Termination of a contract due to breach If I understand correctly, when a party to a contract breaches the terms in a material way (i.e., repudiation), the non-breaching party can, at its discretion, terminate it, cease performance under it and seek damages, if desired. If the innocent party expressly acknowledges the breach and considers the contract terminated (but hasn’t, yet, sought damages), and the breaching party files a petition in pursuit of a contractual right which they forfeit by breaching the contract, would the outcome, likely, turn on whether or not the innocent party expressly communicated their decision to terminate the contract to the breaching party (or their failure to seek damages, assuming no “affirmation” had occurred)? Would there, likely, be any bearing upon the outcome if that decision was communicated, and damages were sought, after their petition was filed? Would a motion to dismiss or stay the action, for “failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted” or a motion to dismiss or stay the action, along with motion for declaratory relief be appropriate, in lieu of filing a response/answer? Would the right to seek damages for the breach still be preserved if not sought concurrently? Could filing an answer be considered an “affirmation” of the contract or create issues that would have, otherwise, been avoidable if any of the above listed action, or a different course of action was taken instead?
Termination is a matter of fact That is, it has either happened, or it hasn’t. Whether it has or hasn’t depends on a multitude of factors including the terms of the contract, the actions of the parties, and communication between them. These factors are so case specific that it is impossible to generalise. Further, within a given case, reasonable parties may differ on if a contract has been terminated, which party initiated the termination, and if that termination was lawful. Usually, these cases involve mutual allegations of repudiation by the other party and rightful termination in response by our side. These issues are likely to be the major ones that the court or tribunal will have to determine. A claim for damages would need to be pursued as part of the overall case but the deadline for raising them is a procedural matter for the court or tribunal. Failing to raise them as an issue in pre-litigation correspondence would not be a bar to raising them in a claim or counter-claim. However, failing to raise them at the earliest opportunity denies the offending party the opportunity to mitigate the damage and, if they can show that there were actions they could have reasonably taken to mitigate but couldn’t because they weren’t informed, then that may reduce or eliminate the damages payable.
Do I have standing to sue a credit bureau or lender after being approved for a loan but being prevented from signing due to their error? Unfortunately, no. The email you got from the loan agency reflects that no contract was formed yet. The email merely is the loan agency's expression of interest to proceed toward the formation of that contract. Absent that formation of the contract, even if for reasons beyond your control, you are not entitled to the benefits or consideration(s) the contract would provide. Nor would the lender be entitled to your compliance with the terms of that contract, terms which might not even be informed --let alone known-- to you. There is no legal obligation from one party to the other. Lastly, the agency's or bureau's faulty process/questionnaire is not actionable either. Lender's reluctance to employ an alternative method is within his freedom of contract.
Let's say the trustee runs into a situation where the beneficiary demands some action, and the trustee thinks this action is a really, really bad idea. Then the trustee can either say "no". Or the trustee can say "yes" and be liable (so if the action is a really bad idea then the trustee won't do this). The trustee can NOT say "yes if you sign this paper that I'm not liable for the result of this action", because the job of the trustee is to protect the beneficiary and he wouldn't be doing that.
the company does have the right to "verify the eligibility of the person and terminate the service to the ineligible at any time" is pretty unambiguous. They have assessed your eligibility, determined you don't have one and have terminated the service. They are completely within their rights to do this. If you feel that they have assessed your eligibility wrongly then you can dispute their assessment - either through whatever dispute resolution is detailed in the contract or by going to court if the contract is silent. The fact that they previously assessed you as eligible (or didn't actually make an assessment) is irrelevant.
No While you can be bound to terms you had the opportunity to read and didn’t, you cannot be bound to terms that you did not have the opportunity to read. That doesn’t mean that you don’t have a contract but it will be on different conditions to those in the undisclosed terms. For a contract to be valid, the parties must agree on the essential terms, for a phone contract, what service the phone company is giving and how much the consumer pays. Incidental terms can be left undefined and they will, if needed, be filled in by a court with reasonable terms. However, this only happens to the extent necessary to give effect to the primary purpose of the contract. For example, late fees or termination fees are not strictly necessary (common law principles of damages for breach of contract work just fine) so, if the undisclosed terms include them, they will be unenforceable. Notwithstanding, it’s quite likely that refusing to disclose in the advance violates state or Federal consumer protection laws against misleading or deceptive conduct.
