is a finger squiggle on an iPad truly binding? We recently had a massive hailstorm and, following that storm, we saw an endless stream of roofing contractors knocking on our door. We're in Boulder County, Colorado. A representative from one of those construction companies pointed out some damage and offered to meet with the insurance adjuster, which he did. Our insurance company wrote us a check to cover some of the hail damage. After emphatically explaining how amazing his replacement windows are, he produced an iPad and asked me to "sign". I foolishly squiggled on the screen. Here's what it said: Quote is valid until ADD DATE HERE CCC has a "no return policy" on windows, doors, glass, and sashes. Project time line - Window delivery - 8 weeks, Prefinish work - 2-3 weeks, Install - 2 weeks. Standard Payment Terms are 50% down at time of order, 25% due upon delivery to CCC shop, and remainder due upon completion of work. Pricing based on payment by check or cash. 3% will be added for payment by credit card. If job cannot be completed (i.e. due to backordered items, remakes, etc) customer will be responsible for full payment for portion of job completed up to that point. If acceptable, please sign and return along with 50% down payment. Thank you! I confirm that my action here represents my electronic signature and is binding. At the time I did not write him a check because I wanted to discuss the scope of the job with my wife. The windows in our house are a bit old, so it would make sense to replace them all at once, and not just the ones that sustained hail damage. Admittedly, I don't know much about windows (or the legal ramifications of squiggling on an iPad screen). That evening, as a sanity check, I looked at Google/Yelp reviews for the window make/model and saw that almost every review had the lowest possible rating. I reached out to the guy and explained that we could not move forward with his recommendation, and I asked him to quote products that rated highly in Consumer Reports, which he did. At that time, he had not ordered any windows from his supplier, so things weren't yet set-in-stone (even though I had stupidly squiggled on the iPad). A few hours later, we received a quote that was almost twice the previous estimate. Because of the large amount of money at stake, I decided to get a second quote. His quote was 76% more expensive than Lowes for exactly the same product. In cash terms, Lowes was $10k cheaper. So, regardless of the squiggle on the iPad, I decided not to move forward with the exorbitant quote. When I mentioned this, he sent me an email saying: in order to break out of the contract we think it would be fair to charge for the time we have put into all of this. Heath ran the numbers and it came to $1,000 So, he knocked on our door, pointed out some damage, met with the insurance adjuster, (over) quoted the job, and is now asking for $1,000 (as a sort of "inconvenience fee"). Even though I screwed up by squiggling on the iPad, I think this is a somewhat predatory sales practice. From my perspective, he tried to rip me off and then sent me a bill for the trouble. From a legal perspective, is my position defensible? I did squiggle, after all. update I took another peek at the electronic document I squiggled on and notice that it's in my wife's name. My name doesn't appear anywhere on the document. Presumably, I do not have the authority to sign legally binding documents on my wife's behalf. I wonder if that alone would invalidate the contract.
Like a paper signature in ink or blood, a finger squiggle is merely evidence that you have agreed to the terms of a contract. You have agreed, and now you are know the downside of that agreement. However, Colorado law gives you a special privilege to cancel certain contracts, and this may be one: here is the law. Under CO Rev Stat §5-3-402, with some exceptions, the buyer has the right to cancel a home solicitation sale until midnight of the third business day after the day on which the buyer signs an agreement or offer to purchase that complies with this part 4. You must give written notice to the seller at the address stated in the agreement. One exception is that you cannot cancel an agreement for an "emergency requiring immediate remedy" (there will be paperwork regarding that). A "home solicitation sale" is one that solicits the sale and the buyer's agreement or offer to purchase is given to the seller or a person acting for the seller at a residence which matches the facts as you describe them. Part 4 is the part that includes §5-3-401 through §5-3-405. §5-3-403 specifies the form of that agreement. One of the requirements is a written agreement or offer to purchase that designates as the date of the transaction the date on which the buyer actually signs and contains a statement of the buyer's rights that complies with subsection (2) of this section. A copy of any writing required by this subsection (1) to be signed by the buyer, completed at least as to the date of the transaction and the name and mailing address of the seller, shall be given to the buyer at the time the buyer signs the writing. Furthermore, Until the seller has complied with this section, the buyer may cancel the home solicitation sale by notifying the seller in any manner and by any means of the buyer's intention to cancel;except that the buyer's right of cancellation shall expire three years after the date of the consummation of the home solicitation sale, notwithstanding the fact that the seller has not complied with this part So it depends on when exactly this happened: you may be able to cancel.
