Would injecting your employees with thiomersal be an osha violation?	Welcome to LSE. Here are some answers to your question: No! It's not even close, but something like it is. The OSHA standard you cite is for mercury in the air in the workplace. You ask about "injections," which do not involve mercury in the air, so: this standard does not apply to injections. You ask about "injecting your employees with thiomersal." With only a few exceptions (for those helping diabetics, etc, and emergencies), all states require that licensed health care professionals administer injections, and then, only under a prescription. (For example, thiomersal is mostly used in vaccines. All states require licensed health professionals to administer vaccines.) So: Unless you are a licensed health professional with a prescription, you cannot inject your employees with thiomersal. However, OSHA has interpreted its rules and regulations to allow employees to require vaccines in some circumstances, such as a pandemic. To the extent these vaccines contain thiomersal, employers can require employees to get injected with thiomersal by a licensed health professional.	I limit my answer to U.S. law. The Right To Quit And Its Impact On Unemployment Benefits First, absent narrow exceptions (e.g. soldiers), any employee can quit at any time, from work with a bad employer. Normally quitting forfeits a right to unemployment insurance payments, but if the employee can convince the unemployment eligibility hearing office that the conditions the employer established were so bad that there was a "constructive discharge" the employee will be treated as having been fired for purposes of unemployment insurance. The employee can't get an advisory opinion on constructive discharge, however. The employee must act first and argue that there was a constructive discharge afterwards at risk of not getting any unemployment benefits if the employee loses. Occupational Safety and Health Laws Second, the employer is obligated to follow workplace safety law. Outside the mining industry (which does not include oil and gas work), workplace safety regulations are primarily promulgated by OSHA (the Occupational Safety and Health Administration) which is a subdivision of the federal department of Labor. Many states have a parallel state agency. (The mining industry is governed by MHSA a parallel and much more powerful body.) Violating workplace safety rules established by OSHA can result in the employer being fined and being required to correct the situation going forward, although the amounts of the fine even taken together with worker's compensation packages, are often far less than the amount of liability that the employer would have in a third-party negligence lawsuit. The government and not the employee receives the fine paid if one is imposed. Also, OSHA is vastly understaffed and routinely ignores worker complaints out of sheer lack of manpower, since it is responsible for all safety issues for 98%+ of all employees in the entire United States. OSHA has protocols related to requirements for employees working in extreme heat that are discussed here. In particular, OSHA states that: Washington, Minnesota, and California have specific laws governing occupational heat exposure. Federal OSHA has a General Duty Clause (Section 5a of the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970) that requires employers to provide a place of employment that is “free from recognized hazards that are causing or are likely to cause death or serious physical harm to employees.” The OSHA Technical Manual Chapter on Heat Stress establishes that OSHA uses WBGT to determine if a heat hazard was present. Thus, outside those three states, rather than having detailed requirements in a regulation, OSHA has general suggestions and provides a framework for evaluating heat related safety and occupational illness issues that gets evaluated on a case by case basis if OSHA asserts that an employer has violated these general safety requirements, which will be resolved in a hearing, if necessary, if a citation issued by OSHA on this basis is issued by OSHA and disputed by the employer. Worker's Compensation Third, the employer has liability without regard to fault for all work related injuries, illness and deaths under worker's compensation law. The employer has liability even if the employer didn't violate any OSHA regulations or standards. But, the recovery allowed is much more meager than it would be between strangers suing each other for negligence. It is largely limited to lost wages, medical expenses, and funeral expenses, although if a deceased worker has dependents, their dependent survivors are also entitled to worker's compensation lost income benefits. The existence of worker's compensation coverage, however, bars an employee from bringing a lawsuit other than a worker's compensation claim against the employer, however. Collective Bargaining Rights Of Unionized Workers Fourth, in a unionized workplace, the union could raise a grievance with the employer under the collective bargaining agreement governing the workplace which will universally require the employer to follow safety rules. If there is a dispute, these disputes are typically referred to an arbitrator in union-management arbitration. The arbitrator has considerable freedom to fashion remedies if the arbitrator feels that the safety rules were not followed. Neither side can appeal the arbitrator's ruling. If the employer does not follow an order from an arbitrator, this is converted to a court order at an ordinary court with jurisdiction over the employer and the court will make the arbitrator's order a court order which may be enforced under pain of contempt of court sanctions (including incarceration or punitive fines).	One path would be to get compliance, by demonstrating that it is legally required. The best evidence that he is legally required to wear a mask is this recent mandate from the Department of Public Health. However, I cannot find a corresponding executive order, which may be in a generic form empowering CDPH to issue orders. Any imposition of penalties for violation must be publicly announced and rest on legislative authority. The mandate is not generally enforced, except in a few cases regarding bars and restaurants. There are various persuasive avenues that you could pursue, such as asking CDPH to come talk to him (unlikely, but you could try), complaining to the property owner, appealing to local social media to apply pressure (possibly putting yourself at legal risk for defamation, if you make a false statement). There are two more involved legal actions to contemplate. One is to terminate the lease and move elsewhere. This would likely result in an action to collect the remainder of the rent, but the strategy would be to argue that the manager has interfered with your private enjoyment of the premise. A second, highly improbable, is to sue the manager and get an enforceable court order requiring him to wear a mask. Courts have a prejudice against ordering people to take actions when other options exist (terminating the lease, monetary compensation). It could be an interesting but expensive test case to see if you could get a judge to order the manager to wear a mask. So yes they are obligated to wear masks, but legal enforcement is going to be difficult at best.	Is it legal for a company to offer a different insurance rate based on the spouse's employer's offerings? Given the scenario you describe, your employer is not charging you a different rate if your spouse is eligible for insurance from your spouse's employer. Under the Affordable Care Act, when an employer decides to provide health coverage to their employees there is no requirement to provide insurance to the employee's spouse. Extending coverage to an employee's spouse carries additional cost to the employer. Many employers implement surcharges for those employee's spouses if coverage is otherwise available to the spouse. Essentially, when coverage is available to a spouse through their employer and they choose to be covered by their spouse's employer they are making a choice, one would presume, for better coverage. In this case, the employer is seeking to recover some of their cost for covering someone who would otherwise have coverage. From this article dated January, 2014, you can see that many employers are moving in this direction. That article references an article regarding UPS. UPS is excluding any spouses from coverage if they would otherwise have coverage from elsewhere. You ask what right do they have to this information [that your spouse has coverage available elsewhere]? You are asking your employer to extend health coverage to your spouse, a benefit that your employer apparently provides. Your employer has the right to ask you information regarding that benefit extension you have requested. If you don't have a spouse or you aren't seeking to have your employer increase their benefit cost by extending coverage to your spouse then there is no reason for them to know if your spouse is covered. What other legal means do they have to find out this information? They should only be seeking this information because you've decided to ask them to provide a benefit to your spouse. If you were to lie about this information then they would have the same facilities available for any other fraudulent act to gain a benefit contrary to the employer's policy. Does this constitute illegal discrimination? Based on what? The employer is not required to extend the benefit to your spouse. The employer's policy for extending that benefit is to charge $50 for any spouse who could otherwise be covered by their employer. If you want the benefit then answer the question truthfully and, if your spouse is otherwise eligible for coverage, then pay the $50. If you don't want to answer the question then don't request the benefit. I am aware of similar policies regarding smoking which are similarly controversial. What conclusions can we draw from that precedent? What precedent, that it is legal to charge smokers more for health insurance? The Affordable Care Act allows insurance providers to charge up to 50% higher premiums for smokers. Here's an article from the Society for Human Resource Management: Most employers using a spousal surcharge require an employee who enrolls a spouse in the plan to pay the surcharge unless the employee can verify that the spouse is not eligible to enroll in his or her plan, is eligible but not allowed to participate for a particular reason, or is not employed.	Yes, it can First, your argument is scientifically vacuous - Sodium and Chlorine are highly dangerous substances - Sodium bursts into flame on exposure to air and Chlorine is both toxic and corrosive. Sodium Chloride is table salt - dangerous in its own way but not in the same class. The same is true in reverse of petrol and superphosphate (fertiliser) apart they are relatively benign, together they are a mining explosive. Second, even if your science was valid, it wouldn't matter. If the government wants to ban substance A and not substance B they have the legal power to do so.	How should I proceed? I am asking law friends to recommend some employment lawyers, but other than this, can I do anything else? You definitely don't need an employment lawyer for this. From a legal standpoint, the matter is very simple: If you grant their request (whether by signing or otherwise expressing your acceptance), you would be waiving any remedies currently available to you for their breach of contract. The company's attempt to override its contract with you is quite naive, but the company can always (and evidently does) try to get away with its liability nonetheless. I would not be surprised if the company subsequently tries harder to intimidate you, but that does not change your legal position & merits unless you sign the waiver the company is pursuing. Asking for your post-termination availability reinforces the notion of company's poor planning and subpar management.	An employer has a duty of care to employees and must take steps to ensure their safety. Notably: 125 (1) Without restricting the generality of section 124, every employer shall, in respect of every work place controlled by the employer and, in respect of every work activity carried out by an employee in a work place that is not controlled by the employer, to the extent that the employer controls the activity, ... (y) ensure that the activities of every person granted access to the work place do not endanger the health and safety of employees; (Canada Labour Code (R.S.C., 1985, c. L-2)) If there is a reasonable belief that the other employee is a danger to you, they should take reasonable steps to prevent this. If they choose to ignore this, they may be liable. Whether or not there is a reasonable belief they are a danger to you or others here is unclear. Being annoying or rude does not endanger you and they haven't made threats towards you (I assume, since you'd have mentioned otherwise).	IANAL, and as @GeorgeBailey suggests, you should ask one. That said, some aspects of your question are directly addressable with what we know. Does US law states anything about this? Yes. Federally this falls under the Wiretap Act, 18 U.S.C. §2511. Workplace monitoring generally falls under either the "System Administrator Exception" or under Consent. In general, continuing past a banner constitutes consent. Does company policy enforcement with such a warning over ride the right to not be subject to surveillance? In general, yes. You don't need to use the companies network if you don't want to consent - and they don't need to hire you if you don't want to use their network. But it's their network, and their rules apply. There are some nuances, and courts have found that the wording of the notice has made a difference in some cases, but overall, if the systems are properly posted with banners, then the employer may capture communications. See the "Bannering and Consent" section of this article from cybertelecom.org, e.g.: Even if no clicking is required, a user who sees the banner before logging on to the network has received notice of the monitoring. By using the network in light of the notice, the user impliedly consents to monitoring pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 2511(2)(c)-(d). Note that stored data is covered by different laws than communications. It's a nuance. Is it ethical to sniff all the data without giving any other warning than the logon banner? "Ethical" is a very different question than "Legal", and largely more subjective. Most employers require signed consent for monitoring as a condition of employment, and use banners thereafter. That is ethical by my definition, in that it meets or exceeds the requirements of the law, and does not mislead or use subterfuge. The tone of your question suggests you find it distasteful, and therefore probably it violates your personal code of ethics.
How do courts actually verify a debt case is legitimate Say someone forges a capital one credit card contract, says they bought the debt from Capone and sues. Will the court just assume the debt is real? Are they seriously going to call Capone and ask? Does capital one have any compliance making sure it only deals with legitimate agencies? And isnt that irrelevant because the agencies can trade the debt?	The creditor must prove the debt with evidence In order to collect a debt, either: the debtor has to agree the debt is owed - straight up or after some sort of non-binding ADR, like mediation. the debtor has to prove the debt in a binding forum - either a court or binding arbitration Details vary by jurisdiction but a court case: starts with a statement of claim where the plaintiff (debtor) sets out their case against the defendant (creditor) the defendant can: ignore the claim - in which case the plaintiff seeks a default judgement and, providing they have a prima facie case, they will get it. They can then recover the debt. admit the claim and pay the debt raise a defence - in which they set out why the don’t owe the money in part or in whole. each side provides evidence to support their position the court considers the evidence and arguments and decides if the plaintiff has proved their case on the balance of probabilities if they have, they receive judgement which the can enforce (subject to appeals) if they haven’t there is no debt (subject to appeals)	I reported this to my bank as soon as I found out, and Chase said that the money would be reimbursed once they completed their investigation (within 10 business days). Chase was likely indicating that the money will be reimbursed within 10 business days of completing their investigation; not 10 business days from the date you told the that someone forged checks on your account. This would make sense when you think about it, as they need to make sure that you were not complicit in the crime (you would be surprised how many people have had someone cash multiple checks from their account only to split the money with them and file a claim for fraudulent transfer/forgery). Further, checks are a negotiable instrument, unlike a credit/debit card, where specific protections exist pursuant to its terms and conditions of use. You have a duty to keep a negotiable instrument safe, and while most banks will reimburse you if it can be established that you had no involvement and you were not grossly negligent in the keeping of the instruments, it is a different animal in and of itself. It has now been 13 business days, and I have checked on the status twice and was told both times that there had been no status update, and they were unable to provide an updated ETA. Unless your bank indicated in the disclosures of the checking account application and acceptance documentation that in the event of a stolen check you will be reimbursed in X amount of days, they have the absolute right to complete their investigation before reimbursing any funds to your account. It's a fairly large amount of money, and I need to get it back as soon as possible. I'm trying to figure out if I have legal footing here. Does the law protect me from this type of fraud? And if so, does it require the bank to respond within any particular timeframe? Federal banking regulations provide broad protections to consumers when it comes to fraud involving credit/debit cards, as these are easily stolen from all sorts of means. That said, checks do not carry the same protections, although oftentimes some. National banks may be required to reimburse customers for forged checks. However, based on individual circumstances, the bank can investigate to determine if the customer is entitled to a reimbursement. There is not duty to reimburse until the investigation is complete. This is why I think you've potentially misconstrued what they said about how long it would take. They cannot promise a time certain when they don't know how long the investigation will take. Whether the bank is liable for the customer's loss depends on the specific circumstances of the case. Generally, a bank is liable for accepting a check that has been forged, altered, or improperly endorsed. However, if the bank can prove two things — that it accepted the check in good faith and exercised ordinary care and diligence in handling the transaction — it may not be liable. If your actions — the way the check or checkbook was handled, issued, completed, or made payable — contributed to the making of the forgery, you may be at least partially liable. Generally, the bank will require you to complete an affidavit. It may also request that you file a police report. ** Addition: I forgot to mention that if the checks were not "cashed" (i.e. filled out to cash or cashed in person), but rather were presented to a 3rd party for payment in receipt of goods or services, you are also going to need to contact those individuals or businesses (their name is on the check) and alert them to the fraud, and allow them to contact their banks, lest you will be assessed fees by them for insufficient funds if your bank later takes the money back as a result of the investigation. Also, in the event the checks were recreated rather than stolen, or if you don't know exactly how many were stolen, you are going to need to close your account while you wait for the investigation to bear fruit (hopefully), and open a new account, as you now have a duty to account for any and all checks stolen at that event (so, if you know a book is out there and 10 checks have cleared you know there are 15 remaining that the bank is not going to cover if you don't take steps to protect yourself). One would think they've asked you this and have already done something to prevent further checks from coming in, but if not, you need to get on it. Also, you may want to hire your own investigator if you have the funds to do so. While stolen cards are often strangers, stolen checks (unless it's one washed check) is nearly always someone you know.	Each case is decided on its own facts I know you want a clear answer to where the bright line between illegality and legality but there simply isn’t one. The reason you feel there is a “legal grey area” is because there’s a legal gray area. The way the common law works is that there are some acts and omissions that are clearly crimes/torts/breach of contract, some that aren’t and some that live in that grey area. When someone brings a case in the grey, the court will make a ruling that will apply to similar facts and we get a little light on the subject. Then the legislature changes the law and it all goes dark again. Each of your bullet points is simply too vague and encompasses so many fact patterns that it’s impossible to say. For example, “Using a fake name/birthday”: do the ToS prohibit this? is there an intent to mislead or deceive? are there laws that prohibit this? is a benefit being received dishonesty? etc. If you come with a specific, detailed fact pattern there might be case law that is specifically relevant that will allow an answer with a high chance of being right. However, nuances matter and no two fact patterns are exactly the same and the difference might be enough to distinguish your case from the precedent. Or there might not be a relevant precedent because no one has sued/prosecuted on this fact pattern before. Then we are in virgin territory and even experts are only making educated guesses until the judge (and the appeals court(s)) hand down their decision. These are the most interesting cases to watch but the most terrifying to be part of. If you need to ask the question”where’s the legal line on this?”, there’s a decent chance you have a foot on each side.	Fraud may be a crime, or a tort (civil wrong): only criminal fraud can be a "felony". The Washington criminal laws about fraud are here, and they are all fairly specific, such as selling or destroying encumbered property (which is a misdemeanor anyhow), or conducting a mock auction. Most frauds are misdemeanors, though forgeries are in the felony category. It also includes identity thefts, again the emphasis being on false documents. Based on your description, this is not a crime, it is a civil wrong, meaning that she will have to sue the guy to get her money back. The Attorney General's office will not get involved unless there is a widespread state interest (for example, very many Washington residents being victimized), and then the involvement would be suing on behalf of the victims. That said, if the swindle was carried out by phone, then that is potentially a violation of a federal felony law, 18 USC 1343. It would not matter if the parties are in the same state, because phone service counts as "interstate commerce". So the details of phone involvement matter. Saying that you "have to" charge for processing a refund is not per se fraudulent and texting someone that "I'll have to charge an extra $2,000" doesn't make this wire fraud. But there is some potential for a federal wire fraud angle.	Assume that this happened in a matter that goes to court. In civil court, there is no "innocent until/unless proven guilty". In civil court, the judge hears everyone's story, and decides which story is more likely to be true. So I tell the judge "I sent a letter by registered mail; this is what was in the letter, and the post office reported to me that they delivered the mail, and someone signed for it". And you say "I never received a letter". The judge will believe me and the post office. You say "I received a letter and signed for it, but there was just a birthday card inside". Who does the judge believe? Does he or she believe that you received a letter with the contents I said and you are lying about it, or does she believe that I sent you an unsolicited birthday card by registered mail? Why would I do that? So they believe me. Now if you said "I received a registered letter containing just a birthday court, so I immediately called my secretary and three other people in the office to see this and to verify there was nothing but the birthday card, and here they are as witnesses", then the court might start believing you.	The linked Bloomberg story quotes the rule as: The recipient is allowed to keep the funds if they [the funds] discharge a valid debt, the recipient made no misrepresentations to induce the payment, and the recipient did not have notice of the mistake. If the recipient, or somone acting on behalf of the recipient, hacked the sender to induce the payment, that sounds like a form of misrepresentation to me. If the hacker is unconnected with the recipient there seems no way that the hacker benefits financially, although I suppose a hacker might simply want to cause an amusing disruption. As I understand it this rule only applies when the sender in fact owes a debt to the recipient that the transfer pays off. If the hacker were working for one of a large group of recipients, most of whom are innocent, and subsequent analysis establishes that there was a hacker, but not who the hacker was or which of the many recipients the hacker was working for, I suspect, but cannot prove, that the doctrine would not apply, because the transfer was not a valid but incorrect act by the sender, but was a fraudulent intervention in the sender's procedures.	Embezzlement is criminally prohibited by 18 USC 666, and this DoJ manual page on what is embezzlement cites the answer in Moore v. United States, 160 U.S. 268 that Embezzlement is the fraudulent appropriation of property by a person to whom such property has been entrusted, or into whose hands it has lawfully come. It differs from larceny in that the original taking was lawful, or with the consent of the owner, while in larceny the felonious intent must have existed at the time of the taking Following other case law, the elements of the crime are there was a trust or fiduciary relationship between the defendant and the private organization or State or local government agency; the property came into the possession or care of the defendant by virtue of his/her employment; the defendant's dealings with the property constituted a fraudulent conversion or appropriation of it to his/her own use; and the defendant acted with the intent to deprive the owner of the use of this property. This page lists over 32,000 disbursements; filtering just for rent give over 2,400 disbursements, a number of which are recent and made to some business with Trump in the name (Trump Tower LLC etc). The conversion would have to be fraudulent to be embezzlement. There actually is not any evidence provided that a transfer violated FEC regulations (we have dates, amounts, and recipient), so we would have to speculate about what else is true. There are processed disbursement images up to 10/21/2020 such as this receipt for 3 charges for food and lodging paid to Trump Hotel Collection. In fact this payment was made by Donald J Trump for President, Inc. although the search term was the aforementioned PAC: I will overlook that anomaly. This is the FEC page on that committee (you have to follow the committee number because the name was also used in the 2016 campaign but was terminated). There vast numbers of filings linked there, but nothing that I saw indicates that Trump is in any sense an employee of the organization, so there is no actual evidence that there were any "Trump actions". First, it would have to be shown that there were Trump actions. Second, it would have to be show that the action was fraudulent. Technical misappropriation is not fraudulent. This FEC page describes the safe harbor provisions for misappropriation. This page specifically addresses embezzlement. Although they use the word "embezzlement", they do not purport that misappropriation constituted embezzlement as defined above, to point out that civil penalties may result from violation, see 11 CFR Part 104. Ultimately, the legal propriety of the disbursements depends on its purpose: here is what the FEC say about illegal conversion for personal use (food for daily consumption, mortgage or rent for personal residence, tuition...). The available evidence does not even suggest embezzlement.	It's not clear whether you mean that the entire agreement is carried out by text message. If you have a paper or electronic document stating what the parties will do, that is the agreement, and signatures are a conventional form of proof that there is an agreement. A handshake or a verbal statement – or text mesage – could also serve as evidence of the agreement, though there could be problems with the quality of the evidence (e.g. how do the witnesses know which piece of paper you agreed to). There is not a huge body of law surrounding text messages (and apparently none regarding text messages and contracts). We know that a text message is not a "printed receipt" (Shlahtichman v. 800 Contacts), and that a text message is a "call" w.r.t. the Do-Not-Call law (Campbell-Ewald Company v. Jose Gomez, Keating v. Nelnet). The closest that I have been able to come in terms of a decision about whether a text message is "written" is Commonwealth v. Mulgrave 472 Mass. 170, which states that While Massachusetts appellate courts have yet to approve admission of text messages or any other writing under the spontaneous utterance exception to the hearsay rule... The wording "any other writing" implies that the court believes text messages to be "writing", which of course it is if you look at the plain meaning of the word "write". Contracts can be formed and signed by email: 15 USC 7001 states that a signature, contract, or other record relating to such transaction may not be denied legal effect, validity, or enforceability solely because it is in electronic form....a contract relating to such transaction may not be denied legal effect, validity, or enforceability solely because an electronic signature or electronic record was used in its formation so the fact of electronic writing does not make the contract non-written. There must be a venerable and well-known rationale behind the written / oral asymmetry, which presumably has to do with the volatility of memory which would be front and center in a dispute about oral contracts. FRE 1001 "clarifies" that a "writing" consists of letters, words, numbers, or their equivalent set down in any form, and that a "recording" consists of letters, words, numbers, or their equivalent recorded in any manner. 15 USC 7001 also states that An oral communication or a recording of an oral communication shall not qualify as an electronic record for purposes of this subsection except as otherwise provided under applicable law So a recording of an oral contract would be useful to prove that there was an agreement, but would not change the fact that the contract is oral.
