What happens if parties do not honour a settlement agreement? Say a settlement agreement was reached where a shopper sued a grocery store over food that gave her food poisoning. If the terms of the settlement agreement were grocery store shall pay shopper $100 grocery store shall give customer a free steak customer will remove her negative review from Yelp both parties release each other and won't bring legal action for anything relating to this subject Assume all terms must be executed within one weeks time. If the week past and the shopper didn't receive $100 what would be her next course of action? Would she just go back to court or would it somehow be easier? If they go back to court, can the shopper sue for other things, especially considering term 4? For example if the shopper had claimed $300 but agreed to $100 in term 1. in the event of breach could they sue for the original $300 or some other claim they had waived? If the shopper did not remove the negative review from Yelp, would the grocery store still need to execute their terms (1. and 2.) or would they somehow be exonerated? Must the shopper execute 2. even though it's to her own benefits? For example if she decides she doesn't trust the grocery store enough she doesn't want another steak from them.
If the agreement is the result of a binding determinative process like the decision of a court, arbitrator or administrative tribunal, the aggrieved party can go to the court for enforcement. If it isn’t, then the agreement may be enforceable as a contract (see What is a contract and what is required for them to be valid?). Breach of the contract allows the aggrieved party all the normal remedies. In either case, breach by one party does not excuse breach by the other. Of course, the agreement can be worded “you do this then I do that” so if you don’t do this, you are in breach but I’m not. If it isn’t either of the above, it can’t be enforced.
Depends on where you are, and likely also on what they knew when. It is entirely normal to order some goods (like perishable food, or custom-fitted furniture) before it is produced. The contract may or may not include advance payment. Most jurisdictions require some sort of intent for fraud, so the non-fulfillment would not be fraud if circumstances beyond the control of the supplier prevent delivery. The question of civil damages and repayment is distinct from criminal fraud charges.
Written Contract If there was a written contract, the fact that it wasn't signed is not relevant. While a signature is evidence of agreement with the terms there are other ways that acceptance can be indicated: like you paying them $600. Wrong Information Where the error is fundamental to the performance - e.g. you needed shipment to Alaska and they were offering shipment to Alabama, the contract would be void ab initio. That is, it never happened and everyone needs to be returned to their original positions as far as possible. However, in general, an error by one or the other party in their understanding of what was agreed does not invalidate the contract. For example, if you told them it was a "small" dog because it was small for a Great Dane but under an objective classification, it is, in fact, a "large" dog the contract must be completed and either you or they wear the additional cost of doing so. Whether they are entitled to ask for additional payment "due to some wrong information" depends on who took the risk under the contract for its correctness? Barring a specific term, the risk usually lies with the party that provided the "wrong information" but some contract will assign the risk for one party's errors to the other party - subject to a requirement to act in good faith. If they are not entitled to additional payment, they have to perform the contract for the original fee. If they are entitled, then you have to pay a reasonable price increase - you are not generally entitled to cancel. All of this turns on the specific terms of the contract and the exact nature of the "wrong information". Consumer Protection Law CPL in your state or their state or both will almost certainly have something to say about this beyond common law rules of contract.
tl;dr: If you are not satisfied with the service provided by the restaurant, you should take your business elsewhere and write negative, but honest reviews of the establishment. That will over time solve the problem as well without legal intervention. To answer your question if the restaurant can refuse service if you don't tip is actually a much more difficult question than it might sound. I can't find any case law on this subject, such practice is however perhaps more widespread than commonly expected and my interpretation of the law is that they in most cases actually can, at least if they demand payment up front as take-away services often do. It is for example a 'well known fact' that if you don't tip the waiters at the Oktoberfest, they will usually ignore you and don't take any further orders. It is a dirty and unfair way to conduct business, but not necessarily a violation of law. Even if a tip indeed is legally defined as a voluntary donation by the customer, there is in German law also the concept of 'freedom of contract'. Contrary to popular belief, restaurants and other businesses in Germany are not obligated to serve or accept a customer as long as they don't violate other laws, e.g. anti-discrimantory laws and they don't even need any particular reason for doing so. If you want to enter a club or fancy establishment and the bouncer doesn't like your face, he will make use of this right, refuse you entry and be fully within his legal rights to do so. When you order food for take-away, your order must first be interpreted as a contract offer and the restaurant can, albeit with some restrictions, in most cases freely decide to accept your offer and enter a contract which binds them to deliver food, or they can simply refuse your offer and return any payment you may have done in advance.
