Is there a difference between seizing and impounding items? You hear both terms used to refer to broadly the same action.
Seizing is the taking. Impounding is a possible action after the seizure. Goods may be impounded, or forfeited, or destroyed, or turned over to the legal owner, or something else. If you're hearing both terms referring to broadly the same action, it's because the cases you're hearing about are broadly the same: something is seized and impounded.
No, you could not have prevented them from collecting their belongings But you could have sued for trespass Unless those boxes were part of the contract for sale, they remain the vendor’s property and just like you can’t withhold your mate’s trombone that he accidentally left after that great party, you can’t withhold the vendor’s boxes - that’s called “stealing”. What you could (should?) have done is refuse to settle until the boxes were removed. As the vendor was in breach, if you suffered any unmitigated loss as a result of the delay, you would be entitled to recover it. This is one of the reasons why you should inspect on the day of settlement. Given that you accepted the breach, even though the vendor’s boxes were technically trespassing, they could reasonably raise the defense that they had implicit permission- at least for a reasonable time. “A few days” is a reasonable time.
First, I need to correct a misconception you seem to have. The length of time you spend in jail does not normally determine if something is a felony or a misdemeanor. Whether something is a felony or a misdemeanor is based on how you're charged. And it's not like you happen to be charged with something with a maximum sentence of 365 or 366 days; if you are being charged with a felony, it's because the decision was made that your alleged crime was serious and should be treated as a felony. If you're being charged with a misdemeanor, ditto. Prosecutors charge knowing the difference between the two. The distinction was not originally &quot;punishable by more than a year in prison&quot; vs. &quot;punishable by at most a year.&quot; In fact, it originated well before the idea that the default punishment for most crimes is confinement for a term, where the term is dependent on the severity of the crime. The original distinction was about forfeiture. A felony was a violation of a feudal relationship between a lord and a vassal; if a vassal violates their duty of loyalty to their lord, their relationship ends and their property is forfeit to that lord. Not all serious crimes were felonies. Murder was normally not a felony, because it didn't violate that duty of loyalty. Later on (post-Normans), murder and other serious crimes did result in forfeiture. The term broadened to include these crimes; at this point, &quot;felony&quot; meant &quot;this crime results in your property being forfeit.&quot; These were also the most severe crimes. This is the point where &quot;felony&quot; meaning &quot;exceptionally severe crime&quot; really became established. However, the technical distinction based on forfeiture became muddied, because of another punishment that almost always went along with it: execution. Blackstone, in his Commentaries on the Laws of England, complained that people are mixing these two up. The meaning generally shifted to &quot;crimes which were punished by death,&quot; but scholars did know that the proper meaning should really be &quot;crimes punished with forfeiture.&quot; The distinction mattered. Because felonies were so serious, the procedure involved differed in several respects. I happen to know you're in the US and my main source is also about the US, so let's hop across the Atlantic Ocean to the colonies. Here, forfeiture was pretty much unknown around the time of independence. The popular understanding of &quot;felony&quot; was still &quot;capital crime;&quot; the legal understanding tended to be &quot;the common-law felonies plus things the legislature designated as a felony.&quot; Nearer the end of the 18th century, the number of crimes punishable by death dropped substantially in the US. The default punishment for most serious crimes shifted from execution to confinement in a prison (this is when prison became the default sentence for even very serious crimes in the US). These new prisons were very different from the older jails: they were designed to reform their inmates, and turn them into productive members of society. But not all crimes need that; with less serious crimes, you don't have to go about fixing a character flaw, you just have to show to the criminal that doing this bad thing results in this punishment. The lack of a firm definition of felony became a serious problem shortly after this change. Originally in the US, things worked basically like in England. Legislatures passed laws, which might refer to older laws by name, but there was no organizing principle. Lots of the criminal law was bound up in precedent. It was extremely difficult to find out for sure what the law even was. Instead, there was a major push to codify the law. That means you would have a code, which contained, in organized form, all the laws relating to crime. One of the earliest and most influential American penal codes was actually never adopted. It was written by Edward Livingstone for Louisiana, and was intended to wholly supplant the common law (Louisiana would be the perfect state for this, because it still has a civil law tradition). Livingston didn't use the term &quot;felony,&quot; but did distinguish between &quot;crimes&quot; and &quot;misdemeanors.