Who becomes President if no candidate for President or for Vice-President has been selected at noon, January 20th? The Twentieth Amendment to the Constitution , Article 3, deals with the situation where no President or Vice President has qualified on January 20. Section 3 If, at the time fixed for the beginning of the term of the President, the President elect shall have died, the Vice President elect shall become President. If a President shall not have been chosen before the time fixed for the beginning of his term, or if the President elect shall have failed to qualify, then the Vice President elect shall act as President until a President shall have qualified; and the Congress may by law provide for the case wherein neither a President elect nor a Vice President elect shall have qualified, declaring who shall then act as President, or the manner in which one who is to act shall be selected, and such person shall act accordingly until a President or Vice President shall have qualified. (Emphasis added) So, has Congress made such a provision, and, if so, what is that provision?	If no President or Vice-President is picked by Inauguration Day, January 20th, then the Presidential Succession Act kicks in. The Act lists the line of succession Acting President. It starts with the Speaker of the House, the President pro tempore and then goes through the cabinet officers. (You can see the full order of succession here.) You can read more here here and here.	Yes, it has happened. Charles Evans Hughes served on the Supreme Court from 1910 until 1916, when he resigned to run for President as the Republican nominee. He lost to Woodrow Wilson. Later, in 1930, he was appointed again to the Supreme Court, this time as Chief Justice, and served there until 1941. John Jay, Oliver Ellsworth, and James Iredell all received electoral votes for President in the election of 1796. Jay had recently resigned as Chief Justice in 1795, and Ellsworth and Iredell were still serving and did not leave the court until 1799 and 1800 respectively. It's not clear that any of the three seriously campaigned for the presidency, though.	Most of the implications here are political, not legal. For that, you'd have to ask Politics.SE. The law, however, is quite clear: If the President is alive, and "a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide" do not invoke the 25th amendment, the President would remain President and just not do their job in this case. Congress could presumably provide for a different set of people to validate the President's disability status, but in your hypothetical, this wouldn't happen due to a lack of consent from the Senate. The 25th amendment was created to solve this problem: it is the only solution to it. If it is not used, then there is no other means to remove a disabled-but-alive President. Most (all?) executive agencies can run themselves perfectly well day-to-day without the President's help, so nothing would be likely to fall apart immediately. There wouldn't be anyone to appoint new judges or other presidentially appointed officers, which would probably eventually become a problem.	This is an interesting question. Requirement to "Qualify" The relevant provision seems to be subsection (b) of the Presidential Succession Act of 1947 (codified at 3 USC 19. That subsection provides that: (b) If, at the time when under subsection (a) of this section a Speaker is to begin the discharge of the powers and duties of the office of President, there is no Speaker, or the Speaker fails to qualify as Acting President, then the President pro tempore of the Senate shall, upon his resignation as President pro tempore and as Senator, act as President. Thus a Speaker would not become acting President unless the Speaker "qualifies". I believe this would include fulfilling all the requirements for a President, including the minimum age, and the requirement that the President be a "natural born citizen". Subsection (d)(1) further provides that: If, by reason of death, resignation, removal from office, inability, or failure to qualify, there is no President pro tempore to act as President under subsection (b) of this section, then the officer of the United States who is highest on the following list, and who is not under disability to discharge the powers and duties of the office of President shall act as President: Secretary of State, Secretary of the Treasury, Secretary of Defense, Attorney General, Secretary of the Interior, Secretary of Agriculture, Secretary of Commerce, Secretary of Labor, Secretary of Health and Human Services, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Secretary of Transportation, Secretary of Energy, Secretary of Education, Secretary of Veterans Affairs, Secretary of Homeland Security. The Act has never been invoked, nor have either of the two prior Presidential Succession Acts, so there is no case law or precedent available. The Wikipedia article on the Act describes the history of all three versions, and the times when an invocation might have occurred. Questioned Constitutionality The Wikipedia article quotes a statement by Judge M. Miller Baker made during a September 2003 joint hearing before the U.S. Senate's Committee on Rules and Administration and Committee on the Judiciary. This statement argues that the Act as currently written is unconstitutional. The statement reads: The 1947 Act is probably unconstitutional because it appears that the Speaker of the House and the President pro tempore of the Senate are not "Officers" eligible to act as President within the meaning of the Succession Clause. This is because in referring to an "Officer", the Succession Clause, taken in its context in Section 1 of Article II, probably refers to an "Officer of the United States", a term of art under the Constitution, rather than any officer, which would include legislative and state officers referred to in the Constitution (e.g., the reference to state militia officers found in Article I, Section 8). In the very next section of Article II, the President is empowered to "require the Opinion, in writing, of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments" and to appoint, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, "Officers of the United States". These are the "Officers" to whom the Succession Clause probably refers. This contextual reading is confirmed by Madison's notes from the Constitutional Convention, which reveal that the Convention's Committee of Style, which had no authority to make substantive changes, substituted "Officer" in the Succession Clause in place of "Officer of the United States", probably because the Committee considered the full phrase redundant.[1] Since the Act has never been invoked, this contention has never been tested in a court. Given the 25th Amendment's provisions for filling a vacancy in the office of Vice-President, the likelihood of the act ever being invoked is much reduced. Notes [1]: "Ensuring the Continuity of the United States Government: The Presidency". Prepared Statement of M. Miller Baker, Joint Hearing Before the Committee on Rules and Administration and the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate. September 16, 2003. Archived from the original on January 14, 2021. Retrieved July 11, 2018 – via GlobalSecurity.org. [This citation is copied from the Wikipedia article.]	The comments have basically covered this, but: It's a slightly weird parallel structure ("who shall not be at least 25, and been a citizen for 7 years, and who shall not be a resident"). The Constitution is not written in fluid 21st-century English. But the obviously correct way to parse the sentence is that no one can be a representative who isn't a 25-year-old or older who's been a citizen for at least 7 years; furthermore, no one can be a representative who wasn't a resident of the state they represent when they were elected. With some parts of the Constitution (like the Second Amendment), the drafting results in actual disputes about the intended meaning. With other parts (like here), only one reading makes any sense. It's the same with the requirements to be President. The Constitution says "No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President," which could be read as "you're not eligible unless, when the Constitution was adopted, you were either a citizen of the US or a natural-born citizen." But that's a silly reading, so "at the time of the Adoption" is read as only applying to "a Citizen of the United States:" natural-born citizens are eligible period, and people who were born before the US was a thing but were citizens by the time the Constitution was adopted were grandfathered in.	Before the election, can a lawsuit prevent the amendment question from being put on the ballot? No. Generally speaking, the constitutionality of an otherwise procedurally proper ballot initiative is not ruled upon until after it has passed (eliminating the need to rule unnecessarily on the constitutionality of failed initiatives). Of course, if someone tried to put it in the ballot when the existing law conditions for putting it on the ballot were not met (e.g. because a deadline for doing so wasn't met) that could be challenged in court by a party with standing to do so. If passed into the constitution, would a court still have the ability to rule the restrictions unconstitutional? Probably not. The constitution as newly adopted doesn't sound like it would forbid doing that. This seems to be the whole point of the constitutional amendment in the first place and it the amendment to the constition is approved, that requirement is gone.	Assuming, for purposes of argument, that such a change could be made by executive order, or indeed by legislation, rather than by amendment, yes, the change could and would have to have an effective date, and apply only to persons born after that date. Indeed that would still be true if such a change were made by constitutional amendment. Consider, people whose parents (or one of whose parents) are US citizens, but who are born outside of the US, are or may become citizens (by statute), but only if the citizen parent complies with certain rules specifying a minimum period of residence in the US, and other conditions. Those periods and conditions have changed over the years, and each such change had an effective date. If such a change could be made but could not be made with an effective date, then it would apply retroactively, and deprive people who are already citizens of their citizenship. There is no valid equal protection claim, because the same rules apply to both individuals, they merely give different results for the different birth dates. (See my answer to this question for why I do not think such a change would be valid except by Constitutional Amendment.) EDIT: I suppose such a changed interpretation, if made at all, might take the position that such births never did validly convey citizen ship, and all people whose parents were not validly in the country had never been citizens. That strikes me as even less likely to pass judicial review, but one cannot know what the Supreme Court will do when faced with a truly novel situation.	If the Senate has convicted by the necessary majority, Trump would no longer be the President - Mike Pence would be. There is no legal difficulty in removing ordinary citizens from the White House. Of course, President Pence might decide that he didn't mind ex-President Trump remaining in the White House, and I think the law enforcement agencies would be obliged to respect that.
An enigma regarding double jeopardy laws I am currently debating this with my friend. So in a hypothetical situation, Person A was falsely accused of a horrible crime, like say, rape or murder. However, Person A was found guilty anyway because of a lack of evidence to defend themselves. Person A serves some time in prison and is eventually released years later when evidence is found that they are not guilty. My friend's claim is that Person A can now go out and fulfill this crime that they were falsely accused of with no legal repercussion. As they were already technically punished for this crime. He claims that double jeopardy laws prevent this person from being prosecuted twice on the same crime. My claim is that Person A can not fulfill this crime without legal repercussion. My reasoning is because even though they already served time in prison for this crime, Double Jeopardy laws regard this as a second and separate punishable offense instead of a continuation of the first false accusation.	(assuming United States law here, though I'd be surprised if it were significantly different in other jurisdictions with such restrictions) Your friend is incorrect: that would be a new offense, for which Person A could be prosecuted anew. If your friend's logic were correct, once a person is convicted of robbing a store, they'd be free to rob that store without repercussions for life. It's worth noting that the conviction isn't relevant: the prohibition of double jeopardy in the United States prevents even multiple prosecutions (except, in some cases, for separate state and federal prosecutions or foreign prosecutions).	It depends on what you mean by "doesn't stick." If Mark is acquitted of murder in state court, he can't be tried again in state court for the same act of homicide. If the charges are dropped or dismissed without prejudice before jeopardy "attaches" then Mark can be charged again and tried for manslaughter or even murder. From Wikipedia: The Double Jeopardy clause encompasses four distinct prohibitions: subsequent prosecution after acquittal, subsequent prosecution after conviction, subsequent prosecution after certain mistrials, and multiple punishment in the same indictment. Jeopardy "attaches" when the jury is impanelled, the first witness is sworn, or a plea is accepted. Any lesser crimes that could be charged for the same act (or acts) are instead considered concurrently with the main charge (or charges) at the original trial. See lesser included offense at Wikipedia. And if you can charge him with B, does that mean you have to do a whole nother trial? Yes. If you can charge Mark again, this means that jeopardy did not attach. In this case, if a new charge is to be brought, the entire process starts again from the beginning.	You misunderstand the significance of the phrase "innocent until proven guilty." This is in part because you are not considering the entire phrase. The full phrase is that an accused party is "presumed innocent until proven guilty." This does not mean that the accused is innocent, only that criminal procedure must take as its starting point that the accused did not commit the crime. The major implication of the presumption, and indeed its original purpose, is that it places the burden of proof on the prosecution. This means that if a prosecutor asserts that you stole something, you do not have to prove that you did not. Rather, the prosecutor must prove that you did. The only reason to present evidence of your own is to rebut the prosecutor's evidence. Another practical implication is that a decision to detain someone awaiting a criminal trial may not be based on the assumption that the accused committed the crime. On the other hand, that decision is not based on the assumption that the accused did not commit the crime. There is a presumption of innocence, but no assumption of innocence, and the government is not obliged before the person is convicted to treat the person as if there is no accusation or charge. Wikipedia has a decent discussion. If we modify your question accordingly, it becomes How can two people be presumed innocent until proven guilty if their stories conflict? Now the answer should be clear. The prosecutor must develop evidence that shows which one of the people has committed the crime. If the prosecutor cannot do that, neither person may be punished.	A lawyer is obligated to accurately state the law as stated in the jury instructions in closing argument (and also not to make a clear and deliberate misstatement of the facts presented at trials, and also not to express personal knowledge of the facts based upon anything other than what the jury has seen). But a certain amount of poetic license is allowed so long as the closing argument is not so misleading, as a whole, that it is likely to lead the jury astray. In this case, the prosecutor is alluding, with poetic license, to the idea that an aggressor or interloper can't assert self-defense. You can't "look for trouble" and then be shielded by that doctrine. A more full quote from that prosecutor makes that more clear: you lose the right to self-defence when you’re the one who brought the gun, when you’re the one creating the danger, when you’re the one provoking other people I have no opinion concerning whether his statement does or does not cross the line. I'm not sufficiently immersed in the case, and don't have enough context from having heard the closing arguments as a whole, to have a confident opinion on that point. If there is an acquittal we'll never know. If there is a conviction and appeal and this is an issue raised on appeal, we might find out. Opposing counsel has a right to object in closing argument if it goes too far, and appealing an argument that a closing argument is objectionable is challenging unless it is preserved with a timely objection at the time. Particularly if the prosecution makes a misstatement in their initial closing, rebutting it in the defense closing may be more effective than objecting. But, if the prosecutor makes a misstatement in a rebuttal period to which the defense can't offer a corrective statement, an objection may be wise in order to preserve an issue for appeal.	What you are describing is closely related to "acquitted conduct sentencing". On the first point, "Carl's" previous acquittal cannot be considered evidence that he committed a later crime; the subsequent crime must be tried on its own merits, in isolation. However, for your second question, once convicted of that crime, his previous acquittal (rather surprisingly) can be taken into account during his sentencing. Many legal minds have found the practice of "acquitted conduct sentencing" extremely troubling, and there are hopes the US Supreme Court could prohibit the practice in the near future. But for the moment, it is still an allowed practice. Summary article here "This practice allows judges to use conduct a defendant was acquitted of by a jury to increase a defendant’s sentence or punishment for a separate crime. This tool essentially allows judges to veto a jury’s decision when they merely disagreed with their conclusion." Another good article on the topic Of the seven charges, [he] was convicted on two. Under federal advisory sentencing guidelines, the two convictions generally warranted a sentence of 24 to 30 months in prison. The district court, however, calculated a range of 87 to 108 months, based on the charges on which [he] had been acquitted. [he] was then sentenced to 84 months (seven years) in prison. [He] was indicted on seven charges, convicted of two, and acquitted of five. But his sentence was exactly the same as it would have been had he been convicted by the jury of all seven charges — and three times as high as it would have been had the judge considered only the two charges of which the jury convicted [him].”	In the United States, jeopardy attaches to a criminal trial when a jury is empanelled, the first witness is sworn in or guilty plea is accepted. Before that point the prosecution can dismiss the case without prejudice, allowing for charges to be brought again. After that point the prosecution can only dismiss the case with prejudice, effectively resulting in an acquittal and preventing a new trial on the same charges or charges based on the same facts.	No. This isn't possible. A judge can only sentence someone after they have pleaded guilty or been found to be guilty, following an indictment or criminal complaint, and multiple advisements of rights.	An appeal to ignorance asserts that a proposition is true because it has not yet been proven false. That is not in any way the situation here. The defendant knows if he/she has or has not so the only available answers under oath are "yes" or "no" - the jury knows this too so any other answer will be seen as disingenuous. However, this information (affirmative or negative) is off limits to the jury as it could prejudice their decision, hence the mistrial. A quick judge could instruct the defendant not to answer and instruct the jury to disregard the question but if a conviction results the defence team could use the fact that it was asked as grounds for appeal. A judge must decide if the interests of justice are better served by a retrial or a tainted conviction.
What does "structured, commonly used and machine-readable format" look like in practice? I have made a subject access request, and the result included: Statement that their right to process data is from Article 6(1)(b) A series of images, that appear to be photographs of a computer monitor, with my data displayed within some unrecognised application (presumably internal and/or proprietary software) I have requested the data in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format. They have responded saying screenshots are appropriate and they cannot do otherwise. I am fairly sure what they provide is not consistent with Article 20(1). I note that article 20(2) includes "where technically feasible" but article 20(1) does not. However I am not at all sure what this would look like in practice. Is there any sources of information where extraction of data from a closed source application and provided to a data subject is further defined? Am I within my rights to insist on this, even if to comply they would have to do some software development? Assuming there is a database underlying the application I would expect it to be a DDL of the database structure, and the relevant insert statements. However this is likely to be very difficult to provide if it is a closed source proprietary application.	Is there any sources of information where extraction of data from a closed source application and provided to a data subject is further defined? No, the GDPR is based on "general principles" and does not concern itself with implementation details for such matters. It's possible there's EU case law on this, but I can't find any. Am I within my rights to insist on this, even if to comply they would have to do some software development? Yes you can demand it, but they don't have to comply with your demand. The information only has to be provided in a "concise, intelligible and easily accessible form, using clear and plain language." and they only have to provide the information electronically where "reasonably practical" to do so, and they only have to take "reasonable steps" to do all this per Section 52 of the Data Protection Act 2018 which implements GDPR into UK law. You can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office, and they will decide if Section 52 has been complied with or not. 52 Form of provision of information etc (1) The controller must take reasonable steps to ensure that any information that is required by this Chapter to be provided to the data subject is provided in a concise, intelligible and easily accessible form, using clear and plain language. (2) Subject to subsection (3), the information may be provided in any form, including electronic form. (3) Where information is provided in response to a request by the data subject under [the Right of access by the data subject], the controller must provide the information in the same form as the request where it is practicable to do so.	Under GDPR Article 6 section 1(f), a lawful basis for processing is: processing is necessary for the purposes of the legitimate interests pursued by the controller or by a third party, except where such interests are overridden by the interests or fundamental rights and freedoms of the data subject which require protection of personal data, in particular where the data subject is a child. It seems that informing a data subject of the availability of a possibly better-focused related site would be a "legitimate interest", and merely doing a broad geo-locate on the IP does not seem to impact the "interests or fundamental rights and freedoms of the data subject" so it would seem this could be done without specific consent in advance. I don't know of any legal case on this specific point, however.	The Art 15 GDPR Right to Access is pretty absolute, the Art 17 Right to Erasure not so much. Whether you can successfully request erasure of your personal data will depend on the purpose and legal basis for that processing. Short decision schema to check if erasure should be granted: no, if any of the Art 17(3) exception applies yes, if the data is no longer necessary for the purposes for which it is being processed (Art 17(1)(a)) yes, if the legal basis was Art 6(1)(a) consent (Art 17(1)(b)) if the data is being processed pursuant to a legitimate interest, yes, if the data subject successfully objected to the processing (Art 17(1(c)) yes, if the data is being processed for direct marketing purposes (Art 21(2)) yes, if the data subject objects on grounds relating to their particular situation, unless those grounds are overridden by a compelling legitimate interest For example, CCTV recordings on private property are often stored for some time for a legitimate interest to deter crime and to be able to investigate criminal acts if they should occur. A data subject could object to the recording, but would likely be unsuccessful: it doesn't make sense to let individuals opt-out from security measures, otherwise bad actors could use this to destroy evidence. Thus, the objection and consequently the request for erasure should be denied.	Copyright Prominent at the bottom of the page is: © RealClearPolitics 2015 This is nice because it tells you who you have to approach for a licence. If it wasn't there the material would still be copyright you just wouldn't know who owned the copyright. Questions So: If I'm looking to build an app or write a book and I wish to use statistics, am I allowed to basically use their numbers as long as I cite where it is coming from? No, unless what you do constitutes fair use and I don't think it does. If I do make a profit from it, do I owe any royalties to the original scientists/surveyers? No, but you would owe whatever licence fee you negotiated with the copyright holder, ostensibly RealClearPolitics. Must I ask them for permission? Yes, unless you are OK with running the risk of being sued. Commentary I see books reference hundreds of studies all the time This is because they are generally protected by Academic Fair Use public polls should be open information to everyone The only public poll that I know of is an election and that information is available. What you are looking at is a private poll commissioned by and paid for by RealClearPolitics and it is their intellectual property; why should that "be open information to everyone"? commercial interests may be legally entangling Always	This could be covered by point 1(c) of Article 6: Processing shall be lawful only if and to the extent that at least one of the following applies: ... (c) processing is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation to which the controller is subject; ... It might also fall under point 1(f): ... (f) processing is necessary for the purposes of the legitimate interests pursued by the controller or by a third party, except where such interests are overridden by the interests or fundamental rights and freedoms of the data subject which require protection of personal data, in particular where the data subject is a child. It is difficult to know whether any particular processing of data falls under either of these points because of the lack of relevant court decisions. The latter is particularly slippery, since whether any interest is "legitimate" is at least partly subjective, and whether any interest of the data processor overrides the data subject's interests, rights, or freedoms, is even more so. I should also note that point 1(a) is the point that requires user consent, so the other points explicitly take the place of consent rather than being somehow required alongside consent: (a) the data subject has given explicit consent to the processing of those personal data for one or more specified purposes, except where Union or Member State law provide that the prohibition referred to in paragraph 1 may not be lifted by the data subject;	The question reads: I see an NDA as a pseudo-public document, something you need to read in detail before you acknowledge and opt-in to limit rights (discussion of topic/tech). Unfortunately for this view, the law normally sees an NDA as a private contract, except when it is alleged that it violates public policy. If an NDA explicitly or implicitly includes itself in the list of things not to be disclosed, then posting it would be a violation of the contract. In such a case the party posting the agreement would be subject to whatever consequence the agreement specifies for violation, unless that person had a valid defense. The operator of a web site where the document might be posted would not normally ne a party to the agreement, and so would not be liable for hosting it, unless some other limitation applies, beyond the NDA itself. An NDA can indeed be a significant limitation on the signer's freedom to discuss certain topics, and a person would be wise to consider it in detail, and perhaps consult a lawyer, before signing one. But that does not mean that the person should post or distribute it publicly, nor that the person is automatically entitled to consult NDAs that others have signed. There are sufficient sample NDA forms available that a person can compare an offered NDA with other possibilities, and get an idea if an offered NDA goes beyond the usual terms.	Yep, you are. You still need to keep the LICENSE and NOTICE files in the repository, if there were any in your copy of the project. These files contain the terms and conditions for the project, and provide attribution to the original developers. If you're trying to attribute in the UI of your application, you probably should. It's considered courteous and in the spirit of open source as well. This is also related: Do I need to include the full text of the MIT license in the UI of my app?	Consent for processing someone's personal data is only one of the possible requirements to process that person's personal data. The options listed in Art. 6.1 are (text in Spanish, with links to other languages): a. the data subject has given consent to the processing of his or her personal data for one or more specific purposes; b. processing is necessary for the performance of a contract to which the data subject is party or in order to take steps at the request of the data subject prior to entering into a contract; c. processing is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation to which the controller is subject; d. processing is necessary in order to protect the vital interests of the data subject or of another natural person; e. processing is necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest or in the exercise of official authority vested in the controller; f. processing is necessary for the purposes of the legitimate interests pursued by the controller or by a third party, except where such interests are overridden by the interests or fundamental rights and freedoms of the data subject which require protection of personal data, in particular where the data subject is a child. Obviously, your case meets the criteria for c.1 So, you do not need consent from your hosts, and your hosts do not have to sign any consent and they cannot refuse to provide their data if they want to reside at your dwelling. The moment you ask your hosts any data to which you do not have a legitimate interest, you need the consent. And you cannot refuse hospitality to your hosts if they do not want to provide that piece of data. Anyway, maybe it would be a good idea to print a leaflet explaining why you require their data in case they have any doubts. 1 For the Guardia Civil, it would be c. and maybe a few more cases.