england-and-wales She (as the claimant) would have to prove that the food caused her &quot;long-term negative effects&quot; and the shop (as the defendant) was negligent in knowingly offering spoilt food - a legal concept known as &quot;causation&quot; that Wikipedia describes as concering: the legal tests of remoteness, causation and foreseeability in the tort of negligence. It is also relevant for English criminal law and English contract law. [...] The claimant must prove that the breach of the duty of care caused actionable damage. The test for these purposes is a balance between proximity and remoteness: that there was a factual link between what the defendant did or failed to do, and the loss and damage sustained by the claimant, and that it was reasonably foreseeable at the relevant time that this behaviour would cause loss and damage of that type. I cannot find any relevant caselaw using the given circumstances of far-future ill-effects, but it seems unlikely (to me) that such a claim would succeed on the information available due to the remoteness between events.
In the US, there are many possible sanctions A frivolous case, or pattern of cases, can result in a number of punishments: Paying the other side's legal fees -- Mind you, in the U.S, it is normal for each party to pay their own fees, and that will happen in &quot;honest disagreement&quot; type cases in which both parties have a valid perspective. &quot;Loser pays&quot; only happens when a) the loser has filed a ridiculous lawsuit, or greatly burdened the other side with frivolous filings; and b) the winner asks for fees. Transferring other costs to the plaintiff as the court sees fit. Again, winner must ask. Barring a plaintiff from filing future cases, without advance permission from the court. Again, winner must ask! Barring attorneys or firms from practicing in certain areas of law. Disbarment of the attorneys. That is decided by the state's Bar Association, typically a nonprofit trade association who in effect regulates lawyers in this manner. For instance, California is one of only four states allowing cash awards for ADA violations. A clever person named Mr. Molski went around to different restaurants and checked their bathrooms for ADA compliance. If a toilet paper roll was 1/2&quot; out of position from where ADA required, Molski would take notes. Molski checked dozens of restaurants every day, and passed these notes onto a San Francisco law office. The law office filed hundreds if not thousands of these lawsuits against the various restaurants. The lawsuits all claimed that Molski was injured as a result of the ADA noncompliance. Mind you, this was in the age before easy merging of databases and MS-Word documents. Since these hundreds of cases were so similar, they simply made Xerox copies of the relevant paperwork, only leaving a few fields blank to be typed in by hand. To reduce secretarial workload, they didn't bother customizing the date of injury: so all cases claimed Molski was injured on the same day. Hundreds of defendants simply settled for amounts in the $5000 range (about half the cost of hiring a lawyer to grind through a trial). However, one defendant, a Chinese restaurant, fought. Their counsel discovered the hundreds of other same cases, and pointed out to the court that Molski was claiming to have suffered the same injury at dozens of restaurants on the same day. What an unlucky fellow! The defendant then claimed Molski and attorneys were Vexatious Litigants, and the court wholeheartedly agreed. Molski was barred for life from filing any lawsuit without advance court approval (in which Molski would need to show a body of evidence to the court that yeah, a real and valid case was there). The law firm was barred for life from filing any ADA related cases. The law firm folded up, and is no more. The lawyers involved in the case quit practicing law. Then we have Righthaven, who purchased from newspapers the &quot;right to sue and collect damages&quot; for copyright violations. Many bulletin boards, chatrooms, forums and Q&amp;A sites allow/rely on &quot;User Generated Content&quot; (UGC), such as this here answer. They used search engines to find forums where users had copy-pasted newspaper articles. Generally, forums are protected from user behavior by the DMCA. Then, like Molski, they sued the forums, offering a settlement number below the cost of litigation itself. Again, hundreds paid; but a few fought on principle, with support from EFF. Again, Righthaven got destroyed in court - the right to sue cannot be sold. Courts ordered them to pay their victims' legal fees, bankrupting the operation. Prenda tried a similar thing against people who BitTorrent porn. I was in a case where we asked for fees. I got them, with such ease that I am kicking myself for not asking that the plaintiff be declared a vexatious litigant (which would have saved many others from this person). Further, the judge laid a heavy hint to the 3 other co-parties that if they asked for fees, they'd get them too. They did not ask. Amusingly, one of the lawyers who should have asked, was unable to collect from the client. Should have asked...