&quot; The main systematic difference was not in the penal code itself (the punishments were set out on a crime-by-crime basis), but in the corrections code. Crimes were punished in a penitentiary designed to reform the prisoner; misdemeanors were punished by simple imprisonment. Crimes were all punished by more than a year, while misdemeanors could be punished by anywhere from a few days to two years. The important thing was where and how you were punished, not for how long. While this code was never adopted, it had a major influence on the New York code of 1829. The New York code was designed to rationalize the law, but not do too much in the way of substantive changes. In particular, the old idea of a &quot;felony&quot; was not abolished; it was preserved, with real significance (part of the point of keeping the term was that they didn't want to lose all its baggage), and so it needed a definition. They basically adopted Livingstone's definition. Felonies were always the more serious crimes; since serious crimes were now evidence of character flaws to be reformed in a penitentiary, the crimes where you got sent for reform were the felonies (plus, of course, those punished by death). All others were misdemeanors. They also decided that punishment for more than a year, in a jail that's not designed to reform you, was bad; no jail sentence could be more than a year. Since confinement continues to be the main form of punishment, this definition has managed to stick without issue. The forfeiture and capital punishment definitions became obsolete as those punishments became completely obsolete or very, very limited in use. That's pretty much how things got where they are now. It makes some amount of sense to distinguish between bad crimes and not-so-bad crimes, without needing to list out the bad crimes. This is not actually unique to English law; the French penal code also makes this distinction. The term survived the feudal context in which it originated because it was useful. As confinement became the main type of punishment, and as (at the same time) confinement for serious crimes was paired with efforts to reform and rehabilitate criminals, the old distinction shifted to distinguishing between things where you needed that reform and things where you just needed punishment. Then, it shifted in some places to being about the length of said punishment, as an alternative way of expressing the same basic idea but which could be more easily applied to varying systems. Main source: Will Tress, Unintended Collateral Consequences: Defining Felony in the Early American Republic, 57 Clev. St. L. Rev. 461 (2009)
There is not a single legal term that encompasses all of these offenses in most jurisdictions. Instead, there are a number of different offenses that could apply based upon whether or not there is sexual contact, the nature of the coercion involved, and certain other details of the offense. To use a concrete and precise example, I provide the exact language of the most relevant offenses in Colorado's criminal statutes, since they are easily available to me and I am familiar with them, and they are typical, for the most part. I omit the language used to determine offense category within offenses when there are more and less aggravated versions of an offense that have different criminal penalties (e.g. kidnapping has a higher grade of offense if it is not possible to verify that the kidnapped victim has been subsequently released and is alive). But, the terminology used for the kinds of offenses that you describe in not nearly so uniform as the terminology used for sexual assault or rape (and some jurisdictions would include some or all of the conduct you describe as a subtype of sexual assault). In Colorado, there is an offense called "Unlawful sexual contact". Section 18-3-404, Colorado Revised Statutes, which basically means a rape that does not involve penetration. Any actor who knowingly subjects a victim to any sexual contact commits unlawful sexual contact if: (a) The actor knows that the victim does not consent; or (b) The actor knows that the victim is incapable of appraising the nature of the victim's conduct; or (c) The victim is physically helpless and the actor knows that the victim is physically helpless and the victim has not consented; or (d) The actor has substantially impaired the victim's power to appraise or control the victim's conduct by employing, without the victim's consent, any drug, intoxicant, or other means for the purpose of causing submission; or (e) Repealed. (f) The victim is in custody of law or detained in a hospital or other institution and the actor has supervisory or disciplinary authority over the victim and uses this position of authority, unless incident to a lawful search, to coerce the victim to submit; or (g) The actor engages in treatment or examination of a victim for other than bona fide medical purposes or in a manner substantially inconsistent with reasonable medical practices. There is also an offense called "Invasion of privacy for sexual gratification". Section 18-3-405.6, Colorado Revised Statutes (same link). A person who knowingly observes or takes a photograph of another person's intimate parts without that person's consent, in a situation where the person observed or photographed has a reasonable expectation of privacy, for the purpose of the observer's own sexual gratification, commits unlawful invasion of privacy for sexual gratification. It is generally used for peeping tom type offenses, but could conceivable involve forcing someone to expose themselves sexually without their consent but without physical contact with the offender. Similarly, "Internet sexual exploitation of a child", might apply to some cases, and is defined at Section 18-3-405.4, Colorado Revised Statutes (same link), although "importunes" and "entices" isn't really the same as coercion, and is instead more in the nature of deception than than coercion. An actor commits internet sexual exploitation of a child if the actor knowingly importunes, invites, or