Has anyone ever been fined for not wearing a mask in California? California has a statewide mask order. I wonder if anyone has ever been fined for violating it?	Yes. According to CalMatters, Beverly Hills has issued at least 103 fines to an unspecified combination of individuals and businesses: Beverly Hills has cited 103 individuals and businesses since the city’s fines took effect, city spokesman Keith Sterling said, but he could not provide information on the amount of money involved or whether there were repeat offenders. According to the San Antonio Express-News, San Antonio has also issued many citations, including several that were clearly issued to individuals (emphasis added): One employee had the mask sitting on his chin after receiving a warning. The business and employee were cited. Two citations were issued, one to the the business for employees not wearing masks and one to the owner for not wearing a mask after a warning. All of the employees corrected the issue immediately, except for an American Cookie Factory employee who was not willing to wear a mask correctly. The employee was cited along with the three store owners. As far as I can tell, it's up to local enforcement agencies to enforce the mask order, so cities issuing fines (possibly under their own laws implementing the order) would seem to be the primary way that fines would be issued for such violations.	In this specific case and location, the precise location of the incident was explicitly made a public space via state law not too long before this actual event. They therefore most certainly have no right to privacy. What is interesting to me though is the other side of this, does someone have the right to record others in public spaces, or is it simply not illegal? For instance if I non-destructively and non-violently "jam" your camera by shooting a low-power IR beam at your lens, have I abridged a legal right of yours? I don't think it would be illegal to do this. I am not even positive its against the 1st Amendment. The 1st Amendment relates only to the dissemination of information, not the collection of it. The Constitution doesn't seem to compel the gov't to make information available, or even to make things/events/spaces observable. The various "sunshine" laws after-all had to be enacted, it wasn't part of an interpretation of the 1st Amendment. To put a finer point on it, is recording events in public spaces legal or merely lawful?	The CCPA is in many ways similar to the GDPR. It applies to firms that profess the personal data of California citizens, just as the GDPR applies to firms that process the data of EU residents. If you expect to have any significant number of users from California you will probably we wise to comply. Fortunately, most of the needed steps to comply with the CCPA will also be needed to comply with the GDPR, there should be little additional effort needed. Even a site that hosts no ads and sells no information must still do some things to comply. The California Online Privacy Protection Act of 2003 (CalOPPA) primarily requires that a site include a clear privacy policy, and there there be an easily found link to such a policy from a sites main or home page. According to the Wikipedia article linked above: Neither the web server nor the company that created the website has to be in California in order to be under the scope of the law. The website only has to be accessible by California residents. The law apparently does not contain any enforcement provisions of its own. The Wikipedia article states that: CalOPPA is expected to be enforced through California's Unfair Competition Law (UCL), which prohibits unlawful, unfair, or fraudulent business acts or practices. UCL may be enforced for violations of CalOPPA by government officials seeking civil penalties or equitable relief, or by private parties seeking private claims. Thus CalOPPA is not really a Data Protection law like the GDPR or the CCPA. Rather it requires disclosure of privacy practices, whatever they may be. See Also "Making your Privacy Practices Public" by KD Harris.	A school district has been sued for something like that. In Church of God, Etc. v. Amarillo Indep. Sch., 511 F. Supp. 613, plaintiffs successfully sued the school district "to enjoin the enforcement of the Amarillo School District's absence policy which limits the number of excused absences for religious holidays to two days each school year", where "A fundamental tenet of the Church of God is that members must abstain from secular activity on seven annual holy days". The school district imposed an absence polity where "School work missed may be made up whether an absence is excused or unexcused", and "Excused absences shall be granted to students for a maximum of 2 days for religious holidays in each school year". The court concluded that "This policy poses an unquestionable burden on the Plaintiffs' religious belief", and "This burden is not ameliorated by the make-up work provision. The provision does not require a teacher to evaluate the work made up. It in fact directs the teacher to enter a zero for that work". In this case "Summary judgment is granted and judgment rendered enjoining the enforcement of the Amarillo Independent School District's excused absence policy insofar as it limits the number of excused absences for religious holidays". This is not a matter of religious discrimination, this is a First Amendment issue. The policy is in violation of the Free Exercise clause. Eliminating spring break per se is not a problem: doing so and providing no excused absences is the problem. In the above case, there was clear a religious principle of the church to the effect that one must be off the clock on the holiday. As far as I know, there is no requirement to abstain from work or school on Shrove Tuesday, Ash Wednesday or Good Friday. Nevertheless, in recognition of New Jersey state law which allows any student to take off a religious holiday – including Shrove Tuesday and Ash Wednesday, and dozens more – the Board of Education has prepared a list of such holidays, which includes Wiccan, Hindu, Baha'i, Jewish, Zoroastrian, Church of Scientology (and so on) religious holidays.	In the UK this is just called "an appeal for the suspect to come forward." The UK police are not allowed to lie or mislead as suggested in the OP, and any reduction in punishment is in the hands of the courts when passing sentence (unlike some other jurisdictions, I believe).	Public nudity is not generally prohibited in most of Europe, only exhibitionism is (exhibitionism: openly presenting your private parts in a way to stimulate sexual desire). Now that does not mean you can really walk around nude everywhere. If there are other people around, you may be fined for "public harassment". That will typically only give a small fine, though. Particularly in Germany, but also in parts of France, beaches are normally fine. While there are often separate areas for nude bathing, usually people don't really care, unless there are a lots of children around. In Germany, almost nobody wears something for a swim before breakfast. And IIRC wearing nothing in your house or even in your garden is perfectly fine, even if it can be seen from outside. So while you might be looked at strangely if you only wear those shorts (particularly in the middle of a town) I don't think much will happen.	An individual does not have authority to "issue" a restraining order. In the U.S. only judges can issue such orders. The guidelines and policies for obtaining a restraining order vary by jurisdiction, although in the end a judge can issue any order he wants. So in theory you might be able to find a judge who will issue an order for any or no reason. In practice I'd be surprised if many judges would abuse their office to gratuitously harass people in this fashion, though there are probably a few amusing/disturbing examples out there to the contrary.	They can’t But they aren’t This is the law (as amended). Section 9 contains the penalties. In any event the police don’t fine people they issue an infringement notice which is an allegation of an offense - police can issue these even if they reasonably believe they took place - they are entitled to be wrong. The person given the notice can admit the offense by paying the fine or contest the allegation by going to court.
Why isn't voluntary manslaughter punished equally to murder? I can't wrap my head around the fact that in many legal systems, the punishment for "voluntary manslaughter" (or similar) is different than the punishment for "first degree murder" (or similar). Some examples, all prefixed with "Unlawful, intentional, voluntary and successful killing of another human being...": with malice aforethought on a whim after being provoked in order to not get caught in order to not pay after being asked/paid to by hiring a contract killer Why shouldn't all of these cases have the exact same punishment? Edit, to clarify: Why wouldn't a manslaughterer generally be considered to be an equal threat to the society as a first-degree murderer (assuming that both were deemed to have been equally willing to take a person's life while being equally aware of what they were doing)? Both of them could (or could not) regret what they did afterwards, that is outside of the scope of this question (assume both were deemed equally likely to regret). Edit 2: "assume both do the same" --> "assume both were deemed equally likely to regret"	The distinction is a question of culpability, not just the harm caused. The law, at least in the criminal law context, is not fundamentally consequentialist in its philosophy. The end consequence of an act for which someone is at fault in some way isn't the only thing that matters in criminal law. Instead, there is basically a two dimensional grid. On one axis is the seriousness of the harm caused on the "eye for an eye" theory of proportionality between punishment and the harm caused. Thus, homicide is more serious than causing serious bodily injury or raping someone, which is more serious than causing bodily injury that is not serious or sexual in nature. Grand theft is more serious than shoplifting. It doesn't make economic sense to spend $70,000 a year to incarcerate someone for many years to prevent people from stealing $15 items, unless very extreme aspects of the person's criminal history suggest that this seemingly minor incident demonstrates a high risk of future offenses that are far more serious because it proves that a hardened criminal hasn't reformed himself or herself. On the other axis is basically a measure of how evil and malicious someone would have to be to do such a thing which is called culpability. At once extreme, first degree murder, for example, is calculated, premeditated harm to another. At the other extremes are completely non-culpable conduct (either due to lack of any fault-worthy conduct or because someone is mentally incapable in the eyes of society of engaging in culpable conduct like a baby or someone with dementia or someone having hallucinations relevant to the conduct that kills someone, ordinarily negligent conduct that kills someone, and criminally negligent conduct that kills someone. In between the extremes is conduct that is reckless or is impulsive or carried out in the heat of passion or by someone with diminished capacity. Only moderately culpable conduct is punishable only by a civil lawsuit for compensatory damages, and non-culpable conduct isn't even punishable in a civil lawsuit in the absence of special circumstances in which strict liability is imposed in lieu of proof of culpability. Less culpable conduct commands less serious sentences, and more culpable conduct commands more serious sentences. Why single out culpability? Basically, this is a crude way a predicting, based upon someone's past actions, the risk that the pose in the future. (Our evaluation of culpability is further refined and adjusted by factors related to the individual defendant and not the particular offense involved, like a criminal defendant's status as a juvenile or adult, and the individuals history of prior criminal convictions.) Conduct that constitutes first degree murder corresponds more or less to psychopathy, an incurable psychiatric condition in which someone lacks all empathy and takes selfish delight in harming others out of boredom or for personal gain. Psychopathy is a technical term that is modern abnormal psychology's closest synonym to saying that someone is unredeemable and evil, and conduct for which the death penalty is available, mostly in conduct that is most highly diagnostic of psychopathy, since the usual goal of incarceration, to return someone to the community once they are no longer an appreciably elevated threat to it, can never be achieved in the case of someone who is unredeemable and evil, because their condition is an incurable part of who they are as a person and their lack of empathy makes them incapable of emotionally distinguishing between right and wrong or feeling guilt. This intuition bears out. The more culpable an offense is, the more likely it is that the offender scores high on standardized measures of the extent to which someone displays signs of psychopathy that are exemplified in serial killers and the worst con men. Intermediate levels of liability correspond more or less to impulsivity that can turn violent (which is associated with a variety of incurable psychiatric conditions and also with the developmental states of adolescence and young adulthood and with instances of excessive intoxicant consumption, especially in men), in which someone knows what they are doing is wrong but lacks sufficient self-control to prevent themselves from acting until it is too late and they have calmed down, at least until they "age out" or or take steps to treat the symptoms of the conditions or addictions or intoxicated excesses. Their lack of self-control makes them a potential risk to others even though they empathize and feel guilt, but not like the risk associated with a psychopath who just doesn't care at all if they are doing something that violates intuitive moral codes of conduct. Negligence, i.e. inattentiveness and carelessness pose even less of a threat to the community and while it could be due to something like attention deficit disorder, could also be due to extenuating circumstances like sleep deprivation or being overwhelmed with too much at once to keep track of everything at once. Negligence harm generally isn't even momentarily malicious due to loss of control and the person who harms someone negligently will often immediately regret the harm that they caused and will try to refrain from doing so again and will try to make things right. Such a person is far less of a future threat to society, but still more of a threat than someone who doesn't harm others in the first place in any manner in which they are at fault. Who decides? Reasonable people (and even reasonable judges) can and do have differences of opinion on the relative importance of seriousness of harm and culpability in determining a sentence for a conviction of a particular course of illegal conduct. The difficulty in balancing the apples and oranges factors of seriousness of harm (which, in part, reflects a person's capacity to inflict serious harm in the future and also reflects society's judgment about how serious it is to do something with ill intent) and culpability. To insure that these factors are balanced in a predictable and fair way, we embody the weighing of those two factors in a collective legislative judgment codified in a state or national penal code, rather than a case by case decision making process by judges. The modern trend towards giving more weight to culpability. If anything, the tendency at the present is for legislative judgment to give more weight to culpability than it has in the past as social science methods in criminology have demonstrated that culpability demonstrated in criminal conduct actually carried out by a person is indeed highly predictive of that person's future dangerousness to society For example, cruelty to animals is an offense which reflects very high levels of culpability despite often involving relatively modest amounts of harm viewed in a human-centric way. But, cruelty to animals is increasingly being upgraded from a misdemeanor to a felony, because it is a very diagnostic litmus test for psychopathy in an individual and very frequently eventually escalates to causing serious harm to humans. Similarly, drunk driving when it is charged based upon a traffic stop, rather than an accident that occurred while someone was driving drunk, is a very low harm offense, just like any other traffic offense, and historically has only been a misdemeanor. But, in cases where someone is repeatedly convicted of drunk driving, the culpability is high and the conduct tends to reflect a very difficult to self-regulate addiction and substance abuse problem that is highly likely to recur and to eventually result in a high harm accident. Repeated convictions are what distinguish an incident where someone is basically just criminally negligent in driving when they should have known that they shouldn't, from the far more serious case where someone recklessly and with indifference to the well being of others drives drunk knowing full what the risk that they are exposing other people to. And because repeat drunk driving convictions are more culpable and reflect a personal character of the offender that shows a high likelihood of causing future harm to others, many states are starting to upgrade repeat drunk driving from a misdemeanor to a felony even though the actual harm from the specific incident of drunk driving that only gives rise to a traffic stop is still just as low the fifth or sixth time someone is convicted as it was the first time. Conclusion So, in sum, assigning different penalties to different levels of culpability is a way to allocate limited correctional and punishment resources in a manner proportionate to the future risk of dangerousness that the current conviction provides undeniable evidence of in a non-arbitrary manner. Indeed, most people simply internalize the notion that more culpable conduct deserves more serious punishment because it is wrong, without conceptualizing in the more theoretical abnormal psychology informed and utilitarian framework in which I have described it above to demonstrate the implicit logic and wisdom behind the gut instinct that more culpable conduct should be punished more seriously, especially when its cause is not a passing incident that is unlikely to recur.	Intent matters here, but yes. Alice could be considered guilty of either Second-Degree Murder or Manslaughter, though the latter is far more likely. Texas has no laws condoning assisted suicide that could absolve Alice. Second-degree murder requires the following: The defendant intentionally and knowingly caused the death of another person The defendant intended to cause serious bodily injury and committed an act that was clearly dangerous to human life and this act caused the death of an individual This is tenuous, but it could be argued this way if Alice intended to cause Bob's death. It certainly meets the second criteria: shooting oneself constitutes serious harm and giving a firearm to someone who has stated an intent to kill themself is reckless. It's more likely that Alice would be charged with manslaughter. The only definition is: A person commits an offense if he recklessly causes the death of an individual. As discussed above, giving someone who has announced an intent to kill themself a loaded gun is reckless. Alice's actions resulted in Bob's death.	There is a general defence to any crime called self defense. If you commit a crime, but the reason you commit it is because you are acting in self defense, or the defense of another, then you will not be found guilty of that crime. For example, if you kill someone, but the court believes you are acting in self defense, then you will not be found guilty of murder (or manslaughter). This defense extends to other crimes too, and trespassing would be included in this. Acting in the defense of another person has the same effect as acting in self defense. Just note that you would have to prove that it was reasonable for you to be acting in the way you did. Usually this means that the crime you committed was proportional or necessary to prevent the crime that would have occurred, and if self defense is involved, that it was necessary to do what you had to do to prevent harm to you or another.	Unless there is enough evidence to convict one or more of the suspects, none will be convicted. In general the argument: We know it must be one of you, but we don't know whch, so we find you all guilty. is not allowed in any non-dictatorial jurisdiction. Just how much evidence is needed for a conviction varies by jurisdiction in theory, and by judge or jury in practice. Also, it would be possible to charge several of the residents with having acted jointly in the crime, but there would still need to be sufficient evidence against each defendant to obtain a conviction.	Assume that this happened in Washington state. Under RCW 9A.32.070, the crime of second degree manslaughter occurs when, with criminal negligence, he or she causes the death of another person. RCW 9A.08.010(d) defines criminal negligence: A person is criminally negligent or acts with criminal negligence when he or she fails to be aware of a substantial risk that a wrongful act may occur and his or her failure to be aware of such substantial risk constitutes a gross deviation from the standard of care that a reasonable person would exercise in the same situation. I don't understand the claim that John unintentionally put the hammer near the window. If he put the hammer on the floor below the window, then Bill can't unintentionally hit the hammer and cause it to fly out the window. Let's suppose you mean that John put the hammer on the ledge of the open window unthinkingly. Bill doesn't see the hammer and accidentally knocks it off the ledge when he backs up and his butt hits the hammer. Only John is criminally negligent: he is negligent, and any reasonable person would know that it was a risky thing to do. John did an act knowingly and voluntarily, just not having an evil intent. John can't plead that he happened to have no clue about the effect of falling hammers – the law doesn't care about his personal knowledge, it cares about what a reasonable person would know. Now, if Bill was tossing a tennis ball at the hammer to see if the ball would bounce back into the room, or some other lame reason, then Bill is also criminally negligent. The point is that saying "I didn't intend this particular outcome" is not relevant. You don't have to have any bad intent at all, when it comes to negligent homicide. You just have to be sufficiently incautious, so that you have not just deviated from the standard of care that everybody owes everybody else, you have done so grossly. This is a judgment made by the fact-finders, and depends on the totality of circumstances. Criminal penalties aren't "divided". In Washington, they could both get 10 years and $20,000 – though the judge could decide that John deserves a bigger penalty because he is a bigger bonehead.	