Probably not. Overview You haven't specified a jurisdiction. I will talk about Australia because that's what I'm familiar with. In Australia the most relevant area of law would be tort, specifically negligence. The university would be liable to pay damages if a court found that it owed a duty of care to your friend, that it breached that duty, and that your friend suffered injury ('injury' including loss of property as well as mental suffering) as a result of that breach. Also potentially relevant would be contract law, if your friend and the university had entered into some kind of agreement relating to his security, or equity, if the university had somehow acted to lead your friend to rely, to his detriment, on the university protecting him (promissory estoppel: Walton Stores v Maher). However, I think this is unlikely unless, for some reason, the university had put up signs saying 'Please come onto our land and we will be responsible for your security'. Negligence You have stated that 'it is their responsibility to make sure all students are safe on campus.' It is not clear whether you mean to state that as a fact or whether you are suggesting it as a possible hypothetical basis of liability. I am not aware of a case that establishes the proposition that universities do have such a duty. The judgments in Modbury Triangle Shopping Centre v Anzil (2000) 205 CLR 254 discuss the liability of the occupier of land (such as the university in your example) for injuries inflicted by criminals upon people present on land (such as your friend in your example). In that case, the defendant ran a shopping centre. The plaintiff worked at a shop in the shopping centre. At the end of the plaintiff's shift at 10.30pm, it was dark outside because the shopping centre switched the lights in the car park off at 10pm. The plaintiff was mugged in the shopping centre car park on his way out to his car. The key question there was whether the defendant shopping centre was under a duty to keep the lights on for workers leaving work (along with the question of how the failure to illuminate the area led to the attack i.e. whether the plaintiff still have been mugged if the lights were on). Therefore the question that we are presently interested in, about an occupier's responsibility to protect visitors, is only dealt with as a side issue in that case. But the principle is pretty well-established that, generally, you are not responsible to protect another person from the criminal acts of a third person. The common law has a strong presumption against imposing liability for 'omissions' as distinct from acts, which is another way of saying that the courts don't want people being liable to run out into the street and help people. See paragraphs 27 and 28 and thereabouts in Modbury Triangle. Particular relationships may exist which create such a duty. One is in relation to school children; the school is responsible for taking such care of the child as a parent would. The relevant features of this the school-child relationship include the child's vulnerability as a child and the way the school controls their movements and enviroment during the school day. I presume that your friend is not a child and the university does not control his or her movements. Therefore a court is likely to be looking at the general principle that the university is not responsible for protecting people from the criminal acts of strangers, and then looking (and probably not finding) any special feature of the relationship between your friend and the university that creates an aspect of vulnerability, reliance or control that makes it reasonable to impose a duty of care. Some people think that there is a general principle that if something bad happens to them, some identifiable person with cash must be responsible for paying compensation, whether that is an insurer, the government or a nearby corporation. The common law has not picked up that principle. The common law would slate the responsibility home primarily to the mugger. Sue them. What does the university have to do with it? Conceivably the university might also be liable along with the mugger, but the fact that an injury occurred and nobody else can in practice be held responsible does not in itself make the university liable. As mentioned by Pat W., there may be some other feature that creates a duty, such as if the university had made some change to the environment that allowed made the attack to occur when it wouldn't otherwise have e.g. moving your friend's dormitory so that the only entrance was through a dark alley, or if the attack occurred inside a university building where the university controlled entry (even then not sure that would get your friend over the line).
If the case is filed improperly, the opposing party should file a motion to dismiss. If the opposing party merely disagrees with the allegations, they will likely have to litigate to address those differences. The inconsistency is not an obvious case of perjury, because it could just as easily be a clerical error.
Depends on the context Statutory timeframes Certain documents, like a Statement of Claim or an Adjudication Application, set very strict timeframes in motion by their receipt and there are real legal consequences if they are not responded to within a statutorily mandated period. For the former, failure to respond may result in a default judgement and, for the latter, it prohibits the adjudicator from considering a response. In such circumstances, the statute will set out the notice period. Contractural timeframes The document may be initiating an action where there are timeframes spelled out in a pre-existing contract. For example, what’s commonly called a “show cause notice” is a notice from one party to the other that they are invoking a contractural term that requires them to give the other party the opportunity to respond, that is, to “show cause”, why they should’t do something the contract then allows - like terminating it. In such circumstances, the contract will set out the notice period or, if the contract is silent, then a reasonable notice period is required - see below. Reasonable notice It is inherent in contracts, but also a feature of the law more generally, that when a specific notice period is not given, reasonable notice is required. What is reasonable depends on all the circumstances including the ability of the recipient to respond, the severity of the consequence of not responding, and the urgency of the issue. For example, a reasonable time to respond to an eviction notice will be longer than that required to respond to remove your vehicle that is blocking a fire escape - particularly if the building is presently on fire. Date of the notice or date of receipt? When measuring all these times, the question might arise as to whether they are from the date printed on the notice, the date the notice is delivered (or, in legal speak, served), or the date that it comes to the attention of the recipient. Again, that will depend on the circumstances and a statute or contract may measure time from any of those things. They may also have deemed receipt, that is, receipt has legally occurred even if it hasn’t factually occurred. For example, receipt may be in the ordinary course of mail for a posted letter - so for a letter posted by Express Mail, the next business day after postage even if the Post Office loses it. Any or all of these may be subject to their own measures of reasonableness. For example, even if the time is measured from the date on the notice, this would not be reasonable if the sending party waited 2 weeks before sending it. Similarly, if the recipient can demonstrate that they spent the last 6 months in a coma, it might not be reasonable to sanction them for failing to respond. The legal art of service, deemed or otherwise, is a whole subsection of law in itself.