entices through communication via a computer network or system, telephone network, or data network or by a text message or instant message, a person whom the actor knows or believes to be under fifteen years of age and at least four years younger than the actor, to: (a) Expose or touch the person's own or another person's intimate parts while communicating with the actor via a computer network or system, telephone network, or data network or by a text message or instant message; or (b) Observe the actor's intimate parts via a computer network or system, telephone network, or data network or by a text message or instant message. In contrast, "Sexual assault" (a.k.a. "rape") is defined at Section 18-3-402, Colorado Revised Statutes (same link) as: Any actor who knowingly inflicts sexual intrusion or sexual penetration on a victim commits sexual assault if: (a) The actor causes submission of the victim by means of sufficient consequence reasonably calculated to cause submission against the victim's will; or (b) The actor knows that the victim is incapable of appraising the nature of the victim's conduct; or (c) The actor knows that the victim submits erroneously, believing the actor to be the victim's spouse; or (d) At the time of the commission of the act, the victim is less than fifteen years of age and the actor is at least four years older than the victim and is not the spouse of the victim; or (e) At the time of the commission of the act, the victim is at least fifteen years of age but less than seventeen years of age and the actor is at least ten years older than the victim and is not the spouse of the victim; or (f) The victim is in custody of law or detained in a hospital or other institution and the actor has supervisory or disciplinary authority over the victim and uses this position of authority to coerce the victim to submit, unless the act is incident to a lawful search; or (g) The actor, while purporting to offer a medical service, engages in treatment or examination of a victim for other than a bona fide medical purpose or in a manner substantially inconsistent with reasonable medical practices; or (h) The victim is physically helpless and the actor knows the victim is physically helpless and the victim has not consented. Colorado does not have a provision parallel to statutory rape for unlawful sexual contact, nor does it have a deception to make someone think that a partner is a spouse provision for unlawful sexual contact, even though that is a recognized form of sexual assault. These are clarified with definitions in Section 18-3-401, Colorado Revised Statutes (same link; definitions inapplicable to the offenses cited omitted): (1) "Actor" means the person accused of a sexual offense pursuant to this part 4. (1.5) "Consent" means cooperation in act or attitude pursuant to an exercise of free will and with knowledge of the nature of the act. A current or previous relationship shall not be sufficient to constitute consent under the provisions of this part 4. Submission under the influence of fear shall not constitute consent. Nothing in this definition shall be construed to affect the admissibility of evidence or the burden of proof in regard to the issue of consent under this part 4. . . . (2) "Intimate parts" means the external genitalia or the perineum or the anus or the buttocks or the pubes or the breast of any person. . . . (3) "Physically helpless" means unconscious, asleep, or otherwise unable to indicate willingness to act. . . (4) "Sexual contact" means the knowing touching of the victim's intimate parts by the actor, or of the actor's intimate parts by the victim, or the knowing touching of the clothing covering the immediate area of the victim's or actor's intimate parts if that sexual contact is for the purposes of sexual arousal, gratification, or abuse. (5) "Sexual intrusion" means any intrusion, however slight, by any object or any part of a person's body, except the mouth, tongue, or penis, into the genital or anal opening of another person's body if that sexual intrusion can reasonably be construed as being for the purposes of sexual arousal, gratification, or abuse. (6) "Sexual penetration" means sexual intercourse, cunnilingus, fellatio, analingus, or anal intercourse. Emission need not be proved as an element of any sexual penetration. Any penetration, however slight, is sufficient to complete the crime. (7) "Victim" means the person alleging to have been subjected to a criminal sexual assault. Also closely related is "criminal invasion of privacy", Section 18-7-801, Colorado Revised Statutes (at the same link), which is primarily targeted at "up skirt" photos, but could be used for the kind of offense described in the question. (1) A person who knowingly observes or takes a photograph of another person's intimate parts, as defined in section 18-3-401 (2), without that person's consent, in a situation where the person observed or photographed has a reasonable expectation of privacy, commits criminal invasion of privacy. . . . (3) For the purposes of this section, "photograph" includes a photograph, motion picture, videotape, live feed, print, negative, slide, or other mechanically, electronically, digitally, or chemically reproduced visual material. There is also offenses called "Human trafficking for sexual servitude" and "human trafficking of a minor for sexual servitude". Section 18-3-504, Colorado Revised Statutes (same link), which could sometimes apply (human trafficking without sexual servitude is also a crime but not within the scope of the question). A person who knowingly sells, recruits, harbors, transports, transfers, isolates, entices, provides, receives, or obtains by any means another person for the purpose of coercing the person to engage in commercial sexual activity commits human trafficking