Errors in the Question Of course, this is not actually what really happens. What really happens is that the original crime is not tried. It is simply ASSUMED to have taken place and there is a presumption that the original actor was guilty of some crime. Obviously this is incorrect and unjust. This is incorrect. To convict a person of being an accomplice, in either US or UK courts, there must be evidence proving that the crime took place. This an essential element of the crime. It need not be proved who committed the crime as a principal, although there is often evidence about that. But an essential element of the crime of being an accomplice is that the underlying offense is a crime and did occur. Like all other elements of a crime, this must be proved beyond a reasonable doubt. Therefore, it would seem that from a theoretical point of view, an accomplice should only be charged and accused once someone else has first been convicted of a crime. Only then should the accomplice be accused of helping that person. That is not the theory that the legislatures of either the US or the UK have adopted. Indeed I do not think that any common-law country has adopted this theory. The law could be changed, and one might argue that it should be. But what the law should be, as opposed to what it is, is not generally on-topic here, as opposed to in politics.SE. Accomplice The LII Definition of "Accomplice" is: A person who knowingly, voluntarily, or intentionally gives assistance to another in (or in some cases fails to prevent another from) the commission of a crime. An accomplice is criminally liable to the same extent as the principal. An accomplice, unlike an accessory, is typically present when the crime is committed. Nothing there suggests that the principal must be convicted first. The Wikipedia article "Accomplice" says: An accomplice differs from an accessory in that an accomplice is present at the actual crime, and could be prosecuted even if the main criminal (the principal) is not charged or convicted. An accessory is generally not present at the actual crime, and may be subject to lesser penalties than an accomplice or principal. ... The fairness of the doctrine that the accomplice is still guilty has been subject to much discussion, particularly in cases of capital crimes. Accomplices have been prosecuted for felony murder even if the actual person who committed the murder died at the crime scene or otherwise did not face capital punishment. In jurisdictions based on the common law, the concept of an accomplice has often been heavily modified by statute, or replaced by new concepts entirely. In The Wikipedia article "Accessory (legal term) In the section on "England and Wales it is said: A mens rea {guilty state of mind] is required even when it is not required for the principal offender (for example, when the principal commits a strict liability offence). The defendant must intend to do the acts which he knows will assist or encourage the principal to commit a crime of a certain type. In R v Bainbridge (1960) 1 QB 129 the defendant supplied cutting equipment not knowing exactly what crime was going to be committed, but was convicted because the equipment supplied was not used in the ordinary way, but for a criminal purpose instead. The accomplice must also know of all the essential matters that make the act a crime ... In the section "United States" it is said that: U.S. jurisdictions (that is, the federal government and the various state governments) have come to treat accessories before the fact differently from accessories after the fact. All U.S. jurisdictions have effectively eliminated the distinction between accessories before the fact and principals, either by doing away with the category of "accessory before the fact" entirely or by providing that accessories before the fact are guilty of the same offense as principals. The Model Penal Code's definition of accomplice liability includes those who at common law were called accessories before the fact; under the Model Penal Code, accomplices face the same liability as principals. It is now possible to be convicted as an accessory before the fact even though the principal has not been convicted or (in most jurisdictions) even if the principal was acquitted at an earlier trial.(Wayne LaFave, Substantive Criminal Law § 13.1(e) (2d ed. 2003).) 18 U.S. Code § 2 - Principals provides that: (a) Whoever commits an offense against the United States or aids, abets, counsels, commands, induces or procures its commission, is punishable as a principal. (b) Whoever willfully causes an act to be done which if directly performed by him or another would be an offense against the United States, is punishable as a principal. Note that there is no requirement that a principal be first tried or even identified to convict one who abetted a crime. All accomplices are abettors, although not all abettors are accomplices. The Model Penal Code (MPC) published by the American Law Institute says, in section 2.06 of the code, that: § 2.06. Liability for Conduct of Another; Complicity. (1) A person is guilty of an offense if it is committed by his own conduct or by the conduct of another person for which he is legally accountable, or both. (2) A person is legally accountable for the conduct of another person when: (a) acting with the kind of culpability that is sufficient for the commission of the offense, he causes an innocent or irresponsible person to engage in such conduct; or (b) he is made accountable for the conduct of such other person by the Code or by the law defining the offense; or (c) he is an accomplice of such other person in the commission of the offense. (3) A person is an accomplice of another person in the commission of an offense if: (a) with the purpose of promoting or facilitating the commission of the offense, he (i) solicits such other person to commit it, or (ii) aids or agrees or attempts to aid such other person in planning or committing it, or (iii) having a legal duty to prevent the commission of the offense, fails to make proper effort so to do; or (b) his conduct is expressly declared by law to establish his complicity. (4) When causing a particular result is an element of an offense, an accomplice in the conduct causing such result is an accomplice in the commission of that offense if he acts with the kind of culpability, if any, with respect to that result that is sufficient for the commission of the offense. ... (6) Unless otherwise provided by the Code or by the law defining the offense, a person is not an accomplice in an offense committed by another person if: (a) he is a victim of that offense; or (b) the offense is so defined that his conduct is inevitably incident to its commission; or (c) he terminates his complicity prior to the commission of the offense and (i) wholly deprives it of effectiveness in the commission of the offense; or (ii) gives timely warning to the law enforcement authorities or otherwise makes proper effort to prevent the commission of the offense. (7) An accomplice may be convicted on proof of the commission of the offense and of his complicity therein, though the person claimed to have committed the offense has not been prosecuted or convicted or has been convicted of a different offense or degree of offense or has an immunity to prosecution or conviction or has been acquitted. (Emphasis added) The official commentary on subsection (7) says: Subsection (7) speaks to the relation between the prosecution of the accomplice and the treatment of the person who is alleged to have committed the offense. In accordance with modern developments, this subsection provides that the accomplice can be prosecuted even though the other person has not been prosecuted or convicted, has been convicted of a different crime or degree of crime, has an immunity to prosecution or conviction, or has been acquitted. The MPC was the result of a 10-year review of the laws then existing in the various US states. It was an attempt to rationalize existing laws and provide a consistent framework for criminal law in the US. It was offered to the states for adoption in whole or in part, and several states have adopted significant sections of it, and others have been guided by it in revising their legal codes. Section 2.06 (7) makes it clear that no previous prosecution of a principal is required for prosecution of an accomplice in any state that has adopted the MPC. Effect of the Theory of the Question The question asserts: Therefore, it would seem that from a theoretical point of view, an accomplice should only be charged and accused once someone else has first been convicted of a crime. Only then should the accomplice be accused of helping that person. If courts adopted that as a rule, it would mean that if the principal escaped, or died, no accomplice could be prosecuted. Indeed consider the case of a crime boss, who is often an accomplice to the crimes of his (or her) henchmen. Such a boss would need only to have the actual criminal sent out of the country, or killed, to be quite safe from prosecution under the proposed rule. Hardly an improvement to my eyes. Such a rule would also mean that an accomplice could not be pressured, by means of a threat of prosecution, to disclose the actual criminal, or testify against that criminal. Again, not desirable. Use of UK Law I would add that in my answer to the linked question, sources from several US states were cited, and no UK sources. Indeed UK law does not seem to have been cited in the comments either, but this is a matter on which US and UK law are quite similar.	Yes Now, murder needs a definition because they are all subtly different. Let’s use the one in the new-south-wales Crimes Act 1900: Murder shall be taken to have been committed where the act of the accused, or thing by him or her omitted to be done, causing the death charged, was done or omitted with reckless indifference to human life, or with intent to kill or inflict grievous bodily harm upon some person, or done in an attempt to commit, or during or immediately after the commission, by the accused, or some accomplice with him or her, of a crime punishable by imprisonment for life or for 25 years. The only real difficulty is in the phrase “causing the death charged”. So a sensible prosecutor would charge both defendants with both deaths. A jury would find them guilty beyond reasonable doubt of one of the “death[s] charged”. The case is similar to Rogerson and McNamara who took a live Jamie Gao into a storeroom and came out with a body. Each accused the other of the murder - the jury didn’t believe either of them.	X can be convicted of murder in all jurisdiction in the United States (and probably the other common law jurisdictions). The issue here is two-fold. Contracts that involve illegal actions are not enforceable. In fact, the contract killing example you gave is a classic illegal agreement/contract. See the Wikipedia articles on illegal agreements and contract killings. Most criminal prosecutions involving bodily injury or death proceed regardless of the victim's wishes. This is because the prosecution represents the State's interests and can prosecute a case where the victims want it dismissed. Consider and example where the "battered spouse" doesn't want to testify against his/her abuser. The prosecution can still bring changes where the victim is not cooperative. It just makes proving their case more difficult. Check out this article from the DOJ that discusses how victims do not have a right to veto a plea agreement or other prosecutorial decisions. http://www.lclark.edu/live/files/6439-input-into-plea-agreement One could make an argument that the affirmative defense of consent could apply; however, most states have consent statutes like Colorado's that would not apply to murder. See C.R.S. § 18-1-505(2), which states: When conduct is charged is charged to constitute an offense because it causes or threatens bodily injury, consent to that conduct or to the infliction of that injury is a defense only if the bodily injury consented to or threatened by the conduct consented to is not serious, or the conduct and the injury are reasonably foreseeable hazards of joint participation in a lawful athletic contest or competitive sport, or the consent establishes a justification under sections 18-1-701 to 18-1-707. This statutes basically says consent doesn't apply where someone received serious bodily injury (murder would meet this standard), unless they are in a lawful athletic sport, such as boxing.
Ireland case outcome? See the last section of this website. It discusses about Ireland's mandatory requirement that non-EU family members of an EU citizen who want to join them in Ireland should have resided in another EU member state. This requirement is not set in the EU free movement directive. So it was challenged. Does anyone know the outcome?	I cannot find any relevant judgements from June 2007 that were published by the Irish High Court using the judgement finder. However, over 50 similar cases were issued at the High Court regarding this matter, and all but 10 were settled prior to a bundle of four cases being issued before the High Court which ultimately referred the matter to the European Court of Justice (ECJ). This bundle of four cases was Metock & Ors. v Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform [2008] IEHC 77 which ultimately became Case C-127/08 at the ECJ. It's unclear why the 15 June 2007 judgement hasn't been uploaded, or why it took until 14 March 2008 for the High Court to refer the matter to the ECJ. In conclusion, Ireland was ruled to have wrongly interpreted the relevant Directive and the Court held that non-EU family members of an EU citizen can move to an EU Member State without needing to have resided in another EU Member State prior to that. Directive 2004/38/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 29 April 2004 on the right of citizens of the Union and their family members to move and reside freely within the territory of the Member States amending Regulation (EEC) No 1612/68 and repealing Directives 64/221/EEC, 68/360/EEC, 72/194/EEC, 73/148/EEC, 75/34/EEC, 75/35/EEC, 90/364/EEC, 90/365/EEC and 93/96/EEC precludes legislation of a Member State which requires a national of a non-member country who is the spouse of a Union citizen residing in that Member State but not possessing its nationality to have previously been lawfully resident in another Member State before arriving in the host Member State, in order to benefit from the provisions of that directive. Article 3(1) of Directive 2004/38 must be interpreted as meaning that a national of a non-member country who is the spouse of a Union citizen residing in a Member State whose nationality he does not possess and who accompanies or joins that Union citizen benefits from the provisions of that directive, irrespective of when and where their marriage took place and of how the national of a non-member country entered the host Member State.	Can the subject actually sue me in England, or is it possible to sue only in the EU country I posted the article from, or in the US where the article is actually hosted? Yes. If the online encyclopedia is available in the UK, then you have libelled them in the UK and, indeed, in every country where it is available. They can choose to sue in and under the laws of any country where they were libelled. If the subject can and does sue in England, what happens exactly? This is laid out in the Civil Procedure Rules Am I correct in presuming that I will be notified of this by mail and asked to enter a defence? You will definitely need to be served with the Particulars of Claim, however, this may come by other methods than snail mail. If so, what happens if I ignore the matter? Will a default judgment against me necessarily be entered, or will the court duly consider the plaintiff's case, perform the bare minimum investigation/reasoning necessary to determine which arguments of theirs are (un)sound, and so possibly rule in my favour? A default judgement will be entered providing the Particulars of Claim show a cause of action on its face. The court will not examine any evidence or enquire into the veracity of the statements made on the Particulars of Claim. In short, unless the plaintiff has ballsed something up - you lose. If I do choose to respond, can I hire an England-based lawyer to handle everything remotely, or can I be compelled to physically attend the court in England? You are generally not required to attend court in a civil matter unless you need to testify. Even then, arrangements can be made for remote testimony. If the court rules for the plaintiff and awards damages, can this judgment be enforced in the EU, or would it apply only in the UK? It can be enforced in the EU. As a courtesy or by treaty, domestic jurisdictions will enforce foreign judgements in most cases. If the court rules in my favour, would I recoup my legal fees? You will probably recoup some but not all of your legal fees, say 50-60%. Costs orders are complicated - talk to your lawyer.	It is probably illegal in all of the jurisdictions in the US where a fetus is legally declared to be a person and where the murder statutes are written to not explicitly exclude abortion: that is, in no jurisdictions. No law existing or proposed for Georgia specifically addresses "travel for the purpose of getting an abortion". The underlying theory behind the claim (advocated by some Georgia attorneys) is that a person may be open to a conspiracy charge for taking a woman to another state to get an abortion, which would be a crime if committed in Georgia. If a conspiracy exists in Georgia to do something illegal (in Georgia), that is a violation of OCGA 16-4-8 ("when he together with one or more persons conspires to commit any crime and any one or more of such persons does any overt act to effect the object of the conspiracy"). The substantially same law exists in Washington, and most if not all other states. The theory is apparently that "conspire to commit a crime" means something like "conspire to perform an act which would be a crime if performed in in this jurisdiction", e.g. "purchase marijuana, or take a job at certain payday loan companies". No state has successfully claimed extraterritorial jurisdiction, where a Georgia resident can be prosecuted in Georgia for a legal act carried out in another state, so this theory is a bit of a stretch.	Fun one! First on the question of whether it matters if the agreement is written, I don't imagine it would make a difference in most of the US. We only require written contracts for agreements that meet certain requirements, those include contracts over a certain dollar amount, contracts involving the sale of land and contracts that cannot be completed within the year. Depending on the facts of your hypo, the writing requirement may be in play, but either way, it doesn't really make the situation more or less interesting; it's not a unique issue to this sort of contract. Second, the baseline assumption is that people can form legally binding contracts. The question is, whether something forbids the sort of contract you have in mind. I can think of a few things: It would be reasonably challenging to define what conduct is forbidden by the agreement. But that is merely a challenge not a road block. You could easily come up with a laundry list of forbidden acts to accomplish your result. Two people cannot contract to force the behavior of a third person, barring special circumstance. But again this isn't important since it's just a matter of drafting. In other words the contract probably would not say Juliet cannot go to the movies with Romeo, rather it would say Romeo cannot go the movies with Juliet. Even drafted in the less ideal way, he operative concept is whether the father could enforce a breach. So, the contract COULD be worded to say "If Juliet attends a movie while Romeo is present, Romeo must pay the father $xx dollars." Most importantly a party cannot form a contract that violates public policy. This is sometimes referred to "legality of objects", as in the object/goal of the contract must be legal. Contracts for prostitution, or the sale of a child (i.e. certain adoption contracts), or illegal products, would likely trip over this category. Here however, I can't readily think of a public policy basis to challenge the contract. Surely (some) states have stated a public policy favoring marriage, but it would likely be a challenge to contend the contract to not date (or not marry) was void because of such a policy. I can't think of any reason that the father couldn't enforce this sort of agreement. Finally, even if the contract was not enforceable, it's highly likely that Romeo could not simply take the money and breach. There are basis to demand return of the money even if no enforceable agreement exists. I am not your lawyer. Seek counsel from a lawyer in your area before taking any action. This answer is provided without research and for purely academic reasons. I have no special knowledge of this area of law.	Because the Austrian has equal rights to an Irish wholesaler wrt fireworks The freedom to provide services means that a national of any EU country has the same rights as a national of any other EU country including the home country. However, they all must still comply with local law.	I think that the plain meaning points to (1). The "other than an alien lawfully admitted for permanent residence" modifies who "is admissible", in the present tense, i.e. at the time of seeking admission. It doesn't modify the departure. Also, if it were (2), there would be weird issues like, if the departure doesn't count as a departure for the purposes of this section, then what about the unlawful presence? Does it stay accrued until a future departure, or does it just get wiped clean with no consequences? If it stays accrued, then in some cases it may be worse than interpretation (1), because interpretation (1) starts the 10-year period earlier while it doesn't affect you while you are a permanent resident, so that if you lose your permanent residency in the future the ban will be over earlier. The only case I know where a departure doesn't count as a departure for the purposes of this ban is when you leave on a grant of Advance Parole, as ruled by the BIA decision in Matter of Arrabally. But the reasoning in that case was that Advance Parole was specifically granted to allow the person to travel abroad an preserve their eligibility for Adjustment of Status, which a ban would defeat. But this reasoning wouldn't really apply to the case in this question, because permanent residency isn't specifically granted for travel abroad, and a returning permanent resident isn't subject to this ban anyway, so interpreting it as a departure doesn't defeat the maintenance of permanent residency. The issue you are asking about is rare. In most cases, when people become permanent residents, they stay permanent residents or naturalize to become US citizens, in which case they do not have to worry about this ban after becoming permanent residents. Only if they lose permanent residency would this question come up. I am not aware of any guidance or case law regarding this case.	Why do other countries, like America, not allow this? It is the way that U.S. courts have interpreted the constitutional amendment requirement and reflects a policy judgment that letting someone go free now and then is better than frequently forcing someone to be tried more than once. That value judgment flowed from concerns about and fear and skepticism of the British colonial criminal justice system and the Star Chamber in England with which they were familiar. The U.K., Australia, Canada, and New Zealand didn't have an independence revolution in their history to create the same kind of deep distrust of authority, especially in the criminal justice area. The U.S. was founded by terrorists. Few other former British colonies were. Quoting Dale: "As a constitutional protection, legislative change like this is not available in the United States." Is that really true and can someone expand on this? When the courts determine that the constitution requires something it can't be changed with ordinary legislation. Either the constitution needs to be amended to change it (which is very hard), or the courts can change their interpretation (which is unlikely in an area so settled in the law and which is relatively uncontroversial between liberals and conservatives in the U.S.). If it is, this is a big problem in my opinion. The powers that be in the U.S. don't agree. This kind of case is exceedingly rare. And, there are much bigger problems with the system that obscure that one. Also, the dual sovereignty doctrine allows federal prosecutions in some wrongful acquittals that really matter (e.g. for civil rights violations by law enforcement).	Yes, in most jurisdictions citizenship or residency is not a pre-requisite for standing. However, be aware that there are plenty of jurisdictions where the practical effect of being non-native gives you effectively no chance of winning. "Fair" in some countries means their citizens always beat foreigners.