You mean like this? Of course, a website can charge you to access its pages; many do. And yes, clicking on an "I agree" button can form a valid contract (just visiting the website can't). Historically, the law has adopted the position that if you sign it (including by clicking "I agree") you read it, you understood it and you agreed to it. It's hard to imaging how it could be otherwise because allowing people to get out of contracts by saying "I never read it" is problematical as well. However, there are two things that mitigate against the type of term you suggest; one practical and one legal. Practical: How do they get your money? They can ask for your credits card details and, if they do and you give them a court will probably come to the conclusion that you knowingly and willingly agreed to pay for the service. However, if they don't have any method of getting money from you, they would have to take you to court to do so. There are a number of practical problems with this like: who are you? where are you? Which court can they sue you in etc. Legal: At common law, there exists the doctrine of unconscionability that describes terms that are so extremely unjust, or overwhelmingly one-sided in favour of the party who has the superior bargaining power, that they are contrary to good conscience. Such terms are legally unenforcable. Further, in many jurisdictions, consumer protection law often give additional protections up to and including not enforcing terms that are merely unfair not just unconscionable.
You are granted the free trial as part of a trial, not to permanently use the program. When the user downloaded the trial version of the program, he probably had to accept T&amp;C granting a one-time only say 3‑month trial period. It is a mere breach of contract if you’re circumventing this, but you might still be liable to damages. Circumventing technological protection measures is forbidden, § 95a UrhG. However, these protection measures must be considered effective. Now, lawyers are usually no computer gurus, so they might arrive at completely different conclusions, but I guess/hope editing a plain text file, substituting a plaintext ISO 8601 date, will not be deemed “effective”. (I presume the same effect could be achieved by resetting the computer’s RTC.) Having said that, since you intend to “publish a guide […] detailing how to use this exploit” I suspect it might not be that trivial and thus, from a lawyer’s POV, be considered an “effective” technological protection measure. If it is considered an effective technological protection measure, you might be punishable via § 108b UrhG, but I’m not sure about that. The wording is terribly complex.
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"
What happens is the same as if you were an employee in the office, staying with the company for another few years. You are an agent for the company, and everything you do is as if the company was doing it (except for extreme circumstances). A company employee broke your laptop. It's the company's problem. They should have insurance for this kind of thing. And they told you to work from home, so if something happened because you are at home, that's the company's problem as well. It could be different if your company had told their employees not to have any fluids anywhere near their computers, and you had acted against this. Or my company doesn't allow me to take my works computer with me on a holiday; if I did without explicit permission and it got damaged, that would be my problem.