for sexual servitude. This is clarified with many definitions at Section 18-3-503, Colorado Revised Statutes (same link): (1) "Adult" means a person eighteen years of age or older. (2) "Coercing" means inducing a person to act or to refrain from acting, if the inducement is accomplished by any one or more of the following means: (a) The use or threat of the use of force against, abduction of, causing of serious harm to, or physical restraint of a person; (b) The use of a plan, pattern, or statement for the purpose of causing the person to believe that failure to perform the act or failure to refrain from performing the act will result in the use of force against, abduction of, causing of serious harm to, or physical restraint of that person or another person; (c) Using or threatening to use the law or the legal process, whether administrative, civil, or criminal, in any manner or for any purpose for which the law was not designed; (d) Threatening to notify law enforcement officials that a person is present in the United States in violation of federal immigration laws; (e) The destruction or taking, or a threat to destroy or take, a person's identification document or other property; (f) Controlling or threatening to control a person's access to a controlled substance, as defined in section 18-18-102 (5); (g) The use of debt bondage; or (h) The exploitation of a person's physical or mental impairment, where such impairment has a substantial adverse effect on the person's cognitive or volitional functions. (3) "Commercial sexual activity" means sexual activity for which anything of value is given to, promised to, or received by a person. (4) "Debt bondage" means: (a) Demanding commercial sexual activity as payment toward or satisfaction of a real or purported debt; or (b) Demanding labor or services as payment toward or satisfaction of a real or purported debt and failing to apply the reasonable value of the labor or services toward the liquidation of the debt; or (c) Demanding labor or services where the length of the labor or services is not limited and the nature of the labor or services is not defined. (5) "Identification document" means a real or purported passport, driver's license, immigration document, travel document, or other government-issued identification document, including a document issued by a foreign government. (6) "Maintain" means to provide sustenance or care for a minor and includes but is not limited to providing shelter, food, clothing, drugs, medical care, or communication services. (7) "Makes available" means to facilitate contact between a minor and another person. (8) "Minor" means a person less than eighteen years of age. (9) "Person" has the same meaning as set forth in section 2-4-401 (8), C.R.S. (10) "Serious harm" means bodily injury or another harm, whether physical or nonphysical, including psychological, financial, or reputational harm, which is sufficiently serious, under all the surrounding circumstances, to compel a reasonable person to perform or continue to perform labor or services or sexual activity to avoid incurring the harm. (11) "Sexual activity" means: (a) Sexual contact, as defined in section 18-3-401 (4); (b) Sexual intrusion, as defined in section 18-3-401 (5); (c) Sexual penetration, as defined in section 18-3-401 (6); (d) Sexual exploitation of a child, pursuant to section 18-6-403 (3) (a) and (3) (d); or (e) An obscene performance, as defined in section 18-7-101. (12) "Victim" means a person who is alleged to have been, or who has been, subjected to human trafficking, as described in section 18-3-503 or section 18-3-504. An obscene performance, referenced above is defined at Section 18-7-101, Colorado Revised Statutes (same link) in the pertinent parts, to mean: (2) "Obscene" means material or a performance that: (a) The average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find that taken as a whole appeals to the prurient interest in sex; (b) Depicts or describes: (I) Patently offensive representations or descriptions of ultimate sex acts, normal or perverted, actual or simulated, including sexual intercourse, sodomy, and sexual bestiality; or (II) Patently offensive representations or descriptions of masturbation, excretory functions, sadism, masochism, lewd exhibition of the genitals, the male or female genitals in a state of sexual stimulation or arousal, or covered male genitals in a discernibly turgid state; and (c) Taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value. . . . (4) "Patently offensive" means so offensive on its face as to affront current community standards of tolerance. (5) "Performance" means a play, motion picture, dance, or other exhibition performed before an audience. . . . (6.5) "Prurient interest" means a shameful or morbid interest. A person, as defined in the referenced language is defined as follows: "Person" means any individual, corporation, government or governmental subdivision or agency, business trust, estate, trust, limited liability company, partnership, association, or other legal entity. Sometimes false imprisonment or kidnapping would be relevant charges: "First degree kidnapping" is Section 18-3-301, Colorado Revised Statutes (at the same link) would apply when someone else is kidnapped for purposes of coercing the person made to conduct the sexual act: Any person who does any of the following acts with the intent thereby to force the victim or any other person to make any concession or give up anything of value in order to secure a release of a person under the offender's actual or apparent control commits first degree kidnapping: (a) Forcibly seizes and carries any person from one place to another; or (b) Entices or persuades any person to go from one place to another; or (c) Imprisons or forcibly secretes any person. Sometimes