How can one open a profitable MMORPG private server (server emulator) legally? Background The MMORPG in question has a Korean developer and a German publisher. It is pretty old, but is still live and running by the publisher. The game appears to be dying and has a very low active population in general. The EULA seems to prohibit packet-sniffing and reverse-engineering to "reproduce ... the games" by the wording used, however that does not seem to make it illegal. Merely voids ones contract between emulator-developer and the publisher, giving them the right to ban use of their servers/services, if I am not mistaken. There was an excellent answer, in my opinion, on a related question in Law StackExchange [1]. I am a European citizen. It is meant to be a hobby project originally, but seeing as how much time it takes to execute, it is sad to not see the effort be financially profitable, especially considering the potential it may have. The intention is first to replicate, and finally to modify by changing experience point rates, quests, maps and more, to re-form the entire flow and experience of the player, differing from the original game. There are leaked server files and possibly leaked source code to the server files, but I will not peek at neither the reverse-engineered leaked software, nor the leaked source code, as it defeats entirely the original purpose. Hence, unless I misunderstand, the "Chinese Wall" principle [1] applies, since packet-sniffing and reverse-engineering of the game client are the tools used. Unless I have misinterpreted [1], the game client appears to be the major stopper, before even getting to the financial aspects. Questions If at all possible, how can one go from writing the MMORPG server emulator, from scratch, to running a profitable server, legally, for the specific game described above? Also, an auxiliary question: is breach of the EULA illegal or immoral, in this case? Edit I want to explicitly point out that, as per [1], the server emulator would not be theft of code, but a recreation from the imagination. The work-flow to produce the emulator only involves dissecting of the game client and packet-sniffing of the communication between the original game server and the game client. The EULA does not state any legal action against these two methods. I have also added a secondary question to help out the discussion. [1] https://law.stackexchange.com/a/48393/34023	Profit changes everything. There is a tradition of tolerance (mostly) for "fan projects" which are totally not-for-profit. However that goes out the window very quickly once profit enters the picture (if the original publisher is excluded that is; Black Mesa had a happy integration of publisher and fan profit, since they also run the game distribution platform Steam). Because of the profit picture, licensing the game platform is your only viable option. And this is actually quite common; the original Half-Life (on which Black Mesa was built) had licensed the Quake engine.) At the least you would be licensing the client-side engine. I suspect you also aim to license the client-side graphics as well; the publisher may have feelings about that since visual IP tends to dilute the uniqueness of their own game. For instance Half-Life did not reuse Quake monsters or art. Art is a problem, because it also brings in lore In a modern MMO, recreating graphics and art is a considerable task. But if you don't, you may not be able to separate yourself from the conceptuals: If you were licensing a World of Warcraft client and using WoW art, it would be hard to justify purple, pink and green Elves without getting into the lore of the Night Elves and Blood Elves breaking away from the high-elf lineage... it would just be too jarring to use the same art assets yet have totally different lore... So at that point your game would become a "World of Warcraft story", which not surprisingly, the publisher would be much more reluctant to publish, since they want to retain creative control of their story, integrate it into their continuity, etc. Star Trek and Star Wars have whole staffs of "canon police" who make sure writers don't contradict existing lore, e.g. portray the Ferengi as a warrior race or Gungans in any way whatsoever. If it's just the engine, that's easy So if you are forced to change lore and art, and your plan is already to scratchbuild a new back-end... then really, all you're doing is licensing the game engine. So now the question is, why would you rely on brand X's game engine, when there are plenty of other game engines whose owners are happy to license them cheap, and even ones that are open-source? For instance, a fan project is re-casting Half Life II into the Unreal engine. So if we're not using that publisher's lore... and we're not using that publisher's art... and we're not using that publisher's engine... then we owe them nothing and we have a totally original game. Look at a program like The Guild. It was based on World of Warcraft, but the team tweaked it a little bit so it didn't touch any of Blizzard's IP at all. They did that for a reason.	The law in every country where your service is available prevails. That means that if your servers are in Estonia, your file storage is in Lithuania, your company is in Switzerland, you are in France, you hold Thai citizenship, your users are in the USA and the signal transits through the U.K., Belgium, Germany, Canada and Poland then you are subject to the laws of each and every one of them. In addition, if China has reason to believe that the stored files contain matters relating to their citizens then they can take an interest. And so on and so forth ... A country has jurisdiction wherever it wants to have jurisdiction subject to the limits of and its ability to actually enforce its laws. What you are proposing is certainly illegal in many countries and you need to seek professional legal advice - not rely on strangers on the internet.	Yes, this is gambling. The coupons have a value; gambling is the wagering of something of value. As to if it is illegal gambling, that would depend on the law in the jurisdiction where it takes place: for an internet transaction this could be the jurisdiction of the website owner or the user or both. As an example: in Australia, the Interactive Gambling Act 2001 is administered by the Department of Communication and the Arts, it provides: Any game of chance, including games of mixed chance and skill played over the internet, is prohibited under the Interactive Gambling Act 2001 if it’s provided to someone who is physically in Australia. The Act defines a gambling service as: gambling service means: (a) a service for the placing, making, receiving or acceptance of bets; or (b) a service the sole or dominant purpose of which is to introduce individuals who wish to make or place bets to individuals who are willing to receive or accept those bets; or (c) a service for the conduct of a lottery; or (d) a service for the supply of lottery tickets; or (e) a service for the conduct of a game, where: (i) the game is played for money or anything else of value; and (ii) the game is a game of chance or of mixed chance and skill; and (iii) a customer of the service gives or agrees to give consideration to play or enter the game; or (f) a gambling service (within the ordinary meaning of that expression) that is not covered by any of the above paragraphs. The Act provides exemptions, however, based on the small amount of information in your question its hard to tell if any would apply. Broadly, the exemptions allow for certain types of gaming to be licensed/regulated. The Act applies to any service that may be accessed by people in Australia irrespective of where it is in the world.	It is possible to abandon copyright ... maybe. However, this game has not been abandoned. When the owner of the company was liquidated, the copyright became the legal property of the liquidator in trust for the creditors. It is for him or her to decide how to deal with the property but the copyright still exists until 70 years after the author(s) death. If you allow downloads you are breaching copyright unless you have permission (or you meet the Fair Dealing criteria - you probably don't). The person to seek permission from is the liquidator od the company. If you get sued they do not need to demonstrate financial loss - copyright claims can either be pursued for actual or statutory damages, that is, a fixed amount per violation. In addition, in egregious cases, copyright violation is a crime prosecutable by the state.	...due to the international registration of multiple domains to generate ad revenue by recycling stories across sock puppet networks, giving the impression of multiple, independent companies. None of that is illegal on its face. Internet domains are freely registerable by anyone, anywhere (with the exception of some laws in some nations that restrict such Internet-related activity), and registered privately or publicly, and websites can be hosted anywhere. Writing articles and "spinning" and copying articles (even if that writing is sales gibberish in broken English) among the same copyright owner is legal, and using the same design and layout for a network of sites is legal. The formation of multiple, related companies and shell companies to give the impression that companies are separate and independent is legal (again, with the exception of some business and corporate laws in some nations that restrict such activity). These are all common business practices. Some business practices may appear to be unethical - trying to fool customers in order to make money and get clicks and sell ads. And what you may be feeling is that such activity is unethical. And that's OK. But feeling that they are unethical doesn't make the practices illegal. Many common activities that are considered to be unethical are illegal; but not all. Buyer beware. One way some of that activity may be illegal is if those articles are factually incorrect and promote quack medical treatments, are financial scams requiring payments, are gambling sites or promote other clearly illegal things. But then you get into the complexity of exactly how they are illegal, which jurisdictions are involved, and on and on.	No, it's not illegal... Ads are shown as a contract between the site that hosts it and the advertising company. The contract does not stipulate that customers need to buy something, in fact, the contract can't force the customer to buy anything! At best, the contract can pay the hosting site based on the ad being shown, clicked, or any sale made after it. ...but you will do exactly the opposite Advertizement is made to put your own brand into the head of people. In fact, most ads don't have any effect on people. As I am writing this, ads for a kid TV, travels to Turkey and the primetime films for the weekend on the TV-station I have on are shown. I have no intention of consuming any of these advertised products. Impact of a campaign is measured by two metrics: people reached, and people responding. People reached is measured in clicks. People responding is measured in changes in earnings or sales. Clicking the ad increases the reached rating. If the rating is bad, the ad campaign is just ineffective... which leads to the most paradoxical thing: Bad advertisement and good advertisement both lead to more advertisement - bad to level out the missing response, good to maximize the response. By clicking on the ad you just funnel more money to the ad industry. When does it get illegal? [DDOS] The only way it would become illegal is if John Doe sets up a computer - or rather a botnet - and has that network click the ads thousands of times per second. Google can handle easily 83,000 searches per second, twitter gets more than 9000 tweets that are distributed to millions of people, Tumbler and Instagram handle together about 2500 posts per second. In fact, every second, more than 100000 Gigabytes of traffic run through the net. To have an impact on one site, you need to be truly a large number of calls... and then it is called a DDOS. DDOS is illegal under the CFAA, in this case 18 UC 1030: (a)Whoever— (5) (A)knowingly causes the transmission of a program, information, code, or command, and as a result of such conduct, intentionally causes damage without authorization, to a protected computer; (b)Whoever conspires to commit or attempts to commit an offense under subsection (a) of this section shall be punished as provided in subsection (c) of this section. In the UK, you'd break the Computer Misuse Act of 1990 section 3, because denying someone else service via DDOS is unauthorized, clearly unauthorized, and prevents access to any data (the website) on any computer (the server): (1)A person is guilty of an offence if— (a)he does any unauthorised act in relation to a computer; (b)at the time when he does the act he knows that it is unauthorised; and (c)either subsection (2) or subsection (3) below applies. (2)This subsection applies if the person intends by doing the act— (b)to prevent or hinder access to any program or data held in any computer But can a DDOS be protest? [NO!] Anonymous attempted to petition to make DDOS a legal form of protest in 2013. The petition got 6,048 of the 25000 signatures needed to warrant an answer by the white house - unlike people in 2016 asking for a Death Star. At least it prompted Joshua I. James to write a research paper about the proposal in March. He too points to the CFAA and Section 5A, especially the sentence I quoted above. Among a lot of stipulations, he points out that internet protest in the shape of a DDOS would need to follow the same rules as a legal protest on the streets - which for example demands that entrance to businesses can't be blocked, and one is not allowed to harass employees and customers. According to the general rules for legal protest as given, there are still a number of challenges. First and foremost, entrances to businesses should not be blocked. In terms of DDoS, if sustained denial of service takes place, then access (entrance) to the server (business)is eﬀectively blocked. This means that, at a minimum, sustained denial of service should be considered as a non-legal approach to protesting. Thus, he concludes sustained DDOS is per se can't be a legal protest, and even a non-sustained DDOS would impact people using the site in a way they will deem harassing - which means that even a non-permanent DDOS can't be a legal protest. And then comes the final blow: DDOS, unlike a real protest on the streets, can't, by its very nature, inform people of why there is protest, even if it were a form of protest! This means that nobody knows it is meant to be a protest and not a normal DDOS, and as it can't convey what the action is about, it can't be a proper protest.	The reason is 17 USC 106: the owner of copyright under this title has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize any of the following... (2) to prepare derivative works based upon the copyrighted work The original picture is the underlying protected work. The ASCII reproduction is a derivative work. If you get permission to make the derivative work, it is okay. Otherwise, it is copyright infringement. There is an escape clause, "fair use", which amounts to taking a chance that you won't be sued and then arguing that you didn't do them any prohibited harm. If you make any money off of the game, you have a major strike against you. I suggest reading the fair use FAQ; basically, it is really hard to know how a fair use defense will fare, but based on prior cases, I'd say it's infringement, not fair use.	Short Answer No, you may not do this legally without permission in the form of a license from the owners of this intellectual property. Your video game based merch business plan is a horrible, horrible idea. There is no reasonable way that you could have known just how horribly awful and bad an idea this was without talking to someone familiar with the law. So, I'm not saying that this was a stupid or unreasonable question. But, now, you know. And, you should run away from this idea as fast as you can. Long Answer What you are proposing to do is blatant infringement of copyright (and trademarks) through the creation of derviative works, on a systematic basis, for profit, without permission, in a manner that does not constitute a parody or satire or any form of fair use. This kind of economic activity is precisely what copyright and trademark laws are designed to prevent. The case against you for liability could only get more clear if you were selling pirated copies of the game itself. You would have no legal defenses (other than statute of limitations if they waited to many years to sue you, which they almost certainly would not). You would be liable for statutory damages of up to many thousands of dollars per infringing item and the attorneys' fees the intellectual property owners incurred to sue you. The owners of the games could probably get a court order to destroy all of your merchandise, and a restraining order and injunction to force you to immediately shut down your business at any time. They could obtain all of those remedies without sending you a cease and desist letter before suing you. The moderately likely worst case scenario economic liability that you would face would be on the order of 100 times the amount of profits you could hope to make in a best case scenario, and the likelihood that you would incur some significant civil liability is on the order of 85%-90% (with almost of of the little or no civil liability percentage attributed to scenarios in which the company doesn't notice that you are infringing upon its intellectual property rights). Also, the more profitable you are and the higher the volume of goods you sell, the more likely you are to be sued. The liability risk to profit ratio grows with each additional dollar of profit you make. There is a good chance (perhaps 65%-75%) that they could establish that your violation was willful and wanton in these circumstances, which would also prevent you from discharging any part of the massive judgment against you in bankruptcy. So, there is a better than 50% chance that you'd be stuck with an intellectual property rights infringement debt, which could easily run into the high hundreds of thousand or even many millions of dollars, plus post-judgment interest at a rate similar to the market rate for high risk junk bonds, for the rest of your life. In terms of the economic harm involved to you, this would be almost as bad as having all of your property seized and then being sold into slavery for the rest of your life, if a coin toss bet comes up tails, but you get to keep the coin if it comes up heads. A settlement in which you turned over every penny you ever made in the venture, destroyed all of your products, shut down the business and paid them an additional low five figure amount in lieu of penalties and attorneys' fees would be a very generous offer. You would also face a real risk (perhaps 10%-15%) of some low level felony criminal liability (perhaps several years in prison). This is a business plan that is so toxic with immense, near certain liability risks of the worst possible kind that you should put on gloves before picking it up and tossing it into your nearest available fireplace or campfire. This business plan poses more liability risk to you than opening up a nightclub, bribing your contractors and code inspectors to ignore all fire and electrical codes, painting the walls with turpentine, padlocking all of the exit doors from the outside, changing a $1 cover and selling booze at cost to get huge crowds, and then booking bands with lots of fireworks in their stage shows on a nightly basis. (Yes, I really had a client who was stupid enough to come up with this business plan until I talked him out of it.) From a civil liability perspective, you would have less exposure to economic liability if you started a business that involved abducting random cats and dogs and goats off the street and charging customers to forcibly rape and then mutilate them, while filming it for distribution on the Internet with your real name and fingerprints in a watermark on every image and close ups of the animals collar tags and the goats' brands. The likelihood of criminal liability would be quite a bit greater (perhaps 60%-80%), however, even though the punishment if you were convicted of felonies for the bestiality business would be similar to the punishment for a conviction for copyright and trademark infringement. (Thankfully, I have yet to see a client try to implement this business plan.) Go hire someone to secure a license from the intellectual property owner for you (perhaps an IP lawyer or an agent or broker), or forget about it. This is an industry where you absolutely must be legitimate, and you have to go big or go home. The economies of scale are simply too immense to ignore. If your anticipated gross sales aren't at least $500,000 a year or so, you probably shouldn't even consider doing it whether it is legal or not. A license, if you could get it, would probably cost $6,000 to $12,000 in professional fees to negotiate (if you could accomplish this feat at all), perhaps a similar amount for an upfront fee to the intellectual property holder, and probably 10%-35% of your profits on an ongoing basis. This is because the market rate of licenses of this kind are geared towards what large scale distributors selling wholesale to Wal-Marts, department stores, and national mall chains could bear (I have some clients that happily pay these kinds of license fees so they can sell branded products, manufactured in China and then imported, on a high volume national basis.) The license fees would be a huge bargain by comparison to your economic exposure to infringement liability. But, if even the licensing fees (if you could negotiate a deal to pay them) are too expensive, then, this business plan doesn't make economic sense even with permission in the form of a license from the intellectual property owner. In that case, you should instead go into the lemonade stand business or buy a food truck, or become an Uber driver, or open a coffee shop or a liquor store, or something like that, with less liability risk and a more proven business model. If you must make video game merch without permission, do it in a back alley of a small town in rural Mexico on a cash only basis (where lots of people do stuff like this without getting caught), rather than an online store, where any bored paralegal or network manager in the video game company's law firm can find you at a moment's notice and might win a promotion or a raise or a bonus for doing so.
Does my university employer have a claim to the proceeds from an academic book I am writing? I am a research scientist with a state university in the United States. I am an at-will employee, not tenured or tenure-track. Currently I am in the process of developing an academic book in my area of expertise, which is also the area I work extensively in for my employer. The book will be developed on my own time during evenings, weekends and vacation time. Does my employer automatically have a claim to the proceeds if this book ever gets published? How can I verify? If they do have a claim, can I request a release and must I have a lawyer to do this for me? Can I represent myself? For clarification, there was no contract signed at the beginning of the employment. Rather they pointed me to general bylaws of the university governing the type of position I am in and I was asked to verify that I agree to them. After examining the bylaws, I have not seen anything remotely related to copyright etc.	Yes, but maybe no. In many state universities that I am familiar with, there are contractual guarantees that exempt regular academic staff from the "we pwn all your stuff" rule, which does not extend to other staff. (I had to toss back a contract for subcontracted work once because they asserted automatic ownership of copyright). It depends on your contract, entirely. Which, if it is non-existent, is a bit problematic. Their claim would be based on "work for hire" law, 17 USC 101, where the central question is whether it is "a work prepared by an employee within the scope of his or her employment". If this is a work for hire, they have more than a right to the proceeds of the work, they own the work and can sue you for publishing without permission. Work for hire means they own the copyright, and only the copyright owner can authorize publication. You do not legally have to have an attorney to request a release, but you should have one, because if you request a release, you are admitting that this is a work for hire. Your lawyer would tell you not to admit to such a thing. Of course, if you are reasonably certain that this is a work for hire and don't intend to contend otherwise, that kind of foot-shooting is not a concern. If your lawyer delivers a formal letter to your boss, the boss will almost certainly hand it to the university attorneys, and both parties will then take the hardest line possible, in defense of the interests of their clients.	Depends if the artist is a contractor or an employee Let's say I am the person who created Spiderman, but my artist came up with the design of the costume and everything Well, it certainly looks like you didn’t create Spider-Man - the artist did. If they are your employee then you, as their employer, own the copyright. If they are a contractor, then they own the copyright which can be transferred to you under the terms of the contract or otherwise. What if the design was written in paper and then the concept artist represented the written design graphically, does that make any difference? Not really. Here the artist has created a derivative work but since they did so with your permission, that’s fine. The derivative work is a seperate work with its own copyright owned as stated above. How can you make sure you don't face this problem if you hire an artist for your work? You set out in the contract who owns the copyright.	It is not necessary for an agreement to be verbose and written by a lawyer, for it to be binding. There is some danger in having untrained people writing up agreements (they don't know the distinction between "what the law says" versus "what we had in mind"). The agreement is binding, but their interpretation of the contract language does not automatically prevail. The statement "ALL TUTORS ARE PAID 8 HOURS, unless told otherwise" is slightly problematic since it is not true (you can't pay time, you pay money for time spend). With no other statements about time and payment, and just looking at the words, this says that an employee will be paid for 8 hours work, period. Unless they say something different. That could mean "even if you work 20 hours, you only get paid for 8" (illegal under various labor laws), or it could be "even if you only work 2 hours, you get paid for 8" (the most reasonable interpretation). The interpretation "You are limited to 8 hours of work per pay period / contract" is not a reasonable interpretation: that isn't what the clause says. Such a limit could be clearly expressed ("can work up to 8 hours" is a clear way to state the limit), and since they didn't say anything like that, that is not how the courts will read the clause. They can, however, inform you otherwise, e.g. say "your minimum automatic pay is now 2 hours", or "we will only guarantee 2 hours work", and at that point that's what the number is. Since this is (presumably) a take-it or leave it contract which they wrote up and you didn't actually negotiate, any unclarities are legally interpreted in your favor. If you have worked more than 8 hours and they are using the contract language to argue that you won't be paid for the overage, that is not at all likely to hold up in court. Under terms of the contract (interpreted as stating a minimum guarantee of hours), they can inform you that your new minimum is 0 hours. Also, unless there is some kind of tenure clause, they can terminate the contract at will, and maybe they'll hire you under a different contract. What the terms of employment were for you in the past does not matter, what matters is what the current terms are. If you did not pay attention to the fact that they changed the terms of the agreement as of this quarter, that is not their problem. If they decided to change to "actual hours worked" after the current contract was formed, and they informed you of that fact later, then thereafter that is what the agreement is. Until you are notified of that change, the guaranteed minimum is what it says in the contract. In case their argument is "The university sets this policy, the department made a mistake in not informing you", the university has to take responsibility for the errors of their inferiors.	It should contain one of the following two clauses: A clause that explicitly lists all of the side projects you are working on at the point of employment, that will not be transferred to the employer's ownership under Section 11 of the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act 1998 ("the Act") which states (1) The author of a work is the first owner of any copyright in it, subject to the following provisions. (2) Where a literary, dramatic, musical or artistic work, or a film, is made by an employee in the course of his employment, his employer is the first owner of any copyright in the work subject to any agreement to the contrary. (3) This section does not apply to Crown copyright or Parliamentary copyright (see sections 163 and 165) or to copyright which subsists by virtue of section 168 (copyright of certain international organisations). This would mean that your existing side projects are protected, but any future side projects would transfer to your employer under S11(2). This might be fine if you don't intend on doing any more side projects during your employment and simply want to protect your existing work. A clause that explicitly rejects S11(2) of the Act in relation to work undertaken outside of your employment and not on company resources, that is specifically defined as "side projects" (including a non-exhaustive list of examples) and the rebuttable presumption that any such work is outside S11(2) unless proven to the civil standard in a court of law. This provides balance to both sides: the employee is free to pursue their side projects outside of work, but in the event that they work on them in company time and on company resources (e.g. a laptop) the employer is free to rebut that presumption in court and have the work transferred to them. Generally, the second clause seems to be what most employees would want in a contract to protect their side projects. Whether it can successfully be inserted depends on the negotiation between both sides. Most reasonable employers would not refuse it. The leading case on the matter of S11(2) is Penhallurick v MD5 Ltd [2021] EWCA Civ 1770 (02 December 2021) which future courts of first instance are presently bound to follow, unless the Supreme Court issues a different decision. What does "in the course of employment" mean? Per Penhallurick mentioned above, "in the course of employment" is generally held to mean doing things that you are paid for as part of your employment. For example, if you are a baker and you write a novel in your free time, it is clear that has nothing to do with your employment: you are not being paid by the bakery to write novels. However, if you were to write a baking cookbook that incorporated recipes that you developed at the bakery, that could be held to be done "in the course of employment" because the bakery could argue that you are paid to develop new recipes for them. The development of side projects in relation to software development is fraught with peril. A lot of employers will try and advance the argument that, although you did not develop the work using company resources and time, your work is still "connected" to the area they operate in. Well known examples of this include Google asserting ownership of software development side projects that, on the surface of it, aren't done on company time and resources and don't appear to have been done "in the course of employment" as you are not being paid specifically to work on, e.g. game development when you are employed as a website backend engineer. If the employer can present enough evidence that what you are/were working on is "connected" to their business in some fashion, that is (at present, in England and Wales) sufficient for ownership to transfer to them under S11(2) even if the work wasn't done in company time and/or using company resources. An example of a clause that seeks to protect side projects Both Parties agree that Section 11(2) of the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act 1988 ("the Act") does not apply to any and all Side Projects started prior to the commencement of employment. Both Parties also agree that S11(2) of the Act does not apply to any and all Side Projects started after the commencement of employment, specifically where said Side Projects are unrelated to the Employer's business of area of business. For the avoidance of doubt, "unrelated" has the ordinary meaning that a reasonable person would assign to it. For example, since the Employer operates in area of business, a Side Project regarding the development of an online video game is clearly unrelated to the Employer's business. This ex post presumption is rebuttable on the provision of clear and compelling evidence presented in a competent and validly constituted court of law in England and Wales that the Side Project was developed on company time and/or using company resources (e.g. a laptop) or that it validly infringes upon a business domain the Employer operates in. Both Parties agree that it will not be sufficient to adduce that the Employer "could" seek to operate in the Side Project's domain. For ownership to transfer under S11(2) of the Act, the Employer must demonstrate that they operated in that domain prior to the creation of the Side Project or that the Side Project has taken advantage of company resources that were not legitimately available outside of the company. For example, confidential company know-how that is specific to the Employer and not an industry standard or widely known thing. For the avoidance of doubt, use of open-source software (used in compliance with the licence and regardless of whether that software was created, released, or maintained by the Employer or someone else) does not constitute taking advantage of company resources. The Employer agrees to pay the Employee a sum of special damages assessed and awarded appropriately by a court of law in England and Wales for any attempt to subvert this clause or sue the Employee for a Side Project contrary to this clause. In the alternative, at the Employee's absolute discretion, a permanent injunction enforcing this clause may be awarded against the Employer.	The situation in Texas is unclear. It is worth mentioning Texas as a state where the law may require statutory authorization in order to copyright state documents. Although the statute does not explicitly state such as a requirement, it can be inferred from an attorney general opinion. At a bare minimum, the Department of Health, the State Preservation Board, the Water Development Board, the Department of Motor Vehicles, and county governments all have statutory authority to hold copyrights. In your specific case, there's an additional complication. Something is only a work of the State of Texas if one of the following is true: 1) it was created by a government employee as part of their job duties, or 2) it was a work for hire. It's quite likely that neither of the above is true for a student newspaper, rendering the question of Texas-owned copyrights irrelevant.	This depends on the agreement between the person commissioning the work and the ghostwriter; but it is entirely possible that the ghostwriter would have no claim of copyright if it is a "work for hire". This circular (PDF) from the US Copyright Office lays out the possibilities. Under the US Copyright Act, a work may be considered a "work for hire" if it is: a work prepared by an employee within the scope of his or her employment; or a work specially ordered or commissioned ... if the parties expressly agree in a written instrument signed by them that the work shall be considered a work made for hire. If (in the second case) the commissioner and the ghostwriter sign a written contract saying that the work is a "work for hire" (see p. 3 of the PDF), then the commissioner gets the copyright, not the ghostwriter: If a work is a work made for hire, the employer or the party that specially ordered or commissioned that work is the author of that work. If a work is made for hire, the employer or the party that specially ordered or commissioned that work is the initial owner of the copyright in the work unless the employer or the commissioning party has signed a written agreement to the contrary with the work’s creator. However, it is also possible for ghostwriters to negotiate some rights to their own work in the contract process. This FAQ describes one possibility: Question: How can I bargain for a better ghostwriter agreement? Answer: If you are commissioned to create a work, and you don’t feel comfortable signing a ghostwriter for hire contract (perhaps you want to use the characters you create for another project, etc), then you can negotiate to grant less extensive rights and sign a “freelance writer for hire” agreement instead. Limit the amount of time the Client owns exclusive rights, whereby you can initiate a termination of transfer. If this doesn’t fly, bargain for more money. You may also propose that if the Client decides to abandon the project, then the copyright can revert to you.	When you own something, you get to decide what you do with it There is no obligation to make a copyrighted work available and the fact that it isn’t is not a defence to a copyright infringement. Brenda Books is entitled to either damages or an account of profits. Arguably, they have suffered no damage, so Alan’s profits are the better target. In some jurisdictions, such as the United States, statutory damages (a set dollar amount for each infringement) is available even if there are no damages or profits.	I'm pretty sure in France you have moral rights and copyrights. I am writing from New Zealand, but we have some similar intellectual property laws due to being member countries of the World Intellectual Property Organisation. We are also both member countries of the World Trade Organisation (WTO has the TRIPS agreement which relates to IP). So my answer may or may not be right – check what it says in France's copyright acts: you should be able to search for terms like first owner, and moral rights, films/videos, etc. The school isn't your employer, and so the basic rule is that you as the author are automatically the first owner. Since you're not really at school to create anything or research for the school, I don't think the court would enforce a blanket term that you had to agree to that the school owns intellectual property in what you create. You probably own the copyright. You also have moral rights in what you have created, which means even if the school does own the copyright in your work, you can request they attribute it to you if they show it in public (online). Not all works have moral rights. However, in NZ if you create a film/video you do have moral rights in it.
