Are there laws stating that contracts should have good morals? I am reading a contract that is clearly one sided and demands a lot of rights on the recipient's end to be withdrawn for the sake of the lease agreement. The lending party also wants to negate a lot of responsibilities that are enforced by law such as safety for the receiving party. I like to categorize this under bad morals and evil intent and would like to accuse the lending party of such. Although I just want to see some enactments or civil codes that protect citizens from expensive corporations abusing people through signed contracts. The jurisdiction is California.
There is no requirement that the terms of a contract be even-handed The common law position is that parties are free to contract on whatever terms they like: if you agree to sell me your late model car for $1 that's a matter between the two of us. The law allows you to make a bad bargain. Unconscionability There is an equitable doctrine that allows the court to refuse to enforce unconscionable contracts or terms. The California Supreme Court has ruled that &quot;the central idea (of the) unconscionability doctrine is concerned not with ‘a simple old-fashioned bad bargain &quot;… but with terms that are 'unreasonably favorable to the more powerful party.'&quot; In other words, courts will not enforce contracts that are &quot;overly harsh,&quot; &quot;unduly oppressive,&quot; or &quot;so one-sided as to shock the conscience.&quot; However, I would be extremely surprised if the terms you are upset about rising to the level of unconscionability. The basic test of unconscionability, as expressed in official comment 1 to section 2-302, is: whether, in the light of the general commercial background and the commercial needs of the particular trade or case, the clauses involved are so one-sided as to be unconscionable under the circumstances existing at the time of the making of the contract. . . .The principle is one of the prevention of oppression and unfair surprise. . . and not of disturbance of allocation of risks because of superior bargaining power. They seem to be dealing with risk allocation and moving risks that are normally on the lender to the buyer or requiring the buyer to waive statutory rights and warranties - there is nothing illegal in that unless the law has a &quot;no contracting out&quot; provision. Some laws do and some laws don't. Some laws may not allow contracting out in consumer transactions but may allow them in business transactions. You seem to be talking about some sort of equipment financing arrangement. As such, if you don't like the deal, there's a bank down the street with a different deal. US law recognises that once there is a contract, the parties have to act in good faith to ensure each party gets the benefit of the bargain they made but there is no such requirement in negotiating that bargain. If you can use your economic strength to get a better deal, that's called capitalism.
I can answer for the U.S., if that's helpful. The general rule, in the United States, is that covenants not to compete are enforceable as long as they are reasonable. What constitutes "reasonable" varies from state to state. Factors considered generally include: What kind of actual harm will come to the business if you go to a competitor? In other words, is this rote language they include in every contract, or did they put it in yours because you know all the secret formulas and have the customer list memorized? Is it reasonable in time, location, and scope? Something preventing you from taking any job anywhere in the United States for ten years won't be enforceable; something preventing you from taking a job with the exact same title in the same industry in the same town for the next six months might be. The general rule at common law was that covenants not to compete were unenforceable restraints of trade; the fact that they're enforceable at all is later law created by each jurisdiction, and that means it's going to vary based on your specific jurisdiction. If you want to know whether it's okay to take a specific job based on a specific non-compete you signed, you will need to talk to a legal professional licensed in your jurisdiction--and even she may not be able to tell you for sure.
The clause refers to what might be a lawsuit, which can be adjudicated in appropriate government courts (cf. the choice of law clause), but instead would be submitted to an arbitrator. The contract will spell out the details. An offence is a punishable criminal act, which is outside the scope of civil suits. In US law, the government prosecutes the wrong-doer, not e.g. one of the parties to the contract (if for example the vendor ships an illegal substance to a customer). The same goes for a &quot;breach of law&quot;, depending of course what you mean by breach of law. A breach of contract could not be pursued in court, given a mandatory arbitration clause. The fact that the two parties are in different countries does not nullify a mandatory arbitration clause, at least between the US and the UK.
The section you quote as clearly saying a thing is not clearly saying the thing. However: you cannot pass on or resell any license keys seems to say a thing clearly. However, one could argue that it's the sharer of the account who is in the wrong, and not the person receiving and passing on the account. I'd say that that piece of the agreement, combined with this: must not... let other people get access to anything we've made in a way that is unfair or unreasonable says that, yes, they are out of bounds.
No Let's consider a similar scenario. If you made a beverage which poisoned a number of people, would you be absolved of liability because you gave it away for free? Of course not. As there is no contract between you, they would have to bring an action against you in the tort of negligence or negligent misstatement OR under consumer protection law. To succeed at tort they would need to prove that you owed them a duty of care; from Donoghue v Stevenson "You must take reasonable care to avoid acts or omissions which you can reasonable foresee would be likely to injure ... persons who are so closely and directly affected by my act that I ought reasonably have them in contemplation ...". Most cases will founder on your inability to foresee the use to which your software may be put. Consumer law is jurisdiction specific but they generally contain warranties that what you provide (gratis or otherwise) is fit for purpose, merchantable and that you do not make false and misleading statements. There is a chance that a case brought under this sort of law could succeed as you have not limited the purpose, specifically declared that it is not of merchantable quality and have (presumable) said what it does so that, if it doesn't do what you said, you have been misleading and deceptive.