the victim would also be a victim of "second degree kidnapping" per Section 18-3-302, Colorado Revised Statutes (at the same link): (1) Any person who knowingly seizes and carries any person from one place to another, without his consent and without lawful justification, commits second degree kidnapping. (2) Any person who takes, entices, or decoys away any child not his own under the age of eighteen years with intent to keep or conceal the child from his parent or guardian or with intent to sell, trade, or barter such child for consideration commits second degree kidnapping. One can also imagine this offense including "false imprisonment", Section 18-3-303, Colorado Revised Statutes (same link): Any person who knowingly confines or detains another without the other's consent and without proper legal authority commits false imprisonment. This section shall not apply to a peace officer acting in good faith within the scope of his or her duties. "Criminal extortion" (a.k.a. "blackmail") defined at Section 18-3-207, Colorado Revised Statutes (at the same link) is likewise a plausible offense depending upon the nature of the coercion: (1) A person commits criminal extortion if: (a) The person, without legal authority and with the intent to induce another person against that other person's will to perform an act or to refrain from performing a lawful act, makes a substantial threat to confine or restrain, cause economic hardship or bodily injury to, or damage the property or reputation of, the threatened person or another person; and (b) The person threatens to cause the results described in paragraph (a) of this subsection (1) by: (I) Performing or causing an unlawful act to be performed; or (II) Invoking action by a third party, including but not limited to, the state or any of its political subdivisions, whose interests are not substantially related to the interests pursued by the person making the threat. (1.5) A person commits criminal extortion if the person, with the intent to induce another person against that other person's will to give the person money or another item of value, threatens to report to law enforcement officials the immigration status of the threatened person or another person. If drugs are used to induce the sexual conduct, assault charges could apply. The relevant offense in Colorado is "second degree assault", Section 18-3-203(1)(e), Colorado Revised Statutes (at the same link): A person commits the crime of assault in the second degree if: . . . (e) For a purpose other than lawful medical or therapeutic treatment, he intentionally causes stupor, unconsciousness, or other physical or mental impairment or injury to another person by administering to him, without his consent, a drug, substance, or preparation capable of producing the intended harm; Notably, in Colorado, unlike many states and countries, intentionally causing bodily injury that is not serious bodily injury and does not involve a deadly weapon or a first responder injury, is a tort or municipal ordinance violation, but not a state law crime, except for some subtypes of disorderly conduct, harassment and hazing. "Disorderly conduct" includes assault in the context of fighting in public, in Colorado, but wouldn't be applicable in the circumstances of the question. Section 18-9-106, Colorado Revised Statutes (same link). A person commits disorderly conduct if he or she intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly: . . . (d) Fights with another in a public place except in an amateur or professional contest of athletic skill "Harassment" is closest to bare physical assault in Colorado, and could apply in some of these cases. Section 18-9-111, Colorado Revised Statutes (same link). A person commits harassment if, with intent to harass, annoy, or alarm another person, he or she: (a) Strikes, shoves, kicks, or otherwise touches a person or subjects him to physical contact "Hazing" is defined in Section 18-9-124, Colorado Revised Statutes, and could be implicated if the means of coercion are related to this kind of activity. (2) As used in this section, unless the context otherwise requires: (a) "Hazing" means any activity by which a person recklessly endangers the health or safety of or causes a risk of bodily injury to an individual for purposes of initiation or admission into or affiliation with any student organization; except that "hazing" does not include customary athletic events or other similar contests or competitions, or authorized training activities conducted by members of the armed forces of the state of Colorado or the United States. (b) "Hazing" includes but is not limited to: (I) Forced and prolonged physical activity; (II) Forced consumption of any food, beverage, medication or controlled substance, whether or not prescribed, in excess of the usual amounts for human consumption or forced consumption of any substance not generally intended for human consumption; (III) Prolonged deprivation of sleep, food, or drink. (3) It shall be unlawful for any person to engage in hazing. If the conduct causes serious bodily injury or the loss of a pregnancy, there are other charges that could apply. There are also offenses that might apply in certain situations that apply only to certain kinds of victims or certain kinds of relationships. For example offenses limited to minors like child abuse, domestic violence offenses, offenses related to abuse of "at risk" persons, offenses related to sexual offenses involving psychotherapists, sexual offenses involving abuse of a position of trust, solicitation of prostitution, child prostitution offenses, criminal conspiracy charges, criminal solicitation charges, criminal attempt charges, organized crime charges when there is a pattern of such conduct for profit by an organization or group of people, etc.