Neighborhood with chronic internet outages ISP won't fix My neighbors and I have had problems with internet service intermittently for years. Since I was at home full time, I decided to get serious about making them fix it. I've been through every aspect of the customer service apparatus, contacted every relevant State and Federal agency, and still I cannot get them to fix the real problem. At any point do my neighbors and I have a legal remedy? There is only one high speed provider here (FL US), if it matters. Thank you. Internet Down Log.txt	Per Fla. Stat. 364.011, broadband services in Florida are not subject to state regulation, there are no statutory / regulatory standards for network downtime. So you would have to see what guarantees you were given in your contract – mine makes no enforceable promises, it just simply say they will try hard and I can call them to report problems. If they make a concrete claim like "we promise that internet service will be not be unavailable for more than 10% of the time per 24 hours for more than 2 consecutive days", then they may have breached their contract. Without a specific promise, you can't sue them for not providing the service that you want.	There is, in most countries at least, no law requiring a business to treat a customer fairly. In general, a business may refuse to serve a would-be customer for any reason or none, provided that the reason is not membership in a protected class (racial, religious, ethnic, or sexual bias, mostly). Exactly which classes are protected depends on the local law (in the US, there can be such laws at all of federal, state, and municipal levels). If a customer is asked to leave and does not do so, s/he could be charged with defiant trespass (or local equivalent). More likely, security, or the police, could simply escort the customer out of the business, using as much force as is reasonably needed for that purpose. Unless there are grounds for action not mentioned, I see no basis for a successful suit by the customer.	I'm not going to comment on the specifics of this law; rather, I think this question shows a misconception of the way the legal system works in general. Here's the question: do you actually have "legally privileged" material on your phone? If not, what's keeping you from claiming that is that it's not true, and lying to a police officer is a bad idea. And just putting a letter from your lawyer on the phone doesn't mean you've established a legal privilege--attorney-client privilege is not a magic spell, it's a reasonable system of protection that only covers certain communications. The bottom line is: the statute in general, and that clause in particular, were included in the law to protect real, important, and substantial legal right. The courts interpret the law in light of that purpose. If the police officer finds a solution that protects your rights while still carrying out the purpose of the statute, the court will be unlikely to fault him or her. In this case, if you tell the officer that there is a letter from your attorney in a particular folder, the obvious solution is for the officer not to open that folder. Problem solved. In practice, in the United States at least, these cases are dealt with routinely; computers are seized, and attorneys and judges work together to ensure that privilege is protected while still allowing reasonable access to seized materials. I would imagine the same is true in the U.K. The bottom line is: the law is not a game, and technical "gotchas" are rarely effective. Common law systems allow judges enough leeway to avoid this sort of pointless technicality.	I found a mention of this issue here, where the case Rhonda Eddy v. Ingenesis was cited. Eddy worked from home in West Virginia, but had signed her contract with a company headquartered in Texas. The link is the decision of The State of West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals, which upheld the decision of the Circuit Court of Jefferson County, namely, that the Circuit Court did not have the authority to hear Eddy's petition against her employer because she was out of the Circuit Court's jurisdiction. The circuit court found that it did not have personal jurisdiction over respondent under West Virginia’s personal jurisdiction statutes, and that respondent did not have sufficient minimum contacts with West Virginia to satisfy federal due process considerations. The circuit court also found that it did not have subject matter jurisdiction over petitioner’s WPCA claim because petitioner’s employment contract contained a valid choice of law clause that mandated Texas law would govern any dispute between the parties. Emphasis mine. It all depends on stipulations made in the employment contract. This (in the United Kingdom) states 4. Place of Work Allows the employer to specify the location where the employee will work. However, it also allows for the employer to specify any other location in the future. This gives the employer much greater flexibility. That would seem to indicate that (at least in the U.K.) the place is specified in the contract.	Use of SE is subject to the terms and conditions specified here. Section 3 says "You agree that all Subscriber Content that You contribute to the Network is perpetually and irrevocably licensed to Stack Exchange under the Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike license." That means that your contributions can be used forever. That means the stuff is there, end of story. Section 11 on Termination says "Stack Exchange may also terminate, block, or suspend any and all Services and access to the Network immediately, without prior notice or liability, in its sole discretion, for any reason or no reason at all, including but not limited to any Subscriber breaches of any of the terms or conditions of this Agreement". That means you can be banned. So, yes, what they did is legal.	I would agree with @DaleM that it is probably legal to install such a camera, however I think that you may have recourse - Apparently, California has Civil Stalking Laws and you may be able to get a restraining order prohibiting him from monitoring your front door. (You may also look into harassment, which would be related)	Probably not An employee is someone that the employer "suffers or permits to work" - moderators would appear to be caught by this. There are specific exemptions carved out in the public and not-for-profit sectors where they "a) work toward public service, religious or humanitarian objectives; b) not expect or receive compensation for services; and c) not displace any genuine employees." However, they very specifically say “Under the FLSA, employees may not volunteer services to for-profit private sector employers.” So on the face of it, a moderator is an employee and is entitled to minimum wages and conditions for the hours they work. AOL settled a lawsuit in 2009 with their moderators who were suing for wages for an undisclosed sum and so the case did not set a precedent. This article suggests that "for-profit companies don’t have volunteers; they have lawsuits waiting to happen" and uses examines the situation at Reddit (which could equally apply here). Facebook employs moderators so the precedent exists that this is work that employees do. When the lawsuit happens, we'll find out. It will turn on the particular facts - some types of mods for some companies may be employees while others may not.	The lawyer referred to in that article is suing in his capacity as the recipient of spam emails under California's anti-spam law. Not every jurisdiction has a law like this. I'm from Australia. In Australia, when we make laws prohibiting something, the law usually appoints a government agency to administer the law and bring prosecutions under it, and fines are paid to the government. In contrast, America has a lot of these laws where affected individuals can sue and collect the fines personally. So under the Californian law, you can get $1,000 per email for particular kinds of spam even if you haven't actually suffered any real damage: California Business and Professions Code s 17529.5(b)(1)(B)(ii). How? You need to work out who sent the spam, get evidence to prove it, and file a claim in a Californian court. Apparently you can sue in small claims court, which saves you on filing fees. It helps if you have many email accounts, because then you will receive many emails and therefore can collect many fines. One of that lawyer's wins was in Balsam v Trancos (2012) in the Californian Court of Appeal. Another example of a judgment discussing the Californian anti-spam law is Bontrager v Showmark Media.
Do mask orders in response to Covid-19 violate the First Amendment? Not a lawyer, but curious about what lawyers would say. My understanding is that the legal definition of speech is broader than the conventional definition of the term and I would think the ability to choose what one wears or doesn't wear broadly falls under "free expression." Here are a few specific examples, including one about clothing: https://www.uscourts.gov/about-federal-courts/educational-resources/about-educational-outreach/activity-resources/what-does The obvious counter is that it's about public safety, however, I'd argue that if the barrier is as low as preventing the spread of disease, then the public safety argument could be used to justify virtually any law.	One could make a First Amendment challenge to mask requirements through either the Free Exercise Clause or the Free Speech Clause. Neither approach is likely to succeed. Because going without a mask is not recognized as "expressive conduct," it is not protected by the Free Speech Clause A free-speech challenge would likely also fail for two reasons. As you correctly suggested, the First Amendment protects more than just speech, also protecting "expressive conduct," such as flag burning, dancing, and wearing armbands. Of course, literally any conduct could have some secret expressive meaning in the mind of the person carrying out -- "I shot him in the face to say I didn't like him" -- so we have a question of where to draw the line between what expressive conduct does and does not receive the strong protection the First Amendment affords to speech. The Supreme Court detailed that test in Texas v. Johnson, 491 U.S. 397 (1989), and it's now generally formulated as asking two questions: Did the speaker actually intend to convey a particularized message through his conduct? Are the people who see the conduct likely to understand that message? At the Sturgis rally, or at the statehouse protests over COVID restrictions, or some similar event that is explicitly opposed to masks, refusing to wear a mask goes a long ways in communicating an opposition to the mask requirements. But in the vast majority of cases, no one you run into in the normal course of daily life is likely to recognize that you are not wearing a mask because you are trying to communicate a message, let alone decipher what that message is. Do you believe that mask mandates are tyranny? That COVID-19 is a hoax? That life is meaningless and we should all welcome the hastening of human extinction? None of that is clear to the average viewer, which is who the courts are going to be concerned with. Because refusing to wear a mask is generally insufficient to convey a specific message, I'd argue that it is not expressive conduct. Because mask requirements are neutral as to religion and generally applicable, they do not violate the Free Exercise Clause. A religious challenge ("My religion prohibits wearing masks") is likely to fail because "the right of free exercise does not relieve an individual of the obligation to comply with a 'valid and neutral law of general applicability on the ground that the law proscribes (or prescribes) conduct that his religion prescribes (or proscribes).'" Employment Div. v. Smith, 494 U.S. 872, 879 (1990). This means that if the mask ban generally applies to everyone and you just happen to belong to a religion that forbids mask-wearing, you can't use that affiliation to escape the law's requirements. (The outcome may be different when you run the problem through the Religious Freedom Restoration Act or state-level analogues, which impose more stringent tests for infringements on religious liberty.)	Almost no constitutional right, for the most part, applies or gives rise to an all-encompassing right at all times. Schools can determine that certain times are off limits as activity during those times may interrupt the environment most conducive to learning, or for other articulable reasons; this is fine so long as it is applied evenly. Schools may say you may not hand out literature at certain times, only before or after classes, weekends, or put limits on the place or manner of distribution. There are examples of this premise that exist, pertaining to nearly every right, otherwise considered absolute. This is no different than the principle that while Americans enjoy the right to free speech, not all speech is protected at all times, or that the right to bear arms does not apply to all people, places, or environs.	First, the relevant term is "precedent". You have misstated the nature of "precedent". Precedent is simply the addition of further information about what the law is. A legislature may set forth a law that say "If A, then (if you B, you will suffer consequence C)". But it is not self-evident in a given instance whether A is true, or B is true, or what exactly C refers to. In addition, law is an integrated system, so Law #39 may seem to contradict Law #12: does that mean that Law #39 doesn't apply, or is it that Law #12 (if #12 is a Constitutional provision, #39 is just wrong – laws exist in a hierarchy). Therefore, laws must be interpreted. "Precedent" refers to the creation of a rule of interpretation, one which is logically consistent with existing rules of interpretation (which are arranged in some logical hierarchy). If the Supreme Court establishes a rule that laws penalizing "hate speech" contradict the First Amendment (R.A.V v. St Paul) and therefore cannot be a law in the US, then any similar law is, by rule, also not actually a law. Creation of precedent itself follows rules, though ones that are harder to discern – this is what "jurisprudence" is about. For example, some justices believe that they should appeal to an inherent feeling of justice; others believe that a law should be interpreted according to perceived legislative intent; still others focus on the wording of the legal text (statute, usually). This does not involve appeal to popular sentiment. It does mean (usually) that law is seen to be a system of rules, and not case-by-case feelings.	The 9th Circuit decision actually held that the challenged regulations constitute a prior restraint on speech that offends the First Amendment which is not the same as saying that computer software is speech. A crucial differentiation is that by prohibiting talking about the technology, the regulations imposed a "prepublication licensing scheme that burdens scientific expression", which distinguishes the TikTok case from talking about cryptography. The regulations burden business transactions, which have for a long time not been protected by strict scrutiny. The first hill one would have to climb would be showing that there is a real First Amendment issue. There is no First Amendment right for the Chinese government to spy on Americans. The second issue is whether narrow tailoring means that if someone can come up with an alternative to an outright ban, then the regulation is not narrowly-enough tailored. We may eventually get a clearer guideline on that, since state governments have imposed very many restrictions on constitutional liberties, in order to prevent the spread of covid, when a less restrictive action would be warning people that this is a dangerous disease. Many restrictions have survived strict scrutiny because they were believed to be necessary to achieve that governmental end. The executive order identifies the compelling government interest: TikTok automatically captures vast swaths of information from its users, including Internet and other network activity information such as location data and browsing and search histories. This data collection threatens to allow the Chinese Communist Party access to Americans’ personal and proprietary information — potentially allowing China to track the locations of Federal employees and contractors, build dossiers of personal information for blackmail, and conduct corporate espionage. In light of that, it is hard to see that a warning notice would be effective in the face of this threat. Seizing the company and its IP and handing it over to Microsoft would be a less restrictive measure that would probably be as effective and would be protective of the First Amendment rights of teenagers, but it would also be somewhat outside the scope of current US law, so it isn't an actual alternative. I conclude that the ban is the least restrictive effective response to the threat. But it is not entirely clear what the constitutional rules are regarding effectiveness of alternatives (does 20% less restrictive compel a 10% less effective solution?).	Only in California. The First Amendment provides a student essentially no protection from discipline by a private university. Manhattan Cmty. Access Corp. v. Halleck, 139 S. Ct. 1921, 1928 (2019) ("The text and original meaning of those Amendments, as well as this Court's longstanding precedents, establish that the Free Speech Clause prohibits only governmental abridgment of speech. The Free Speech Clause does not prohibit private abridgment of speech."); Vaynberg v. Seton Hall Univ., No. CIV.A. 09-4999 FSH, 2010 WL 4510904, at *5 (D.N.J. Oct. 26, 2010) ("In order for the First Amendment to apply, the challenged conduct must be deemed 'state action.' Seton Hall is a private, Catholic university. ... Because there is no evidence from which a reasonable fact finder could conclude that Seton Hall's conduct relevant to this lawsuit was “state action,” Seton Hall is entitled to summary judgment.") Some states, however, have passed laws requiring private schools to provide some of the protections of the First Amendment. The most robust of these is California's Leonard Law, which essentially requires private schools to adhere to the First Amendment. Other states also recognize some measure of free-speech rights for students at private institutions. For instance, both the Pennsylvania and New Jersey supreme courts have held that their state constitutions' free-speech clauses (which, unlike the First Amendment, say nothing about the government) protected peaceful protesters who distributed leaflets on the campuses of private colleges.	The validity of the NDA is not an easy question, but a related one is more clear. A lawyer in the U.S. in most states is not permitted to threaten criminal or administrative action (e.g. reporting someone to immigration or tax officials), to gain advantage in a civil case. You can unilaterally bring criminal charges or take administrative action, but it is deemed to be unethical and against public policy to refrain from bringing criminal charges or taking administration action to gain civil advantages. An NDA of the type described arguably violated the same public policy and might be invalidated as a result. Put another way, there is a privilege to make certain reports to public officials without legal consequences and such an NDA might violate that privilege. Some of these privileges found in what are called "whistle blower" statutes specifically prohibit this kind of agreement as to some specific kinds of illegal conduct, but not others. There isn't a general rule. This said, it is not black and white. For example, a private NDA can't prevent someone from testifying under subpoena, but can prevent someone from voluntarily testifying in the absence of a legal compulsion to do so such as a subpoena. Suppose a woman is sexually assaulted at work, and is given an NDA to sign. Can the company legally require her not to disclose the conduct of an illegal activity? I can imagine this example coming out different ways in different jurisdictions. For example, some states have a legal duty (rarely enforced) that requires people to report felonies, and an NDA in this case would contradict that affirmative legal duty, while others do not. Another source of gray in the analysis is that there is a difference between not reporting a sexual assault that actually happened, and, as part of a larger settlement, executing an affidavit stating under penalty of perjury and under oath that a sexual assault didn't happen. The first is potentially an NDA that is void as a matter of public policy. The other, in principle, is a settlement that the person signing the affidavit can only enter into if it is true. There is nothing, in general, wrong, about requiring someone to confirm that certain representations are true as part of a business transaction or contract and allowing the contract to go forwards only if certain facts are true. The gray gets deeper, because whether a sexual assault happened or not is not always a subjectively black and white clear issue of pure fact. (It is subjective because an affidavit or affirmation is made to the best of the declarant or affiants' knowledge and belief, not as a matter of objective fact.) For example, someone may not have perfect memory of what happened, or there could be doubt over the question of whether the perpetrators acted recklessly (the Model Penal Code intent requirement for sexual assault) or merely with criminal negligence (which would not be sexual assault under the Model Penal Code). A statement made under oath about whether a sexual assault happened to the best of your knowledge, thus, might be a mixture of factual issues (A penetrated B at a certain date and time) and legal or not perfectly factually known ones (A acted with X intent regarding consent during that act). So, in a case where there was some room to argue either way about how to characterize what happened and about what actually did happen, there might be some room for a settling party to make a non-perjured statement consistent with the settlement and then to agree not to a true NDA, but instead to not make statements which, if the affidavit is true, would be false. In a plea bargain in a criminal case, one can plead "no contest" without agreeing that the crime factually happened, but that isn't really possibly in the context of an affidavit about what really happened, with an NDA limited to not disclosing the incident since it was already agreed as a matter of sworn fact that there is nothing to disclose that rises the level of a crime.	Yes. The First Amendment protects all speech, outside a few historically recognized exceptions, which include libel, perjury, incitement, and true threats. There is no exception for speech that injures the speaker himself.	Since you asked two questions: No and No Does a company’s T&C or their house rules supersede law No and is asking private health status (including the request to wear a mask) an offence? No A company cannot require you to do things that are against the law but they can require you to do things that go further than the legal minimum. The UK and Spanish governments do not require you to wear a mask but they do not prohibit private organisations (like airlines) for making it a requirement to access their facilities. The law requires that they make reasonable accommodation for people with disabilities. But you don’t have a disability, you just can’t sleep with a mask on. If you had a disability you would have no trouble in getting a letter from your doctor to that effect. The contract requires them to take you from the UK to Spain: they don’t have to enable you to sleep. If you read the T&C, you will find that they can refuse to carry you if, in their reasonable opinion, you pose a hazard to the aircraft or the people aboard it.