if a friend hires someone to fix something in their house, but after the repairs are done, the friend refuses to pay, this would likely fall under theft of service. This is incorrect. The most common distinction is intent. (The federal Canadian criminal code provision for theft (Section 332) requires intent to commit the crime, although &quot;false pretenses&quot; (Section 362) is probably a better match within the Canadian criminal code to theft of services and also requires a showing of intent). If breaching a promise to pay that the person making the promise to pay intended to be honor when the promise was made fails to pay (e.g. due to poor budgeting or losing a job) this is a breach of contract. Similarly, if someone accidentally attaches the wrong cable line to their TV and gets the premium package rather than the regular one, but didn't realize that fact, the cable company might have a claim for negligence or for unjust enrichment, but this would not constitute theft. In contrast, obtaining services knowing at the outset that you do not intend to honor your promise yet deceiving the service provider with your promise is theft. Theft (in the context of a theft of services) is intentionally obtaining services by deceit with an intent not to pay for them at the time that they are obtained. Proving this intent is usually prohibitively difficult and no something that law enforcement will choose to press charges regarding, but with very clear evidence (e.g. an audiotape of the person making a promise to pay bragging immediately before or after making the promise to pay about how he never intends to pay in the first place, or in a case with a pattern of conduct involving many service providers on multiple occasions), charges can be pressed and a conviction can be won. Also, to be clear, it has nothing to do, per se, with the power relationships of the parties. If an employer picks up a bunch of day laborers telling them that they will be paid an agreed rate at the end of the day for the work they are made to do, and the employer not only doesn't pay them at the end of the day but didn't intend to do so in the first place and perhaps has a practice of picking up day laborers and then refusing to pay them without good cause, that is theft of services a.k.a. wage theft. if I play a movie from a streaming service and screen-share on Zoom, I would be committing civil copyright infringement (if it is not fair use), but if I give other people my login credentials for the streaming service, it would be theft of service, I think, depending on the jurisdiction This isn't a good analogy as it implicates copyright law which is quite different from other bodies of law. Some acts are both civil and criminal copyright violations. But criminal copyright violations are generally not a theft of services. In Canada, the typical criminal copyright violation involves the sale or rental of the copyright protected material to third parties for money. how does this distinction affect the outcome for a person liable/guilty of either? Civil law violations are a basis to bring a lawsuit against someone who breaches the law in a civil manner for money damages sufficient to compensate the person bringing the lawsuit for the damages that they have suffered. Theft is a criminal offense. The prosecutor's office decides whether or not to bring charges and if it does bring charges does so (in Canada) in the name of the Crown, at the government's expense under criminal procedure rather than the civil procedure applicable to lawsuits. The victim is usually a witness and is usually consulted, but is not a party to a criminal case. If a conviction is obtained for a criminal offense, the penalty is usually some combination of incarceration, a fine, probation and community service, as authorized by statute, with court costs and restitution to the victim tacked on as an afterthought. The measure of what is owed as restitution is typically more grudging than the measure of the damages that can be awarded in a civil lawsuit. The two remedies are not mutually exclusive. Someone who is prosecuted for committing a crime can also be sued if the evidence supports both civil and criminal claims. Someone who is sued can also be prosecuted if the evidence supports both civil and criminal claims.
It isn't uncommon to interlineate contract language, or to cross out contract language, with the initials of the parties to the contract. This is normally only done with smaller businesses, however, where there is someone who has the authority to do so. Some contracts, such as insurance contracts, for example, have to have their language approved by state regulators before they can be used and can't be modified in that fashion.
Interesting question. I routinely write wills that authorize the executor to destroy property that has no significant economic or sentimental value, but I've never encountered a case where a testator or testatrix has directed that property be destroyed and I've never seen a reported case (or even a news report) in which that has happened. To the extent that an estate is solvent, there is no reason that a creditor could complain and if the destruction was done in a safe manner (as opposed to burning down a house or something like that without consulting the fire department) I'm not sure that there would be a public interest in doing so either. There are many religions that had a practice historically of burying someone with grave goods, so there are reasonable First Amendment freedom of religion arguments for allowing such a practice if it had a religious basis. And, if no interested party objected, I don't see how anyone could stop the executor from acting, unless the property to be destroyed was, for example, evidence of a crime, in which case it would be a crime to destroy it and the provision of the will would be void because it was a crime to carry it out. If an executor sought permission from a court to carry out this instruction, the court might require a public notice of the planned destruction to give notice to any third party who might claim an ownership interest in the property allegedly belonging to the decedent. On the other hand, usually, all interested parties in an estate can agree to act contrary to a will by unanimous consent, in which case no one would have standing to fight for the provision in court (unless it was considered a charitable bequest, in which case a state attorney general or an advocate appointed by the court with the "will" as the client could defend it). Given the strong public policies in the law disfavoring "waste" (i.e. useless destruction of property) such a provision could be held to be void as against public policy (similarly, bequests contingent upon marriage decisions are now void as against public policy).