Legally, in the U.S. (NY, NJ, FLA), what determines the difference between a THREAT and NEGOTIATING, for either side? I have been told that lawyers who are "negotiating" a settlement (or similar) have quite a bit of leeway when doing so as far as not being legally held to certain things they may say or offer during the "negotiation." What draws the line legally for the lawyer or the other party? For sake of this discussion assume all of the below is during a period of both sides trying to settle. One party is the lawyer and one party is a civilian: If one party were to say "I would like to settle this without litigation but if we have to file a complaint/litigate there is a good chance my complaint will contain information/damages related to:" the time you were paid off the books, avoiding taxes the time you were encouraged to perform an illicit/illegal act purposeful misclassification of employment status, which is a felony or other similar items. What are threats vs. what are "negotiating tactics?"
This negotiation tactic is not a crime, but it does implicate an ethical rule for attorneys, Rule of Professional Conduct 4.5, which exists in some states, but has been dropped from the national model rules promulgated by the American Bar Association and is a controversial matter from state to state with several variant forms in different states. In Colorado, the relevant rule of professional conduct for lawyers (Rule 4.5 Threatening Prosecution) states: (a) A lawyer shall not threaten criminal, administrative or disciplinary charges to obtain an advantage in a civil matter nor shall a lawyer present or participate in presenting criminal, administrative or disciplinary charges solely to obtain an advantage in a civil matter. (b) It shall not be a violation of Rule 4.5 for a lawyer to notify another person in a civil matter that the lawyer reasonably believes that the other's conduct may violate criminal, administrative or disciplinary rules or statutes. The concern about the statement in the question is that mentioning that certain allegations would be put in a publicly filed complaint is an implicit threat to expose criminal acts of the other party if the other party doesn't cooperate, but to refrain from doing so if the other party cooperates. This violates Rule of Professional Conduct 4.5(a) above, and goes beyond Rule 4.5(b) above which states that it is not improper to simply tell someone that it may have been illegal and a crime to do the things that he did. The critical distinction is the implied promise not to disclose these crimes publicly if the other party cooperates by not filing the proposed complaint. Under Rule 4.5, a lawyer can tell someone that certain conduct is probably illegal, and can unilaterally report illegal conduct, but can't hold open the possibility of not reporting illegal conduct to gain a civil advantage. The theory is that it is contrary to public policy for a lawyer to put himself or his client in a position where he is promising to help cover up a crime or other violation of the law. This is controversial, and is not adopted in all states, because it makes some very subtle distinctions that often hinge on strongly implied concepts, and that it provides benefit when applied in many cases to someone who has broken the law, instead of making their violation of the law something that makes them worse off in civil cases as well as in other contexts. There is not a counterpart to Colorado Rule of Professional Conduct 4.5 in the Rules of Professional Conduct of New York State, New Jersey, or Florida. So, to the extent that this conduct is subject to ethical rules in any of these states, it would only be indirectly through, for example, through Rule of Professional Conduct 8.4 in each of these states, which is a general catch all clause prohibiting lawyers from committing culpable crimes or that is dishonest or that is prejudicial to the administration of justice. Rule 8.4 is the counterpart for lawyers of the substantive offense in military justice that a military officer has failed to comport himself as an officer and a gentleman. The history of the decision to remove an express prohibition on threatening prosecution from the ethical rules for lawyers is explained in a 2008 ABA article that also discusses how liability might arise under Rule 8.4. In general, there is nothing wrong with making threats in a negotiation. Often that is precisely what negotiations are about. What is (arguably) wrong is making criminal, administrative or disciplinary charge threats in a civil lawsuit to gain advantage in a civil lawsuit. A prosecutor is perfectly free to make those threats in a criminal case, for example. Similarly, it is perfectly acceptable to make a threat of civil legal action, such as filing a lawsuit, in a civil matter, so long as it doesn't imply a threat to bring criminal, administrative or disciplinary charges if the other side doesn't cooperate. Whether it is proper for an attorney to do this depends heavily upon the state in which this negotiation is taking place, which is not identified in the question.