What's the impact of this late fee typo? My landlord has a late fee clause in our lease, which says that if the lessee is late with the rent, the lessor must pay a (poorly defined) late fee. What would be the effect of this clause? The lessor pays the late fee to themselves, making the clause inoperable? The lessor pays the late fee to the lessee, making me happy? The clause would be considered invalid? Something else? Also, the lease contains no severability clause, so if it's option 3, would the whole lease be void? Or voidable?	Dale is right; here are the details from CA statutes: Since 1872, CA law has told CA courts to assume the parties to contracts in CA are reasonable, not crazy. If the literal reading of the contract is crazy, the California Civil Code's rules for the Interpretation of Contracts tells its courts: ignore the crazy reading. Here is what the statute says: § 1636 A contract must be so interpreted as to give effect to the mutual intention of the parties as it existed at the time of contracting, so far as the same is ascertainable and lawful. To win under this section, you would need to claim that both you and the landlord intended that the landlord would pay the late fee. No judge would believe this. § 1637 For the purpose of ascertaining the intention of the parties to a contract, if otherwise doubtful, the rules given in this Chapter are to be applied. To win under this section, you would need to claim that there is no doubt that both you and the landlord intended that the landlord would pay the late fee. Again, no judge would believe this. § 1638 The language of a contract is to govern its interpretation, if the language is clear and explicit, and does not involve an absurdity. To win under this section, you would need to claim that it was reasonable that the landlord would pay the late fee. Again, no judge would believe this. § 1640 When, through fraud, mistake, or accident, a written contract fails to express the real intention of the parties, such intention is to be regarded, and the erroneous parts of the writing disregarded. To win under this section, you would also need to claim that both you and the landlord really intended that the landlord would pay the late fee. Since no judge would believe this, any judge would rule that the wording was a mistake, and should be disregarded. § 1643 A contract must receive such an interpretation as will make it lawful, operative, definite, reasonable, and capable of being carried into effect, if it can be done without violating the intention of the parties. Ditto.	It is usual for a lease to specify for what purposes and on what notice the landlord is entitled to access. Often there is a provision allowing the landlord access on no notice in an "emergency" which is often not specifically defined. Access for purposes of repair, and for purposes of inspection may be on 24 hours notice, or 48 hours, or some other period, or on "reasonable notice" with no specific period specified. Access for a reasonable purpose (such as inspection) on reasonable notice that does not actually inconvenience the tenant, and that is not demanded with unreasonable frequency will probably not constitute such a breach as to justify ending the tenancy, and may well not justify sizable damages in the absence of other breaches. Much will depend on the wording of the lease or rental agreement, and on the practice of the local courts. One might well ask oneself "what actual harm will an inspection with insufficient notice do me" because a court might ask a similar question if an action is brought. If the inspection does cause a problem, then that should be addressed.	You would report unpermitted lock replacement to the home owner. The building code regulates new construction and renovations, and is not a requirement of any and all residences. This seems to correspond to a "secondary suite", which is supposed to be registered with the city (if it is allowed in your city). Here is a link for Vancouver, for instance. Such suites are supposed to be registered and inspected, the inspection being carried out by Development, Building and Licencing: By-Law Compliance & Administration (a division of the city government). This article discusses some of the legal problems that can arise from an illegal secondary suite, however the penalties would land on the property owner, and he may not have approved of this subletting or the basement suite. A less-nuclear first step would therefore be reporting it to the property owner.	A "land contract" is not a way of renting property, it is a way of purchasing property on an installment basis without bank financing. It is Ohio's version of what in some other places is known as "contract for deed". See "What is a Land Contract in Ohio" and "How Land Contracts Work" The actual law is Section 5313. In a land contract, the buyer has equitable but not legal title. The buyer normally pays all taxes and fees, and is responsible for maintaining the property, just as if s/he has bought the property. But if the buyer defaults, all payments and equity would be forfeit to the seller. Until the buyer has paid 20% of the purchase price, or made 5 years of payments (whichever comes first) a single missed payment constitutes default and can lead to the buyer being evicted with all payments to date going to the seller, the buyer coming out of the deal with nothing. Also, if the seller still has a mortgage and defaults, the buyer may lose everything paid to date. The buyer does not have the protections that a lease gives a tenant, nor the protections that legal title gives a purchaser via a traditional mortgage. Land contracts are often used when the buyer cannot qualify for a mortgage. The buyer pays interest, and it is often at a higher rate than the current rate on a mortgage. Land contracts are often a form of predatory lending, but for some buyers they make sense. A buyer needs to carefully review the contract with a lawyer knowledgeable about land contracts, and consider the risks and benefits of this form of financing. As I understand it, there cannot be a valid land contract for one apartment in an apartment building. A land contract must be for title to the land and all fixtures, including all buildings, on it. (There was at one point some unclarity if the question referred to an apartment. It is now clear that it refers to a house, so this statement is not relevant to the OP, but may be to others.) It is not clear just what the OP's landlord (LL) has in mind. It may be that LL plans to offer a "land contract" in which the purchase would be completed only after a very long time, with the idea that the OP would simply default when s/he wanted to move. Such a default could harm the OP's credit. There seems no benefit to the OP in such a scheme compared to a lease, unless LL will lower the price significantly, taking into account maintenance costs and taxes, which OP may well be expected to pay under a land contract. Note that a landlord can't legally force a tenant to sign a document cancelling a lease, or to sign whatever s/he will call a "land contract". Nor can s/he cancel the lease without the tenant's consent except for good cause as specified in the law (such as not paying rent). S/He could become uncooperative on other matters if a tenant doesn't do as s/he wants. If a tenant does cancel his or her lease, s/he will lose some rights. Others are guaranteed by law as long as the tenant is paying rent. If one signs a "land contract", what happens depends on its provisions. OP needs to very carefully consider just what is being offered, and its risks and any possible benefits. Details of the contract will matter. No matter exactly what LL has in mind, this is not at all a usual procedure for a landlord. OP or anyone in a similar circumstance should be very careful.	Since this seems to have been viewed a lot, an update/answer. I can't comment on the normalcy of such clauses since this has been my only experience. But the Estate Agent immediately struck the clause without any fight, so it seems like it was just there "in case I let it slide". It turned out to be a great decision, since I ended up finding my own buyer in the same week that the agent acquired a suitable offer, which I would then have been liable to pay the fees for.	Lying in itself ("of course you will get a wifi signal here") is not a crime. However, if you have proof that the lies were intended to benefit your landlord at your expense ("You won't sign the lease unless there's wifi? No problem") and that they actually did so ("You've signed the lease, it's too late to back out"), he may be guilty of fraud, which is a civil wrong and may be a crime. You would be well advised to consult a lawyer before going amy further, since there are probably ten people believing themselves to be victims of fraud for every one who actually is so in legal terms. The lawyer will also probably tell you that the best you can hope for is restoration to the state before the lies (in my example, the lease is cancelled and you get your deposit back), though the authorities will look at prosecuting the landlord.	In Texas, if the lease states that the landlord can inter for some purpose, the landlord can enter for that purpose. I assume there is no statement in the lease. Then the landlord has no right to enter except in emergencies and for routine inspections or repair. This right, however, stems from the courts and not statutes, and you could theoretically sue the landlord to prevent such an inspection (you would need a good attorney, to overcome the presumption that reasonable routine inspections with notice are allowed).	Unfortunately, your relative is more in the wrong here First, the COVID situation does not change anyone's rights and obligations under a contract (see What effect does an event like the current Covid-19 pandemic have on contractural obligations?). So the landlord (through their agent) is obliged to provide the property and your relative is obliged to pay the rent and to occupy the premises (most residential leases contain a requirement for the tenant to live in the premises and not leave it empty). Your relative (through you) has indicated that she will be in breach of her contract. The agent has considered her position and has offered two (IMO generous) alternatives: Allow her to continue with the lease without taking possession providing the rent is paid. To release her from her obligations under the contract and return the rent. To put it in perspective, if your relative simply "walked away", she would be liable for the rent until a new tenant was found and, if that new tenant was paying less rent than she was, the difference for the duration of the lease plus the costs of finding a new tenant - advertising, agent's fees (usually 1 month's rent) etc. Now, the landlord has an obligation to minimise your costs so advertising the property could just be prudent. However, if they lease it when your relative's contract has not been properly terminated then it is they who are in breach. Surely they can't take the rent and offer to re-let the property at the same time? Surely they can. What they can't do is relet the property without properly terminating your relative's lease. Would they even be entitled to retain the deposit under these circumstances? Absolutely. The deposit is to cover their losses if your relative breaks the lease - as she has indicated she is going to do (this is called anticipatory breach). Finally, I'd rather not go down this route but is there any protection for my relative for not being forcefully 'evicted' - since she's paid the deposit, rent - and those haven't been returned? Having never taken possession, she is not being evicted.
Does GDPR consent notification apply to access points intended purely for maintenance? Suppose I have a publicly available interface, intended to be used exclusively by me or my employees for the purposes of maintenance, e.g. an SSH server. Since I am processing user's IP address when they make a connection, does GDPR require me to notify the user of such an action in, say a banner shown upon accessing the server? Additionally, am I obliged to treat possible login attemps and the data entered as personal data? What if the interface processes user data, but its technology does not necesarily provide for a human-readable interaction, such as an ICMP response?	No, you do not need to show a privacy policy just for running a publicly accessible server, as long as any traffic data such as IP addresses is only used as strictly necessary for providing the service requested by the user. The background here is that while GDPR is a very general law, the ePrivacy directive (ePD) provides more details for telecommunication and information society services, which also includes SSH servers. Per ePD Art 6, traffic data may be used (1) for the purpose of the transmission/service or when the data has been anonymized, (2) for billing purposes, or (3) for marketing or value added services, when the user has given their consent. Information about the processing is only required under ePrivacy for cases (2) and (3), but not for processing that is strictly necessary. Now the tricky question is under what circumstances you can log (failed) log-in attempts or use tools like fail2ban. One argument is that such measures are strictly necessary to ensure the security of the communication, but these measures are evidently not necessary for performing the transmission in the sense of ePD. There are a few ways to resolve this: necessity has to be interpreted more broadly, and security measures are indeed necessary. For example, ePD Art 6(5) mentions fraud detection, without authorizing it explicitly. an IP address is effectively anonymized in the sense of the ePD since you do not realistically have means for linking the IP address to any particular person. This is a fairly weak argument, but could be supported by GDPR Recital 26 which defines anonymous data. Counterpoint: IP addresses are online identifiers which are explicitly included in the definition of personal data in GDPR Art 4(1). an IP address is not just traffic data that falls under the ePD, but also personal data that falls under the GDPR. When the IP address is merely used to make a transmission, it is not processed as personal data and only ePD concerns apply. But when we process it to ban the IP, it is processed as personal data under a legitimate interest. This processing does not fall under any of the categories from ePD Art 6, so that only GDPR concerns apply. These include a requirement to inform the data subject about the processing at the time in accordance with GDPR Art 13, which could be satisfied by displaying a link to a privacy policy in the course of the login process. For a legitimate interest argument, it also depends on the expectations of the typical data subject. Since some security measures such as security logs are normal and should be expected, a legitimate interest argument is likely to be strong. I think this is the correct conclusion, even though the “it's not traffic data, or at least doesn't fall under the ePD” argument is quite weak. It hinges on the assumption that security measures are not “value added services”. This fits the intent of the ePD, but not the actual definition of value added services. In any case, you do not need to ask for consent unless you're required to obtain consent e.g. under ePD Art 6(3) or because your processing of personal data relies on consent as the legal basis per GDPR Art 6. It also has to be noted that ePD has no immediate effect, but has to be implemented by each EU member state in national law. These laws can provide more specific guidance.	The scope of the GDPR is entered when personal data is being processed in a structured manner. Personal data is any information relating to identifiable data subjects (definition in Art 4(1)). "Peter attended the meeting on the 14th" is personal data. "That woman with the blue handbag said she wanted to return on the 25th" is personal data. However, aggregate statistics do not relate to individuals, and are typically not personal data. "On the 14th, we had 25 attendees" is not personal data. Not all use of personal data is within the scope of the GDPR. For example, the GDPR would not apply if two organizers talk about who attended the meeting. However, Art 2(1) says the GDPR applies when personal data is processed wholly or partially with automated means (e.g. computers, smartphones), or forms a filing system or is intended for a filing system (e.g. keeping notes on attendees, keeping attendance lists) If GDPR applies, the organization would be responsible for ensuring compliance with its rules and principles, summarized in Art 5. Primarily, this means: having a clear purpose for processing selecting a suitable Art 6 legal basis for that purpose (e.g. consent or a legitimate interest) only processing the minimum data necessary for achieving that purpose determining and implementing appropriate technical and organizational measures to ensure compliance and security of the processing activities preparing for data subject rights, in particular by providing an Art 13 privacy notice when collecting data from the data subjects There are of course some complexities in the details. When the legal basis is "consent" (opt-in), the organization would have to ensure that this consent was freely given and sufficiently informed. Per Art 7(4), consent would not be freely given if that consent was a condition for access to the meeting. Using "legitimate interest" (opt-out) can be more flexible, but it requires performing a balancing test to show that the legitimate interest isn't outweighed by the data subjects' interests, rights, and freedoms. Roughly, relying on a legitimate interest is appropriate when the data subjects can reasonably expect the processing activity to occur. Regarding point 1, keeping general counts and aggregate statistics about attendees is probably OK since it wouldn't be personal data. If you are very conscientious about this, you could round all counts and use categories like "0-4 attendees, 5-9 attendees" for each facet, which makes it more difficult to make inferences about individuals. But the fundamental point is that all your data should relate to attendees as a whole, never to individuals. Regarding point 2 and 3, this is a question of legal basis. Since you gather names through informal conversations, I think that attendees would be weirded out if they learned that you kept detailed records on their attendance. So I think that you probably wouldn't have a legitimate interest here. However, being upfront with this and offering an opt-out could change this. On the aspect of keeping detailed notes on data from informal conversations, I'd like to point out H&M's EUR 35 million fine back in 2020 (summary on GDPRHub.eu). In a callcenter, managers used to have conversations with employees. These conversations touched on anything from vacation experiences to health problems, marriage problems, and religious beliefs. All of that is fine. What was not fine is that the managers went full Stasi and kept detailed notes about all of this on a shared drive and used that information for management decisions. This went on until a configuration error made those files accessible to all employees. This violated all the points in the basic compliance process outlined above: the records had no clear purpose, no suitable legal basis, contained way more data than necessary (and even Art 9 special categories of data like information on health or religious beliefs which have extra protection), did not have appropriate measures to prevent unauthorized access, and did not fulfill data subject rights like the Art 13 right to be informed. In case this non-profit is a church or religious organization that had its own comprehensive data protection rules before the GDPR came into force in 2018, those can continue to apply per Art 91. This could probably address some issues of legal basis, but cannot circumvent the GDPR's general principles.	Your VPN scenario is why you have to show the banner to everyone. If you somehow knew beyond any doubt that someone was not in the EU, then you would not have to show a banner, but because you can't verify that, you should always show the banner. Doing so also protects against accidentally violating a similar law in another country; the GDPR is the best-known privacy law, but it is far from the only one. It's good practice to ask for people's permission before collecting their information anyway.	GDPR is not a blanket ban on the handling of personal data. It is a set of guidelines when and how data may be processed and stored. Documenting the compliance with a deletion request is one of many purposes for which some data may be retained after a deletion request. Others would be past contractual obligations, legal documentation requirements, and even a balance of 'legitimate interests' of the processors and the data subjects. The processor might be able to argue that fraud/abuse prevention is such a legitimate interest. What if I want to create a service that does let users enter their friends' email addresses, and send those friends an email invitation to the service? Get a specialist lawyer on staff who can check your exact business processes. A web site like this cannot possibly give you a full explanation of the pitfalls.	Term 1 isn't going to hold up, but that is not a GDPR matter. It's just a matter of basic consumer protection law in the EU. You can't offload responsibility for your mistakes. Looking at 2, Dale M. already pointer out that it's now how the GDPR works. You are the Data Controller. X,Y and Z are Data Processors. Article 28(1) of the GDPR is in direct conflict with your disclaimer. You accept zero responsibility, the GDPR says you are fully responsible. That's the exact opposite.	There is nothing preventing the OP's "subject" from making a Subject Access Request in these circumstances From the British Transport Police's Privacy Notice page, under the heading "How we use personal data": This privacy notice explains: ... the rights individuals have when we process their personal data. ... Right of Access: You can request access to the personal data we hold about you free of charge. You can request access to the personal data we hold about you using the contact details in this privacy notice. ... We collect personal data from a variety of sources, including: ... sound and visual images (e.g. from body worn cameras, CCTV, or facial recognition software); ... our own CCTV systems and body worn cameras. There's more detail in the link, which I have not replicated here to save space and avoid unnecessary "noise", but the above should cover the relevant points raised by the OP	Nicknames, usernames, or gamer tags are definitely personal data under the GDPR. You are operating under a very narrow definition of “identifying”, which is understandable since the definition of personal data in the GDPR isn't overly enlightening at first glance: […] an identifiable natural person is one who can be identified, directly or indirectly, in particular by reference to an identifier such as a name, an identification number, location data, an online identifier or to one or more factors specific to the physical, physiological, genetic, mental, economic, cultural or social identity of that natural person; — GDPR Art 4(1) However, this definition does show that “identifiable” should be interpreted rather broadly. For example, indirectly identifying data is still identifying data – there doesn't even have to be a strong identifier like a name, passport number, or street address. It is also not necessary that identification enables you to determine the real world identity – identification is anything that allows you to single out a person, or to combine data into a profile of that person (compare Recitals 26 and 30). In any case, an online username or user ID is clearly an identifier and will fall under one of “a name, an identification number, […] an online identifier”. If in doubt, ask your data protection authority for guidance. You've correctly understood that you will need a legal basis to process this data, and that legitimate interest could be that legal basis. This doesn't have to be your own interest, so a community interest would be OK. You need to balance the user's rights against this interest. You have performed this balancing and have found that the interest outweighs these rights. You've noted that such leaderboards are a cultural norm and are generally expected, which strongly weighs in your favour. However, legitimate interest is not a free pass but just means an opt-out solution (right to object per Art 21). You should also inform users that the leaderboard is accessible publicly when they join your server (transparency principle per Art 5(1)(a) as detailed by the information obligations in Art 13). In particular, you should use a “message of the day” or welcome message functionality to link to your privacy policy. You should also be aware that other rights such as the right to access, erasure, and data portability apply. As an alternative to legitimate interest (opt-out) you could also consider consent (opt-in), though this results in slightly different data subject rights and is more difficult to do correctly. But I'd agree that legitimate interest is more appropriate here.	Article 4(11) says: ‘consent’ of the data subject means any freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous indication of the data subject’s wishes by which he or she, by a statement or by a clear affirmative action, signifies agreement to the processing of personal data relating to him or her; Recital 32 says (my emphasis): Consent should be given by a clear affirmative act establishing a freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous indication of the data subject’s agreement to the processing of personal data relating to him or her, such as by a written statement, including by electronic means, or an oral statement.2 This could include ticking a box when visiting an internet website, choosing technical settings for information society services or another statement or conduct which clearly indicates in this context the data subject’s acceptance of the proposed processing of his or her personal data.3 Silence, pre-ticked boxes or inactivity should not therefore constitute consent. ... At the time of writing, the most recent guidance on consent from the European Data Board says: The use of pre-ticked opt-in boxes is invalid under the GDPR
