If a celebrity autographs a legal document without realizing it, are they bound by its terms? Suppose a celebrity autographs whatever fans hand over (usually in an enthusiastic, crowded, and rushed setting). Suppose one item being signed is a thousand-dollar I.O.U. (promissory note or some such). A million dollars would look ridiculous in court but $1,314.55 sounds reasonable. The celebrity didn't keep a copy of whatever they autographed. The celeb's lawyer would likely advise against signing anything. The celeb's movie studio, record label, etc. would likely say to keep your fans happy and everyone does it. The celeb could hand over presigned autograph cards, but I think many celebs still sign whatever fans offer. A celeb could say they didn't know what it was but that comes under the principle of coulda-woulda-shoulda. That defense usually fails in court. How does the celebrity protect themself and still sign autographs in a rush?
According to Nolo.com five requirements must be met for an agreement to be binding and enforceable by a court. Your scenario meets one requirement at best (see comments). Therefore, there is no legally binding agreement. Contract Requirements To be enforceable by a court, every contract (whether written or oral) must meet several requirements. Let's take a look at each of them. Consideration. As Cole Porter wrote in the song, True Love, &quot;You give to me and I give to you.&quot; That sums up consideration. Each party has to promise or provide something of value to the other. Without this exchange, there is no contract. (Learn more in Nolo's article Consideration: Every Contract Needs It.) Offer and acceptance. There must be a clear or definite offer to contract (&quot;Do you want to buy this?&quot;) and an unqualified acceptance (&quot;Yes!&quot;). Legal purpose. The purpose of the agreement must not violate the law. For example, you won't be able to enforce a loan agreement that charges interest in excess of what is allowed by usury laws or a service agreement to hire someone to rob a bank or kill your mother-in-law. Capable parties. To be &quot;capable&quot; of making a contract, the parties must understand what they're doing. For example, there is a presumption that minors and insane people usually don't know what they're doing and, for that reason, contracts they enter into won't be enforced under certain circumstances. (Learn more in Nolo's article Who Lacks the Capacity to Contract?) Mutual assent. This is also sometimes referred to as a &quot;meeting of the minds.&quot; The contracting parties must intend to be bound by their agreement and must agree on the essential terms. If this isn't enough, there is another common law defense available to such a defendant called estoppel. Courts look to the behavior of the parties to determine if there was an actual contract or not. If the behavior does not fit the alleged agreement, then the plaintiff is estopped from enforcing the words on paper.
I am not a lawyer; I am not your lawyer. You do not cite a jurisdiction so this makes it very difficult to get a definitive answer. What follows is for Australia but the general principles are common law and would be applicable to other common law jurisdictions except where statues apply or case law has diverged. In the first instance, it seems that you were not party to any arrangement to pay for the electricity. So on the face of it you are not party to any contract requiring you to pay. Even if there was such an agreement: family, domestic, social and voluntary agreements (which this would be) are presumed not to be intended to legally bind the participants. Whether this presumption would be overturned would depend on the specific facts. On the face of it, there is no legal obligation to pay. Your options are: Do nothing; this puts the ball in their court, they can: Forget about it (it would then be over) Attempt to sue you with little prospect of success (which would cost them and you a lot more than $50 irrespective of who won) Do something illegal like beating you up (you really need to assess this risk) Tell everyone they know (in person and on social media) what a skiving prick you are (you could probably sue them for damages but that's not really going to happen, is it?) Pay them what they are asking Offer to pay them something less. Option 1 is likely to break any relationship you have with the person, Option 2 is likely to preserve it and Option 3 could go either way. Ultimately, like most legal questions, this is not about the law; it's about relationships ... broken ones mostly.