Do I have any recourse for invalidating all or part of the contract? No. There is a presumption in contract law that when a contract is reduced to writing then what that writing says is what the parties agreed. Also, if you signed it, then you are legally stating: I read it, I understand it and I agree to it - don't sign things you don't understand. If your lawyer has produced something you don't understand then have them redraft it until you do. Would a successful suit against the lawyer for malpractice or negligence make any difference? No. A suit against you lawyer may get you damages from your lawyer but it will not affect the rights of third-parties. What is best practice for avoiding flawed contracts like this in the first place? Read and understand the contract. Educate yourself enough in the law so that you can do this. Your lawyer is there to give you professional advice; you are there to make your own decisions.
Can he/lawyer try to use the payment to me as leverage, for example, offer to give me that payment only if I agree to sign a non-compete or other document? The employer ultimately ought to comply with the written agreements between you two. The employer is not allowed to belatedly impose conditions that alter (to your detriment) the contract(s), let alone when you are no longer his employee. The clause "You will be paid on X and Y when/if they close" does not reflect whatsoever that payment is contingent on your acceptance of a non-compete agreement. Your description does not reflect any legal merits that would justify your employer to further withhold the compensation to which you are entitled pursuant to the deal/sale that got closed. The employer and his lawyer are just being vexatious.
There does seem to be a meme in the UAE of people threatening legal action for negative reviews, as a form of defamation. The police will simply tell them that this is not a crime, go hire a lawyer if you want to sue them. If you block them, perhaps they don't have any other way to contact you (seems that was the point of blocking them), which means that you cannot receive their offer &quot;If you pay us AED 1,000 we will not sue you&quot;, which could be a problem if they win their court case. Still, it is perfectly legal to ignore or block them, up to the point that you are actually served with legal papers. When they actually sue you, &quot;blocking&quot; is irrelevant, they will hire a process server to hand you the legal papers that command you to appear in court.
Are there any underlying reasons behind the nonsensical structure of U.S.C. titles? Is it simply a case of "This is how it's been for awhile, don't fix what isn't broken." or is there more to it than that? First of all, the United States Code is generally not designed to be used by non-lawyers. Second, one of the main ways to research case law interpreting a statute is by doing a boolean search on the code section of that statute. Every time you change a title or section number, you impair the ability of people doing legal research (both judges and lawyers) to find previous case law interpreting the meaning of the statute. Third, you make it much harder to determine when the substance of the provision was originally enacted (e.g. if you want legislative history or to determine which of two conflicting statutory provisions was enacted first) since an annotated statute will often show when the current section was enacted but will not explain what it was derived from. Fourth, the location of a statute within the context of other statutory sections often informs its meaning. Machine gun may have one definition in two or three laws, and a different one in two or three other laws, and there may be yet other laws where machine gun is an undefined term. Moving a statutory section from one part of the code to another could influence the default definition that one uses for an undefined term changing substantive law. Fifth, usually a new codification will also involve some drafting standards, for example, to add gender neutrality or to avoid notoriously ambiguous constructions (like 250 word sentences). But, it isn't at all uncommon for very slight changes like the position of a comma or the formatting of a section with multiple indents, to result in a change of the likely meaning of a somewhat ambiguous statute and it is pretty much impossible to know a priori when a statutory section is ambiguous until you are confronted with a fact pattern that makes the ambiguity in that context clear. This isn't confined to obscure laws of little importance. For example, the question of whether Obamacare applied in states that hadn't set up their own exchanges hinged on these kinds of issues. None of this is to say that you should never recodify the statutes. But, a basically aesthetic motivation that mostly matters to people who make up a tiny portion of the main users of the product (non-lawyers) that poses multiple threats to how statutes will be located using legal research tools, and how it will be interpreted once located, means that reorganizing statutes is not something to be done lightly. In short, there are a lot of serious, substantive costs that can accompany a recodification of a law. As a result, re-codification is most often done only as part of an overall omnibus reform of an area of law on the merits where the interest in being able to track prior interpretive caselaw and determine the original meaning of a statute enacted long ago is at its lowest. Barring the even more ridiculous case of Congress repealing everything and passing the exact same laws again, just