You can read about Magnuson Moss here, but it only applies to warranties on goods, not services. As you note, the warranty on the unit is still valid. As for agreeing, it is not unusual that a consumer is not aware what all they are agreeing to when they buy a house. One of those myriad signatures that you put on myriad documents was your agreement to contract terms in the pile of papers that you were handed. If you trace through the entire pile of pieces of paper, you should find something saying that you agree to &quot;all of the attached conditions&quot;, which is where you are supposed to say &quot;Wait, what conditions?&quot;.
I only address the core legal question. The first question regards where the review appeared: on the facility's own web page, or on some third party web page? In the latter case, there is the possibility that soliciting a modified review in exchange for something of value violates the terms of usage for that web site. There are also US federal regulations pertaining to advertising, as well as state regulations. The federal regulations are here. The main question is whether what you say constitutes an endorsement, as specified here. They define an endorsement as: any advertising message (including verbal statements, demonstrations, or depictions of the name, signature, likeness or other identifying personal characteristics of an individual or the name or seal of an organization) that consumers are likely to believe reflects the opinions, beliefs, findings, or experiences of a party other than the sponsoring advertiser, even if the views expressed by that party are identical to those of the sponsoring advertiser. The regulation in fact gives some helpful examples (reading them helps to clarify what an "endorsement" is), the last of which involves a dog: Example 8: A consumer who regularly purchases a particular brand of dog food decides one day to purchase a new, more expensive brand made by the same manufacturer. She writes in her personal blog that the change in diet has made her dog's fur noticeably softer and shinier, and that in her opinion, the new food definitely is worth the extra money. This posting would not be deemed an endorsement under the Guides. Assume now that the consumer joins a network marketing program under which she periodically receives various products about which she can write reviews if she wants to do so. If she receives a free bag of the new dog food through this program, her positive review would be considered an endorsement under the Guides. The distinction at issue is whether the suggestion of receiving something of value might influence a person's statements. You can pay for a positive review, as a reward for saying nice things, as long as the reviewer had no reason to think that they would get get something in return for a review. Taking your review to be an endorsement, as required here, Endorsements must reflect the honest opinions, findings, beliefs, or experience of the endorser. The regulation does not require you to reveal every thing that came into your mind in writing the review, but it is pretty clear that suppressing the concern about vaccination paperwork and the star count constitutes a dishonest statement of opinion of the endorser. Material connections must also be revealed: When there exists a connection between the endorser and the seller of the advertised product that might materially affect the weight or credibility of the endorsement (i.e., the connection is not reasonably expected by the audience), such connection must be fully disclosed. For example, when an endorser who appears in a television commercial is neither represented in the advertisement as an expert nor is known to a significant portion of the viewing public, then the advertiser should clearly and conspicuously disclose either the payment or promise of compensation prior to and in exchange for the endorsement or the fact that the endorser knew or had reason to know or to believe that if the endorsement favored the advertised product some benefit, such as an appearance on television, would be extended to the endorser In the 7th example under material disclosure, they describe a blogger who received something of value in connection with a review: the blogger should clearly and conspicuously disclose that he received the gaming system free of charge I should point out that these regulations are written by the FTC, and the implied interpretation (such as that the blogger should disclose... with no clearly stated penalty for failure to disclose) is an FTC interpretation. 15 USC 52 prohibits false advertisements for services affecting commerce. This is the jurisdictional aspect of their complaint against Cure Encapsulations, where defendants paid for reviews on a third-party website (this case involves a relationship between defendant and a fourth-party company that apparently hunts for and pays reviewers). This is apparently the first instance in which the FTC has gone against a business for paying for reviews on a third party web site, so it's not a foregone conclusion that they will prevail in court. Still, Chevron deference means that they will probably win at least on the jurisdictional question. The main difference is that in the Cure Encapsulation case, the violation was even more egregious in that the individuals were not even customers, and in this instance the would-(not)-be review was not the honest opinion of the endorser.