The standard of care to determine documents are accurate varies. For example, in an ordinary notarized document, notarizing the signature of an imposter will ordinarily only impose liability on the notary for harm caused by the fraudulent imposter signing, if the notary is negligent, i.e. fails to use the reasonable care of a similarly situated notary. But, suppose that instead of a notary, the imposter uses a fake ID to get a bank to confirm his identity as part of a &quot;guaranteed signature&quot;, which is a parallel system of confirming people's identities arising from an industry organization and mostly used to confirm identity in life insurance payouts and other non-probate transfers (e.g. pay on death bank accounts). In the bank that guarantees the signature is duped, the bank has strict liability without regard to fault to the party that is harmed by the imposter's bad signature. In the case of fake signatures on checks, there is an elaborate web of statutes in Articles 3 and 4 of the Uniform Commercial Code and some related federal regulations, but basically, it boils down to the harm from a forged check falling on the person who dealt most closely with the imposter. The standard for a Fake IDs used to get alcohol is particularly tricky because rather than flowing from a common law rule, it usually depends upon the exact language of a liquor regulation statute and related regulations, so it is often non-uniform. There is not a general rule governing this situation and that situation is very common in American law. More often than not, you can not determine the correct answer to a legal question by simply applying a general rule to a new situation. Law is not physics.
is this absolutely required to be considered a valid document in most jurisdictions, most notably, the European Union? Not at all. There is no legal requirement that contracts, terms of service, and so forth be drafted, devised, or even validated by a lawyer. Law requires that certain types of contract be notarized. That refers to the moment where the parties sign/formalize the contract, which is different from --and independent of-- whether its terms were written by a lawyer. A messaging service like the one you have in mind definitely is not subject to such requirement either.
As I understand it, legal procedure in Common Law jurisdictions (e.g. the UK) is primarily based on evidence given by a person. Paperwork exists to verify that someone has not misremembered something, but even when you have paperwork you need to have someone testify that this is the right paperwork and it hasn't been forged. A piece of paper on its own means nothing. In practice of course the two sides will agree to accept routine matters rather than dragging lots of third parties (e.g. the post office employees) into court to no point. In the case of a letter where you need to prove it was received, the sender will testify that they sent the letter and that the copy they have introduced into evidence is a true copy. The proof of delivery merely shows that the item wasn't lost in the post. If one party testifies that they sent a letter and the other testifies that they merely received an empty envelope then someone is lying, which is a crime meriting further investigation.
Such an image is copyrighted, as part of the movie. You cannot legally use it without permission from the copyright holder, unless the use of the image falls under fair use (note that fair use is a strictly US legal concept. It does not apply anywhere else) or a similar exception to copyright, such as "fair dealing". There are multiple factors which must be considered in making a fair use judgement. No one factor ever totally controls the decision. It is a case-by-case decision. But several things about your proposed use suggest to me that it will not qualify as a fair use. The image is part of a creative work, not a work of non-fiction such as a news report or a textbook. That weighs against fair use. You seem to be using the whole image, although it is only part of the movie. That probably weighs against fair use to some extent. A use in "a social media post regarding a sales vacancy" sounds commercial to me. If so, that would weigh against fair use. The copyright owner might well wish to market images from the film. If so, and if many people used images from the film as you propose to use this one, that might harm the market. This weighs against fair use. You don't seem to be making any comment on the image, or using it in any significantly transformational way. That weighs against fair use. Use of the image does not seem vital or even important to the message you intend to communicate. That also weighs against fair use. In short, I think you would be wiser to use an image that you have or can get permission to use in this way. If you use this image, it is possible that the copyright holder would sue for copyright infringement, or issue a DMCA take-down notice, or both.
The person getting the item by fraud didn't get any ownership. Therefore when you bought it, you didn't get ownership either. It's still the company's property, and they can do with it what they like (within reason, they wouldn't be allowed to make it blow up in your face). If you sent back the item, good on you, because the item is now with its rightful owner. If you don't like it, you can sue the person who sold the item to you.
The copyright holder is free to release the work under whatever licenses the copyright holder wants, in the absence of a contract saying otherwise. A copyright holder could sign a contract not to release under another license, but otherwise I don't see why he or she would waive the rights. The copyright holder can always decide not to reissue under a different license. The copyright holder basically retains all rights not specifically signed away. Everyone else is limited to what copyright law allows and to what license terms they have.