Received an unexpected check for a &quot;settlement&quot; - should I cash it? I received a check in the mail for about $1000. It's from &quot;Huntington National Bank&quot;, and the issuer is &quot;Saylor v. RealPage Inc. c/o Settlement Administrator&quot;. I've never heard of these people or this settlement. What's going on? The letter attached to the check includes the following excerpts: payment you are entitled as a Settlement Class Member Who Disputed or a Claiming Settlement Class Member from the Claims Fund in the Saylor v. RealPage, Inc settlement pertains to a lawsuit under the Fair Credit Reporting Act you will be sent a Form 1099 reflecting the total amount received in 2023 cash or deposit this check within 60 days
There is a class action lawsuit, Joshua Saylor v. RealPage, Inc., where it is alleged that Defendant fails to take reasonable steps to ensure that its reports do not inaccurately identify people as sex offenders. Defendant routinely fails to consult either the United States Department of Justice’s National Sex Offender Website or the online state sex offender searchable databases before falsely labeling consumers, including Plaintiff, as sex offenders. Based on Defendant’s pattern and practice of related violations, Plaintiff asserts FCRA and NJ FCRA claims on behalf of himself and the Classes A settlement was proposed; they indicate that if you &quot;do nothing&quot; then you would get about $300, but the amount depends on circumstances. There's no way to know why you received a check at all: perhaps you rented a residence and were &quot;screened&quot; by the offending company.
You rightly went to http://www.classactionrebates.com/settlements/talentbin/ which is a reliable source. I would say it was a safe site. A quick search found this court document: https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar_case?case=5778378514805192456&amp;q=Halvorson+v.+TalentBin,+Inc.&amp;hl=en&amp;as_sdt=2006&amp;as_vis=1 which proves the existence of the case. I would say everything is legitimate
If I understand your question correctly, you have some clients who have paid you for services that you have not yet provided and, indeed, they have not yet requested. Is this correct? The accounting term for this is a "prepayment". The correct accounting treatment is to increase an asset account (your bank account) and create a liability account (Prepayments or something similar). You need to talk to your accountant about how to treat these for consumption and income taxes. Legally, these people are now creditors of your business - just like all of your suppliers and employees. There is no legal requirement to escrow or otherwise treat this as trust money. Basically, if your business goes bust they will lose their money. This is something that you should have dealt with in your contract with your customers - if you are running an online business then you should get a lawyer to revise your terms of service to cover things like how they can ask for a refund (and how long you have to get it to them) and how long (or if) they forfeit the funds. As it stands the money effectively becomes yours after whatever time under a statute of limitation applies to transactions of this type and size (under whatever law applies to the contract) since after that time they cannot sue to get it back.
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.
In contract law in the United States, this is a "liquidated damages" clause. It provides that when one side breaches the contract, it has to pay a certain amount of money to make up for it. Normally this is done where it is difficult to calculate the actual damages in the event of a breach, or where the parties would rather avoid calculating the actual damages--a common example is where you put in an earnest money deposit on a house and then forfeit the earnest money if you do not buy. However, there are restrictions on what kind of damages are permitted. Notably, a "penalty" usually refers to an unreasonable amount that is unenforceable as against public policy. It would ordinarily be unreasonable to make someone pay a hundred million dollar penalty for breaking a ten thousand dollar contract, for example. Liquidated damages clauses frequently say "this is not a penalty" and "the parties agree this is reasonable" to make it harder to invalidate them on public policy grounds. Instead, if the liquidated damage payment is a payment meant to reflect actual damages that are just hard to calculate, it is much more likely to be enforceable. You would need to research liquidated damages and penalties in the state whose law governs the contract to determine whether the particular clause is permissible under state law. See https://www.google.com/search?q=restatement+of+contracts+penalty&amp;ie=utf-8&amp;oe=utf-8
I would like to give you a clear definitive answer, but there isn't one. This depends entirely on the scope of the easement which is determined on a case by case basis in light of the facts and circumstances. It is frequently ambiguous. These cases come up frequently and usually either get resolved fairly quickly via mediation or negotiation, or escalate into very ugly lawsuits that can last years. I have a case like this that has been pending eleven years, is on a final appeal to the state supreme court, has involved about $800,000+ of legal fees between all parties involved, has been to the court of appeals following about six times so far, and has led to five evidentiary hearings in addition to depositions, motion practice, etc. Obviously, this is an extreme example, but long, costly litigation if a negotiated resolution isn't reached is pretty common.
If you are going to sue, and can prove they overcharged - consider going to the small claims court. It should cost you $15 + time - unless you loose quite badly - in which case its conceivable the court could award costs against you (I don't know if this is true of the small claims court in NY). You can represent yourself, so no heavy legal bills. It will take a a few hours of your time to prepare and have the hearing. Of-course, very often, just by filing you will get the opposing party to sort out the issue - and probably won't even need to go to court.
As explained in more detail here: The IRS instructions on Form 1099-MISC are pretty clear as to when and how you must file that. You don't need to file a 1099-MISC if total payments to an entity in a tax year are under $600. And if you don't need to file tax forms, you don't need to request a W-9. (If in doubt as to the entity receiving the money, you demand a W-9 from whomever is receiving a payment and use that as the basis of reporting payments.) Furthermore, if you transmit the funds using a payment settlement entity who will report the transaction on a 1099-K, then you don't need to report the payment on a 1099-MISC. (See "Form 1099-K" ibid.) PayPal is a payment settlement entity, so you don't need to worry about reporting payments you send through them ... with one big exception: PayPal does not report "payments to friends and family," and so if you're using that to avoid their fees then the IRS would consider you liable for reporting those payments on a 1099-MISC.