under different Titles/Chapters/etc, This is not so ridiculous. Most states have done exactly that one or two times in their history (sometimes more for older states). Also, many newly admitted to the union states also do something similar. For example, the basic template for the statutes in Colorado was the statutes of the state of Illinois. Basically, the first time around, somebody started with an Illinois statute book, eliminated Illinois specific laws and laws that they didn't like, rearranged them and adopted them as the original statutes of the State of Colorado (it may have actually been version 2.0 after a stopgap set of statutes, I don't recall which). Also, most states completely repeal and readopt all of their statutes in codified form on the recommendation of the codifier to a legislative committee, to reflect the acts passed in the previous session, every year. This doesn't involve overhauls really, but in principle is a complete repeal and reenactment. While the federal government has never overhauled the entire U.S. Code in this manner, it has been done at the level of individual titles of the U.S. Code. For example, the most recent major reorganization and overhaul of the structure of the Internal Revenue Code (Title 26) was in 1986. The copyright laws were overhauled in the late 1970s. Both of those accompanied major substantive changes in those areas of law. Another major recodification of many parts of the U.S. Code took place following 9-11 in connection with the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, which reorganized both the bureaucracy and the associated U.S. Code language associated with dozens of federal agencies. would it be possible for Congress to arbitrarily merge, combine, and delete Titles, and to rearrange the location of laws, definitions, etc? Are there laws/regulations governing this? Yes. Congress can do so any time it wants by passing a bill (it would be the longest bill ever - dozens of volumes long) doing so, and getting the President to sign it. The legislative process would be exactly the same as any other bill.
There have been cases in the UK where paying someone's legal bills was interpreted as joining their case. So when A with no money libels someone, and B with deep pockets pays A's lawyer, then B risks being held liable for damages if A gets convicted. So B should be very careful. Just giving you money is probably the safest. But attorney-client privilege is between attorney and client. I have been laid off twice with my company asking me to take an employment lawyer and paying for it. (Interestingly each time the bill was exactly the maximum amount the company was willing to pay :-) It would have been absurd if my company could demand information that is under attorney-client privilege just because they paid the bill. Why did two companies pay the lawyers bill? Because that way they ensure that the separation is without problems. The lawyer explained the settlement contract and what it meant exactly. They also checked that the contract didn’t contain anything unacceptable which the company would have fixed. So if I had tried to sue them later I would have no chance to win (but there was no reason to sue). Another reason not to sue was that the company offered I settlement that was very significantly more than was legally required, but if you sued them you would only get what you got in court - most likely less than you would get without suing. So basically they paid to make sure I would have no reason to sue them later.
I intend to close on the house as I've already signed all the loan paper work, but is there anything that can be done about a Realtor that breaks contract? You have probably waived your claim if you proceed with the deal knowing about the Realtor's conduct. What would your damages be? Could you have mitigated them by not agreeing to the deal? Also second question would it be better to seek a personal or Real estate attorney in such situations as this? Lawyers aren't that specialized. I would not recognize a "personal" attorney as something necessarily different from a "Real estate attorney" and the questions involved are not so complex that a general practice attorney couldn't handle them. Familiarity with real estate issues would be desirable (e.g. you wouldn't want to hire someone whose practice was exclusively as a criminal defense attorney or a personal injury lawyer, or a patent lawyer, for this task), but a great many lawyers who describe their practices differently would have the relevant experience and knowledge.
A text message is just as legally binding as a letter, and the lion's share of the cases have held that a text message from a known sending phone number is equivalent to a signed letter. One would have to carefully parse the exchange of communications to see if they amounted to a binding offer and acceptance, but the fact that it was in a text message, rather than on a piece of paper is irrelevant. Indeed, generally speaking, such an offer and acceptance, if the words exchange show that, could be binding even if made orally, if it could be proved by a preponderance of the evidence. Procedurally, however, once a judgment has been entered, as is the case here, the process of proving that you have complied with a stipulation regarding what is to constitute payment in full may be challenging. I'll leave the question of civil procedure in Connecticut small claims court to someone more knowledgable about it than I am as that could vary a lot from state to state, or even from court to court based upon local practice within the state.