If negligence is admitted as a form of fault, how aren't you broadening the traditional category of mens rea? I don't understand the embolded sentence below. How can you admit negligence as a form of fault, without broadening the traditional category of mens rea? Ashworth's Principles of Criminal Law (2020 9 edn). p 207. The argument is therefore moving towards the conclusion that negligence may be an appropriate standard for criminal liability where: (a) the (potential) harm is great; (b) the risk of it occurring is obvious; (c) D has a duty to try to avoid the risk; and (d) D has the capacity to take the required precautions. This opens up further debates on various points. The thesis is that negligence may be an appropriate standard where there are well-known risks of serious harm. This argues in favour of negligence as a standard of liability for certain serious offences against the person, including some serious sexual offences,279 and also for some serious offences against the environment and property. But it must be debated whether liability for serious crime should be confined to gross negligence, not simple negligence. And it would be vital to protect ‘rule of law’ expectations, and thus to ensure that people receive fair warning of any duties that may form the basis of criminal negligence liability.280 The spread of negligence liability would not have to result in the broadening of the traditional category of mens rea: negligence could be admitted as a form of fault, whereas intention and recklessness would remain the two forms of mens rea. It would be perfectly possible for a criminal code to provide separate crimes of negligence, with lower maximum sentences, at appropriate points in the hierarchy of offences. A further issue is whether the offences of negligence should be in the inchoate mode—‘failing to take reasonable precautions’—or should be tied to the occurrence of the particular harm. Careless driving is of the former type, manslaughter of the latter.281 Fault is related to mens rea. I quote pp 174-175. (a) Mens rea and fault It has already been argued that there should be no criminal liability without fault for imprisonable offence.109 Indeed, there is a respectable argument for saying that there should never be criminal liability without fault;110 but whilst that view seems persuasive in relation to the liability of individuals, it is perhaps less persuasive where the liability of businesses is concerned, particularly in cases where there is a defence to the crime in question of ‘due diligence shown’ (or the like). The claim that criminal offences should include mens rea—guilty mind—requirements reflects the view that criminal liability should be imposed only on persons who can be said ‘subjectively’ to have associated themselves through their behaviour with the p 175 wrongful conduct in question (including the circumstance or consequence elements of the offence, if any). In broad terms, this occurs when people engage in wrongful conduct intentionally, knowingly, recklessly, whilst possessing similar mental states such as indifference, awareness, or suspicion, or when they are complicit in the wrongdoing of others. The subjective mens rea approach encompasses the belief principle, which holds that criminal liability should be based on what defendants believed they were doing or risking, not on facts which were unknown to them at the time.111 For example, according to the belief principle, if D is found in possession of class A drugs, but claims he believed he was in possession of class B drugs, if the prosecution cannot prove otherwise he should be acquitted of ‘possessing class A drugs’. It should not be sufficient to show that he knew he was in possession of prohibited drugs unless, of course, as under the present law, there is a specific offence of possessing ‘a prohibited drug’.112	Fault, in English law, is "blameworthiness". While it covers both the act and the mental state of the defendant, it cannot equate to the subjective criminal intent of the defendant known as mens rea. In other words, you can be at fault for negligence without having the requisite intent to commit a criminal act. This is perhaps best pointed out by the next sentence after the one in bold: It would be perfectly possible for a criminal code to provide separate crimes of negligence, with lower maximum sentences, at appropriate points in the hierarchy of offences. There are also examples of such offences in English law already. For example, careless, and inconsiderate, driving ("driving without due care and attention") contrary to Section 3 of the Road Traffic Act 1988 is an offence that requires fault without mens rea. The defendant merely has to be careless and inconsiderate — they do not have to be in the state of mind where they know or believe that what they are doing is criminal in some way. In contrast, dangerous driving contrary to Section 2 of the Road Traffic Act 1988 has the implied requirement of mens rea because of the word "dangerously". This implies the defendant must have a subjective belief that what they are doing is dangerous (or otherwise be reckless about it), and therefore criminal.	It is an unquestioned pre-American axiom, expressed in Latin as actus reus non facit reum nisi mens sit rea ("the act is not culpable unless the mind is guilty") which has been part of the Anglo-American legal system since at least the 17th century. It is thus presupposed in all criminal proceedings. It's not that a person only commits a crime with free will, it's that it is not deemed to be a crime if there is no free will. A person can be held at gunpoint and required to commit a criminal act: the person does indeed have free will to choose to be killed rather than commit the act, but the act is legally excused since dying is never held to be the only acceptable alternative to committing an otherwise-criminal act.	"Double jeopardy" applies to a criminal proceeding, that is one that needs to be proved "beyond a reasonable doubt," and involves criminal sanctions such as jail time. Once OJ was acquitted of criminal charges, he couldn't be tried again as a "criminal." The second trial was a civil trial, with a "lesser" standard of proof (preponderance of evidence), and lesser "damages" (money, not jail time). So even though the facts were the same, OJ was accused of violating a different standard, that is a different "law" so to speak. He could be tried for a "tort" just not a crime. Or put another way, "wrongful death" is not the same as murder. The latter requires intent. Wrongful death suggests "tortious" negligence, but not necessarily intent.	The officers could incur liability under 28 U.S.C. 2680 (h) with jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. 1346 (b). This would probably be considered "loss of property" or a "wrongful act". It is very rare for cases to go forward for this because of the costs of litigation against an officer. "[I]t is well recognized that ‘officers executing search warrants on occasion must damage property in order to perform their duty.’" Cody v. Mello, 59 F.3d 13, 16 (2d Cir. 1995) (quoting Dalia v. United States, 441 U.S. 238, 258 (1979)). “Before any due process liability can be imposed for property damage occurring in a lawful search, it must be established that the police acted unreasonably or maliciously in bringing about the damage.” Cody, 59 F.3d at 16. That actually means that the burden of proof is on the victim to show unreasonableness / maliciousness. It would probably be easier if the thing destroyed could not possibly have contained the item looked for. For instance, if they are looking for a 65" LED TV, they can't even look in a 64" dresser (or something smaller than the object that could not physically hold the object). This issue becomes moot when dealing with drugs.	California law has a general defense of necessity. It appears that it's not in statute, but rather comes from common law. It's described in what appears to be the official jury instructions at CALCRIM 3403. The defendant is not guilty of (insert crime[s]) if (he/she) acted because of legal necessity. In order to establish this defense, the defendant must prove that: (He/She) acted in an emergency to prevent a signiﬁcant bodily harm or evil to (himself/herself/ [or] someone else); (He/She) had no adequate legal alternative; The defendant’s acts did not create a greater danger than the one avoided; When the defendant acted, (he/she) actually believed that the act was necessary to prevent the threatened harm or evil; A reasonable person would also have believed that the act was necessary under the circumstances; AND The defendant did not substantially contribute to the emergency. The defendant has the burden of proving this defense by a preponderance of the evidence. This is a different standard of proof than proof beyond a reasonable doubt. To meet the burden of proof by a preponderance of the evidence, the defendant must prove that it is more likely than not that each of the six listed items is true. It seems like all six requirements would apply in your hypothetical case, so if you could prove them, you'd be off the hook for a violation of Cal. Penal 148(a)(1) as cited by user6726.	You have accurately summed up the conundrum. There is little else to say. You need to accept that there is confusion, even within the law itself, and rely on context to establish in any given instance which meaning is meant. You will come to find that there are many instances of such confusion in the law. The historic technical distinction in the law (especially in tort law) between assault and battery has been collapsed in the everyday vernacular and this had made its way even into the way that the words are used even by law enforcement officers and legislators, who grew up speaking the vernacular language like everyone else. Where I live, in Colorado, the word "menacing" has been used be legislators to replace the historic sense of the word "assault" and the words "assault" and "battery" have become synonymous. But, in England, they are struck with a situation in which the meaning of the word "assault" has become context specific.	Because in a civil case you have two equally involved sides. If I claim you damaged my car which cost $10,000 to repair, it's not only that you lose $10,000 if you lose the case, but I lose $10,000 if you win the case. Therefore the burden of proof should be equal in both directions. Assume a kid at an expensive boarding school is accused of causing $10,000 damage to the headmaster's car, and instead of suing for damages, the headmaster took the $10,000 out of the kid's school fees and tells the parents that the kid will be thrown out if they don't pay another $10,000. We have the exact same argument, but now the headmaster would be in court and accused. If the burden of proof was "proven beyond reasonable doubt", in the first case the parents would have to pay if it was proven beyond reasonable doubt that the kid was responsible; in the second case they would only get their money back if it was proven beyond reasonable doubt that the kid was not responsible.	You have pretty well enumerated when it is legal. On the face of it it appears that the 11 year old acted illegally. So, if he is not being prosecuted, why not? Age of criminal responsibility. Below a certain age (I don't know about Alabama but in NSW it is 12) a person cannot by law be held criminally responsible because they are deemed to lack the emotional and mental maturity to distinguish right from wrong; this is particularly relevant when the same action can be legal or illegal depending on rather nuanced circumstances. Public interest. A DA may consider that prosecution of this child in these circumstances is not in the public interest. Prospect of conviction. A sensible DA may decide that there is very little prospect that a jury will convict notwithstanding that there is adequate evidence to prove guilt. This is a subset of the public interest; it is in no one's interest to spend time and money on a trial that will probably end with an acquittal.
Has anyone been convicted of perjury for false DMCA takedown notices? When a copyright holder demands that infringing material be taken down, the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) paragraph 3A(vi) requires: A statement that the information in the notification is accurate, and under penalty of perjury, that the complaining party is authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly in-fringed. A common complaint about DMCA is that in practice there are no consequences for false or negligently erroneous DMCA takedown demands. This, combined with the serious legal consequences of failing to respond to a takedown demand leads to "over-removal". Does the perjury clause apply to all the information in the notification, or only the statement that the complaining party is authorised to act etc. ? Has anyone ever actually been convicted of perjury as a result of sending a DMCA notice that lied about the "good faith belief" in the infringing nature of the target material?	Short version: No, no one has even been prosecuted. Does the perjury clause apply to all the information in the notification, or only the statement that the complaining party is authorised to act etc. ? This seems to be answerable by the plain text of the statute that you quoted: A statement that the information in the notification is accurate, and under penalty of perjury, that the complaining party is authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed. There doesn't seem to be any remotely grammatical way to read "under penalty of perjury" as modifying anything in the first part of the sentence (i.e, the statement or the information in the notification). The closest we could come would be reading "A statement that the information in the notification is accurate, and under penalty of perjury" as saying that the information is both accurate and under penalty of perjury. Even if we ignore the fact that that would add a stray comma (as comma errors are not uncommon), that still leaves us with "that the complaining party is authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly in-fringed" after an additional comma. This would need a conjunction (such as "and") that is not there in order for it to read at all correctly. On the other hand, it is perfectly grammatical to read it as: A statement: that the information in the notification is accurate, and under penalty of perjury, that the complaining party is authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed. This would mean that only the statement that the complaining party is authorized to act on behalf of the copyright holder is made under penalty of perjury. Thus, the "statement that the complaining party has a good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized" described in § 512(c)(3)(a)(v) and referenced in your second question is not made under penalty of perjury. I couldn't find any case law regarding this, though, which brings us to the second question: Has anyone ever actually been convicted of perjury as a result of sending a DMCA notice that lied about the "good faith belief" in the infringing nature of the target material? As far as I can tell, no one has ever even been criminally prosecuted for sending false DMCA notices, let alone convicted. In fact, as far as I can tell, no one has ever been prosecuted for false copyright claims under any other laws, either. It's a bit difficult to find an authoritative reference stating something has never happened, and the best I found was the Wikipedia article on Copyfraud, which cites Fishman, Stephen. The Public Domain, Nolo (2006), pp. 24–29 for the proposition that (presumably as of 2006), "[n]o company has ever been prosecuted for violating" a related law on false claims of copyright. Obviously, that's not a great source, due to the date, not having access to the original text, and the fact that it's not quite the same law. I also tried quite a number of search terms on Google and found no criminal prosecutions there, either. There have, however, been civil suits regarding such bad-faith misrepresentations: Automattic, owners of Wordpress.com, have filed at least two. In at least one of those, a lack of such a good-faith claim by the defendant was in fact found by the court: Similarly, here, the Court finds that Defendant knowingly misrepresented that Hotham violated his copyright because Defendant could not have reasonably believed that the Press Release he sent to Hotham was protected under copyright. Moreover, there can be no dispute that Defendant knew, and indeed, specifically intended, that the takedown notice would result in the disabling of Hotham's article. This resulted in the court finding the defendant liable for damages under § 512(f) for the time and money that the plaintiffs spent dealing with the results of the fraudulent DMCA takedown notice. Neither the court nor the plaintiffs mention perjury at any point other than quoting the takedown notice (unsurprising, though, given that it's a civil suit).	Quoting content may or may not constitute copyright infringement, depending on the various factors that go into the fair use defense. Short quotes which are made for the purpose of discussion, research and commentary and not for copy would be squarely in the domain of "fair use" under US law. That means that the copyright owner would not succeed in suing you for quoting them: under the statutory mechanism for recognizing his right to his intellectual product, there is a limit on how much control he can exert over your behavior (since the two of you have not worked out some kind of agreement -- copyright law creates rights even when there is no contract). As for Facebook, you have a contract with them, embodied in the terms of service. You have been given permission to access material that they host (permission is required, under copyright law), and their permission is conditional. It says "you may access stuff on our platform only as long as you do X": if that includes a clause "don't be nasty", then that limits your right to speak freely and be as nasty as you'd like. If it says "don't quote even a little", that means you cannot quote even a little, even when you would have the statutory right to quote a little (or, to be nasty). Fair use would mean that you can't be sued for copyright infringement of the stuff that you quoted a little of. You can, however, be expelled from Facebook. You probably cannot be sued for "accessing Facebook without permission". There is a federal law against unauthorized access of computer networks, and there was a failed attempt to construe violation of a TOS as "unauthorized access" – it isn't. But accessing Facebook necessarily involves copying (that's how computers work), and there is no "fair use" defense whereby everybody has a fair use right to access Facebook. Theoretically you could be sued for copyright infringement, for accessing Facebook's intellectual property without permission. Also, Facebook can rescind your permission to access their content (see this case), and once you have been banned, it is a crime to further access their network. This assumes that there is no overriding limit on contracts that would nullify a no-quoting condition. There is no such limit on contracts in the US, so such a contract would be enforceable. There is also nothing illegal (unenforceable) about a TOS which prohibits automated methods of access.	The notice has a lot to do with legacy requirements in the United States to claim the copyright to a work. Up until 1989, the copyright notice was required. Today, the statements are mainly maintained to protect against "innocent infringement" which might reduce what a content owner can get in court. What exactly do those terms entail? That the owner stated owns all rights and you may do nothing with the content. My biggest concern is this: by writing that, is the company claiming to own everything on the website, even potentially copyrighted user-submitted material? That's exactly what they are doing. Depending on the terms of the specific site, content contributors generally either assign copyright to the site owner or license the content in a way that allows the site owner to do exactly what they want with it. Site creators with the smarts or money to do it right/get someone to do it right usually state something like: Copyright [Site Owner] and contributors. Other sites (like this one) state specifically what they hold the copyright to: site design / logo © 2015 Stack Exchange Inc THIS IS NOT LEGAL ADVICE. CONSULT AN ATTORNEY REGARDING YOUR SPECIFIC SITUATION.	If there's a reason to believe that your machine has data that would be relevant to a lawsuit, then yes, it is subject to inspection under Fed. R. Civ. P. 34: A party may serve on any other party a request ... to produce and permit the requesting party or its representative to inspect, copy, test, or sample the following items in the responding party's possession, custody, or control: ... any designated documents or electronically stored information—including writings, drawings, graphs, charts, photographs, sound recordings, images, and other data or data compilations—stored in any medium from which information can be obtained either directly or, if necessary, after translation by the responding party into a reasonably usable form. So if there's a lawsuit where there becomes a question about what you downloaded from the network, then it's quite plausible that your device could be demanded or subpoenaed. But that's not the same thing as "forfeiting" your device. The normal procedure in such a case would be that the agency's lawyers would notify you of the demand, and you would take your device to an ESI expert, who would make a digital image of the device's hard drive. The parties would then fight about what portions of that image they are allowed to access, but you would have your device again while that was going on.	united-states This answer analyzes the question under U.S. law, although it is really generally applicable in all countries with a common law legal system. I'm not familiar with how non-common law countries address this issue at this level of granularity. Given that Alice has been instructed by the court to stop publishing the data, and given that Mallory refuses to stop publishing the data, what might Alice be obliged to do to comply with the court? Very little. This is why courts very rarely issue orders like this one. Disobedience to a court order is enforced with a contempt of court proceeding against a party that allegedly knowingly and willfully failed to comply with the court order. But an inability to comply with the court order (at least if this is not due to sabotage by the party subject to the order after that party learns of the order's existence) is a complete defense to contempt of court sanctions. Contractually, this is why most non-disclosure agreements have liquidated damages and actual money damages remedies as well as the remedy of injunctive relief. If harm that can't be unwound results from conduct taken before an injunction is in place, or as a result of a breach of an injunction that the person who was ordered to do something can't remedy, then a court imposes money damages and/or punitively imposes a criminal fine or incarceration on a party who defied a court order.	Summary from comments. (Hat tip @jqning) Daniel Nathan Ballard writes here: [It] is not only improper it is UNLAWFUL and may result in serious repercussions... Such a misuse may constitute false advertising... (“It is no doubt true” that affixing the ‘Trade Mark Registered U.S. Patent Office” notice on goods that are not protected by a federally registered trademark creates “a prima facie case of fraud against the public… .”). ... Such use is also a form of “unclean hands” that can bar the user’s registration of the mark. ... Such a use may also bar the maintenance of an infringement case. ... And the fraudulent use of the trademark registration symbol DOES provide other marketplace participants with standing to oppose the user’s registration of the mark. http://www.avvo.com/legal-answers/use-of---symbol-but-not-federally-registered-1125746.html	It is not obvious what the answer is. There are two fundamental questions – what will Youtube do in response to a particular action, and how can you put an end to the infringement? Youtube's response is driven by federal law, 17 USC 512. There is some danger to Youtube that you could sue them for contributory infringement, and this law specifies the conditions under which they can be immunized against such a suit. Referring to the stage of the DMCA take down process that you are at, they will put the material back up unless its designated agent first receives notice from the person who submitted the notification under subsection (c)(1)(C) that such person has filed an action seeking a court order to restrain the subscriber from engaging in infringing activity relating to the material on the service provider’s system or network. As a prelude to filing such an action, the infringer must file a statement that the subscriber consents to the jurisdiction of Federal District Court for the judicial district in which the address is located, or if the subscriber’s address is outside of the United States, for any judicial district in which the service provider may be found, and that the subscriber will accept service of process from the person who provided notification under subsection (c)(1)(C) or an agent of such person Observe that the person has to consent to federal jurisdiction, not state jurisdiction. Small claims court is a state court (copyright small claims court does not yet exist). Under 28 USC 1338, "No State court shall have jurisdiction over any claim for relief arising under any Act of Congress relating to patents, plant variety protection, or copyrights". For the most part, federal law preempts state law, but that guide might point to something about your case (an added right) that overcomes federal preemption. Supposing that that is the case, you might file a suit in state court over that added right: then, it is literally true that you "filed an action seeking a court order to restrain". You could also just go ahead and file an action in state court, because sometimes the court just does what it thinks is right, even if it doesn't have jurisdiction. Even if the suit is dismissed for lack of jurisdiction, you will have "filed an action seeking a court order to restrain". However, Youtube may not be impressed, the way they would be if you picked Federal District Court. At this point, your options (for getting the material taken down) require filing a suit against the infringer. You can file an infringement suit in the UK, but the material will probably be restored on Youtube until they eventually receive a court order demanding that the material be taken down. You can file a suit right now in the relevant federal court in California and notify Youtube, and they should leave the material taken down. Since you are not suing Youtube in small claims court and the infringer is also not in California, you could not sue in small claims court (somebody has to be in California) unless you are suing Youtube (and will lose because they cannot be sued, per safe harbor rules).	Piracy is copyright infringement, not theft, so laws related to theft don't apply. Copyright offences do not have the same tradition of separate 'petty' and 'grand' offences based on the value of the subject matter. In Australia, copyright offences exist under Commonwealth law. Commonwealth law does not recognise a misdemeanour/felony distinction. Instead, there is a summary/indictable distinction. This distinction is particularly relevant in respect to the guarantee under section 80 of the Australian Constitution of a jury trial for offences tried on indictment (although Parliament can apply any punishment it likes for summary offences and prosecutors can proceed summarily even on indictable offences). In Commonwealth law, indictable offences are those which can be punished with a maximum sentence of greater than 12 months: Crimes Act 1914 (Cth) s 4G. Commonwealth copyright offences have indictable and summary forms, e.g. 'commercial-scale infringement prejudicing copyright owner' under the Copyright Act 1968 (Cth) s 132AC(1) and (2) respectively. The summary form is punishable by two years' imprisonment, explicitly overriding the rule in s 4G of the Crimes Act. The difference between the two forms of this offence, as an example, is not related to the size of the infringement but instead turns on the defendant's knowledge of the circumstances that (1) the infringements prejudice the copyright holder and (2) the infringements are on a commercial scale; for the indictable offence the defendant must be reckless as to these circumstances but for the summary offence the defendant need only be negligent. Another copyright offence is 'make or possess a device for making an infringing copy' under section 132AL of the Copyright Act. Again this offence has both summary and indictable forms, differing in respect to the defendant's mental state. You might commit the indictable form of this offence if you knowingly possess the technical means to pirate the Train Simulator DLC and decide to do so. So, in answer to your question, yes it could be an indictable offence (the closest thing to a felony we have under the relevant law in Australia).

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