While software is often the subject of pirating, the term is also used generally for unauthorized use of any copyrighted material. It turns out that this terminology is very old. Wikipedia notes that this sense of the word piracy is attested as far back as 1603 CE and was used as part of the language of a copyright treaty as early as 1886 CE. In particular, people who use or distribute unauthorized copies of movies, television shows, videos of live concerts, and music are also frequently said to be engaged in pirating of the material. The term is used in this context in testimony before Congress by the chief U.S. Copyright official in 2005. Critics of the term argue that "piracy," which originally meant armed robbery of tangible property on the high seas (a form of theft), is an inapt way to describe copyright infringement which is really different in kind than theft because copyright infringement does not deprive anyone of use of the materials, it merely impairs the legally granted monopoly of someone regarding how it shall be used. As Matthew Yglesias explains at Slate: If I steal your car then you don't have a car anymore, whereas if I duplicate a digital media file we both end up with it. The harm in the duplicating is supposed to be that by duplicating content that Fox Filmed Entertainment owns the copyright to, I'm depriving Tom Rothman of some revenue that he might have gotten had I instead gone out and bought a copy of the content for myself. That's fair enough for Rothman to feel sad about, but it's a totally different kind of thing. I didn't buy DC's animated film of Batman: Year One, and I didn't pirate a copy either; I watched it at a friend's house. The difference between watching a movie with your friend and copying your friend's Blu-ray is that one is legal and one is illegal. But in both cases you watch the movie without paying the copyright owner, and in neither case have you stolen anything from anyone.
It means: if I give you permission to occupy my property then you are not occupying it with "hostility" and adverse possession will not come into effect providing that we both remain within the terms of our agreement for your occupation.
It is capitalized because the word NEXIUM has a conspicuous definition. In other words, they're using it in the specific way they have defined it to mean. This is to differentiate it from any other meaning it may have in some other context. Obviously with NEXIUM, it's a word they just made up and it's very unlikely that it could ever be confused with anything other than their particular drug. But what if the drug were called PRAXIA? The word praxia might be confused with the medical term. It's also the name of a city in Romania (I just learned that while looking that word up). But PRAXIA in all caps refers specifically to their drug, and there can be no ambiguity between that and other uses of the term. This is especially important for drugs, since they are legally required to disclose the side effects in their advertising, and you wouldn't want someone potentially confusing the name of the drug with the condition it treats. You see this in contracts as well. When a contract provision is written in ALL CAPS, it is done to conspicuously call attention to the text, either because it is redefining an established legal term or is modifying rights you may have under the law (e.g. LIMITED WARRANTY, SEVERABILITY, BINDING ARBITRATION, etc.) There is no established rule for this, by the way. It's mostly a matter of style. Some laws require conspicuous disclosure of certain provisions in contracts, so ALL CAPS has traditionally been used to meet that requirement. NOTE: The term "Nexium" (not in caps) is simply the registered trademark for the drug. It simply protects their intellectual property (i.e. the name), and isn't intended to describe or define anything in a legal way. Fun fact: Subway got sued for making "Footlong" sandwiches that were not actually 12 inches in length. They tried to argue that "Footlong" was a trademark and not intended to convey the length of their sandwiches. They settled the lawsuit, because really, that's a jackass move right there. I wonder, though... If they'd called it a FOOTLONG, would that have made a difference? ;-)
Depends on where you are, and what law would be broken and why. In germany, there is the concept of rechtfertigender Notstand (justifying emergency). If there is a present danger to a Rechtsgut (legally protected interest), one can take necessary and proportional steps against another legally protected interest. Say I walk through a winter landscape and there is a person who has broken through the ice of a lake (a present danger of the loss of life). Nearby is a yard with a ladder leaning on a shed. I would be allowed to enter the yard (normally trespas) and take the ladder (normally theft) in the rescue attempt (life counts for more than a ladder, using a ladder is necessary/appropriate for an ice rescue). The details are, as usual for Law SE, complicated.