UK - Is there a legal limit to the profit margin of an item or service? A friend of mine is adamant that a business is legally bound to not exceed a "fair" price for an item or service based on the cost of materials and hours of labour used. He claims that businesses have gotten into deep trouble over it. I told him that this was nonsense: even if one could argue that such a system were morally correct and/or beneficial to the economy, it would be impractical to implement. I'm interested in the UK mainly but other countries are acceptable.
Unless there is a law preventing you, you can charge whatever you like for your goods and services. There are lots of laws that prevent you. Just a short list, you cannot: Charge more than the regulated price if you are in a price regulated industry (e.g. telecommunications) Collude to fix prices Form a cartel Abuse your market power: this prohibits practices such as predatory pricing, bundling, etc. Sell at a higher price than advertised Profiteer to benefit from unexpected shifts in demand However, assuming you are a normal business in a normal industry with a healthy level of competition (e.g. hairdresser, plumber, engineer, lawyer etc.) you can set your price anywhere you want.
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.
Your question isn't quite as simple as it sounds; some civil cases are tried before juries, and though a judge can give directions to a jury to give a particular verdict, they are not always required to obey; there are eighteenth-century English cases on the point that established that principle for most related jurisdictions. But your last sentence does have a simple answer: No. A judge usually takes an oath on assuming office, to administer the law without fear or favour. That means he will investigate the relevant law (with the assistance of the parties' lawyers), and enforce what it says. "This law would be unfair to the customer, so I will ignore it" would be just as bad as "The mechanic threatened to hit me with a wrench, so I find for him". Of course, most jurisdictions do have overriding principles of fairness; it may be that this contract term was not shown to the customer, so is not enforceable, or it may be that it is contrary to public policy to be uncertain what repairs will cost. But unless there is an explicit legal reason, the judge will have to find for the mechanic. It would be neither improper nor unusual for the judgment to include the sentence "This result is clearly unfair to the customer, and I urge the legislature to look at closing the loophole; nevertheless, the law is clear, and I find the customer must pay the increased price."
Because your legal fees and contract damages are not "in addition to" your risk; they are your risk. If you pay the retainer and lose, you don't lose anything more than the retainer and damages. If you pay the retainer and win, you don't win anything more than the retainer and damages. The only kind of argument I can see here is that you're incurring some kind of psychic cost by enduring the uncertainty surrounding the litigation, but I can't remember ever seeing a case -- in Florida or elsewhere -- in which the court recognized taking on risk as a compensable harm, especially in a contract case, where damages are much more limited than in other kinds of cases. Risk is just a necessary feature of an adversarial legal system.
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.
You have asked about "United Kingdom", but I can only answer about England and Wales; the law in Scotland is very different (rather more different in some respects than the difference between E&amp;W and the State of New York). There is no time limit per se on manslaughter charges; if the police find evidence for a manslaughter charge after 80 years, there is no difficulty (in principle) in bringing a charge against the now-centenarian (provided they are competent to stand trial, and they can get a fair trial, and so on). However, in the case you mentioned I would have thought the major problem would be a defence of autrefois convict - in other words, the defendant can (usually) only be charged once with charges arising from a particular set of facts. It is just possible that the subsequent death constitutes a new fact which allows a new prosecution. On the other hand, the rule for murder used to be that if the victim survived a year and a day then it wasn't murder (even if they then died of their injuries). Finally, the case certainly would not be reopened with a charge of manslaughter. It would be "causing death by dangerous driving", which is a very different offence. Edit My thanks to ohwilleke whose comment about the "year and a day" rule prompted me to do a little research, and discover the Law Reform (Year and a Day Rule) Act 1996. Section 2(2) clearly covers the present case (in both legs), and says that the perpetrator can be re-prosecuted, but only with the permission of the Attorney General. The act is very brief, and I encourage you to read it all. (And incidentally, does not apply to Scotland.)
A contract can’t legalise illegality Let’s assume that absent the “simulation” disclosure in the ToS, this would be fraud. The question then becomes, does making the disclosure make it not fraud? Fraud requires dishonesty and deception. These are measured by what a reasonable person would determine from the overall conduct so a small piece of truth in amongst a web of half-truths and outright lies is still dishonest and deceptive. From the perspective of US law, is Bob doing this regarded a scam? No, but only because “scam” isn’t a legal term - it’s slang for fraud and this is fraud Is this a criminal case, or a civil case? Both What evidence can Tom provide to support the lawsuit? Whatever he has. However, in practice, these types of fraudsters are rarely ever caught and it’s even more rare for the victim to recover their money. They are usually off-shore in countries with either poor rule of law or which will not extradite their nationals.
That is a very broad clause, broader than the default US rule for copyright, for example. (I know the question asked about the UK, I just happen to know the US copyright rule.) It would seem on the face of it to include independent research on a subject totally unrelated to the person's employment, done off the company's premises and not during normal work hours, but while the person was an employee.. Indeed it would arguably include the copyright to a novel written off premises and during off hours. Use of "course of employment" (instead of "term") would improve the provision. so would "as a part of his or her employment" or "closely related to the subject of his or her employment". Another possible restriction would be "Using the Company's facilities and/or equipment, or during normal working hours". However, my experience is that an employer will have drafted whatever language it uses through its company lawyer, and will be quite unwilling to alter it in any way. A prospective employee will probably be faced with a take-it-or-leave-it choice unless that person is a nearly indispensable figure to the company. One could send the company a certified letter saying, "When i signed the contract agreeing to {company language} I did not intend to include any developments made off company premises, not using company equipment, and unrelated to the subject or scope of my employment. I retain full rights to any such developments." Such a letter would help establish that there was no meeting of the minds to assign such non-employment-related developments or IP to the Company. How much weight it would have if the rights to such developments were the subject of a court case I am not sure.