The real story is that the articles you link to are logically fallacious. The first hedges its assertions by saying a mailbox is "effectively considered" to be federal property. It cites 18 USC 1705, which it correctly notes "puts your mailbox under Federal jurisdiction." But that's not the same as assuming ownership of it. The piece also says that you "effectively lease" your mailbox to the federal government, which is a somewhat exaggerated way of putting it, but even if we accept it at face value it falls far short of a claim that the mailbox is federal property. The second concludes that mailbox tampering is a federal offense because "the mailbox belongs to and is controlled by the USPS." There is no evidence offered to support the assertion of ownership, and there is of course an alternative explanation for the fact that mailbox tampering is a federal offense, which is that there are laws such as the aforementioned 18 USC 1705 that prohibit it. These laws, however, say nothing about ownership. The third is ultimately based on the assertion of a letter carrier who said, "Listen, lady, your friends don’t own these mailboxes. We do." The claim was made in explanation of the prohibition against private individuals putting items into a mailbox. As far as I can see, the article is off the mark in another way: that prohibition has nothing to do with safety and security, but rather with protecting the postal service's revenue: it arises from 18 USC 1725, which explicitly is about avoiding the payment of postage. In any event, it does not establish ownership. In short, the idea that all mailboxes are federal property is a myth, as implied by the USPS page you link to. To what extent do property owners have control over their own mailbox? To a fairly high extent, but they do need to comply with the relevant law. They can't, for example, hang a plastic bottle by the roadside for the purpose of receiving their mail. Can they deface or place non-mail in their own mailbox? 18 USC 1705 actually prohibits willful or malicious injury, tearing down, or destruction of a mailbox, not defacing. So technically, they could, but a prosecution seems highly unlikely. Under section 1725, placing non-mail in the box is only prohibited to the extent that there is intent to avoid paying postage. That would be difficult to establish for someone putting something in their own mailbox. Can they tear it down with no intent to replace it? If they're willing to forego mail delivery, yes. They may be able to arrange to have the mail held for retrieval at the post office. If they do not, their mail will be returned to the sender as undeliverable. This arises from the Domestic Mail Manual, which says (in general) that "customers must provide authorized mail receptacles or door slots" as a condition of city delivery (I could not find a corresponding requirement for rural delivery, but it must exist somewhere). The manual also describes requirements for customer mail receptacles.
Given that you voluntarily turned the car over to the buyer, it isn't your car anymore. The correct procedure would be to file a civil case against the buyer for breach of contract, where he would have been required to turn over the pump or compensate you monetarily. You both violated the law and are subject to punishment. Forgery is a crime in California punishable by up to a year in county jail. Stealing a car is grand theft, which has a range of penalties from misdemeanor to up to 3 years prison, depending on your prior history and the circumstances. You can file a complaint with the police over the forgery, and it will inevitably be revealed that you stole his car. So you should call an attorney right away to try to get yourself out of this mess. Your main interest would be not getting prosecuted for grand theft, or at least minimizing the penalty. Assuming that he did indeed forge your signature (a signature on the title is required, and surely DMV would not issue a new title without a signature, but you don't indicate what evidence you have that he forged your signature), he could be motivated to cooperate – your respective attorneys can work out an equitable arrangement. The windshield issue will probably be central to the case. Did you crack the windshield after you struck the deal? Did he have an opportunity to inspect the car? Did you fail to disclose a material fact that affects the value of a car? If you replace the windshield, that could tilt the scales of justice in your favor. Get a lawyer and try to keep it out of the courts.
The store is, as far as i can see, not using the trademarked image to sell their cake. Your family does not intend to sell anything at all. This photo, from the description, could not reasonably be confused with an official image from the trademark holder. (all of this is based on your description, of course). Therefore, the trademark holder probably won't sue for trademark infringement, even if they somehow heard of this event, and if they did sue, they would quite likely lose. You would be making a copy of a presumably copyrighted image. You might have an active defense, but that is very hard to be sure of in advance. (Note that "fair use" is a very specifically US legal concept, and would not apply in the UK. The roughly comparable concept is "fair dealing" but that is more restrictive, and follows somewhat different rules.) In any case, it is possible that the rights holder would sue, and if the situation were a bit different (the was only one person pictured, making the shirt with the protected image very prominent, for example) there might be a larger chance of such a suit being successful. No business is going to want a bakery department manager deciding whether a particular use of a particular image does or does not infringe IP rights, and whether it does or does not expose the business to significant risk. Just to get an opinion from their lawyer on whether this image infringes would probably cost them several times the price of the cake with image printing. The store has no doubt written its guidelines to err well on the side of caution, because one suit, even if they won, would cost far more than the profits of many cakes, and if they lost, could have a very negative effect on their bottom line indeed. The store is entitled to restrict what business it does to keep itself safe from lawsuits. It is going to keep well on the cautious side, in all likelihood, and so it should. I fear you will have to find a store with a different policy, or use a different picture.