Are dropservice suppliers liable for any damages to customers? I wanted to ask a question about the dropservice business model. We have 3 figures, the customer, the supplier and us. Dropservice is a business model in which we can have services delivered to our customers by outside suppliers (such as freelancers) If the supplier causes harm to the customer (such as in the case of unsavory advertising campaigns) who is responsible? Since he was the one who provided the service, he should be responsible for anything he causes to the customer. How can we wash our hands of all the mistakes the provider can do to our customers?
it depends There's Alice, who wants some service. There's Bob, who offers it. And there's C-Corp, which offers to connect people that seek service with those that offer it. The liability of C-Corp depends on many factors. Some that came up: Is Bob's service needing a license of sorts? C-Corp might be liable if they were warned that Bob lacks such or C-Corp represented that Bob had the license but did not. Is C-Corp getting a fee for referral/payment services only or do they manage or contract with Bob in some way or another? If C-Corp manages Bob or has a work contract with them, they might be akin to a Builder that hires various contractors and who is liable to the buyer of the building and to whom the contractors owe liability for their work. If they just provide the connecting and payment service, that's not as easy, but they still might be liable to some degree. What does the contract say? If they only provide a listing service like LinkedIn and specifically disclaim and point out that all listings are the contractor's making, they might be totally immune and have no liability.
One analysis is in Bow Cycle &amp; Motor Co. Ltd. v. Murray, 2006 ABPC 366, by Judge O'Ferrall (now Justice of the Court of Appeal of Alberta). The defendant sat on a motorcycle, positioned it fully upright, and when he returned the motorcycle to rest on the kickstand, the bike crashed to the floor. There were three potential paths to liabilty argued, none successfully: negligence (for example, if the defendant had repositioned the kickstand at any point—there was no evidence of this) trespass to goods (but this would have required intentional or negligent treatment of the good) contract (which would have required a clear &quot;you break it, you buy it&quot; policy with express statement that the customer would be liable even for non-negligent damage—there wasn't) Context mattered. Liability might be made more strict more easily in a china shop. The judge wrote: in the end, this case must turn on the presence or absence of negligence because, at least in the circumstances of a motorcycle shop, a “break it, you buy it” arrangement would have required an element of fault on the part of the breaker, absent a very clearly communicated term that the customer pays irrespective of negligence. There being no such term and negligence having not been proven, I find the Defendant not liable. In so doing, I considered the china shop analogy. It may be that in a china shop one could infer that the customer pays for broken items irrespective of fault because there is no need to touch the item in order to make the purchase decision. But in order to make an informed purchase of a motorcycle, the purchaser must try it on for size and the fact that he must do so makes it much more difficult to infer a no-fault promise to pay for damage howsoever caused.
Can you be liable for damages? Under Tort Law, yes. Let's assume someone developed a virus based on your code. The virus caused millions of dollars of damage. The plaintiff (software vendor) can argue that: You have a Duty of Care to avoid acts or omissions which you can reasonably foresee are likely to injure your neighbor Donoghue v. Stevenson (1932) (UK) The concept of Duty of Care is also found in U.S. law, for example in MacPerson v. Buick Motor Co. (1916), which established that negligence does not require a contract. Breach of Duty: A reasonable person can foresee that the "proof of concept" can cause harm. The act of releasing code, therefore, falls short of the expected standard. If you are a IT professional, it is going to be difficult to defend this point. There is a causation relationship between your code release and the resulted damage. You are liable for negligence. Damage: It is likely that users will sue the software vendor for their loses. The software vendor will then sue you, since because of you, the software vendor has to compensate to its customers. This, of course, depends on what exactly did you release to the public. For example, if significant effort is needed to convert your "proof of concept" to an actual exploit, and you have provided a workaround to avoid this vulnerability, you may defend yourself by arguing that the cause and effect linkage is too remote. So I must keep the report private? What if the software is open source? Not really. You should take reasonable measure to ensure that your "proof of concept" is not an actual exploit, and a hacker needs considerable time to develop a functioning malicious software. CVE is a platform where vulnerabilities are publicly shared. What if you have given the vendor reasonable time to fix the vulnerability? It does not matter (to you) if time has been given for the vendor to fix the vulnerability. It does matter for the vendor, because if something happens later, the vendor is liable for knowing the problem well in advance and have not allocated the appropriate resources to correct the problem. To demonstrate a vulnerability exist does not require instruction of how to utilize this vulnerability. For example you can record a video showing the effects of the hack. Here (Wayback Machine; original link is dead) is an interesting read about Motorola taking matters into their own hands after they discovered a vulnerability on the Xerox CP-V system and Xerox did not patch the problem.
In Austria they have a law about &quot;Kreditschädigung&quot; (website from the Austrian government, &quot;credit damage&quot;) translated by Google as: Because of credit damage, a person is liable to prosecution if he or she asserts incorrect facts and thereby harms or endangers the credit, the acquisition or professional advancement of another person. A prison sentence of up to six months or a fine of up to 360 daily rates is provided for the offense of credit damage. If you setup a webpage which lists things which might harm somebody's business, you have to proof that every single claim you make is correct (not just your individual experience). So if you have solid proof for each of your claims of your Q&amp;A, you might win a probable law suite. The way you wrote it, it might be difficult to proof because it seems to be your personal experience. See also here for details. (in German).
You claim for the damage you suffered If you owe me $130 for unpaid wages, I sue for $130. If you wrote off my $130,000 car I sue for $130,000. If you burnt down my $130 million building, I sue for $130 million. If you did (in my estimate) $1.3 billion damage to my reputation I sue for $1.3 billion. Of course, I will have to prove that the damage was suffered - some damages are easier to prove than others. Whether the defendant can pay it is irrelevant to the suit. Of course, if there is a judgement that is more than the defendant’s net worth then any excess is “wasted”. At least commercially. However, commercial return is only one factor involved in deciding to launch a suit. Others include: seeking a precedent making a statement of principle vengeance
The question is a little confusing because it’s unclear why any of the payments should be refunded. If A has not provided the services, and B wants a refund, then B can sue A for breach of contract. A assigned its right to be paid to C, but it cannot assign its obligations to C (this would be a novation rather than an assignment, which would require both B and C’s consent). If C also agreed with A to perform A’s obligations to B (a subcontract), then A could sue C for any damages A was liable to pay B, but B cannot sue C directly. If A regrets its decision to assign the contract for £1, and wants to recover larger payments made by B to C in discharge of B’s contractual obligations to A, it can’t. A shouldn’t have assigned the benefit of the contract to C. If B has not paid, B can be sued under the contract which still exists between A and B. C can file this claim as assignee of the contract. While A could also potentially file the claim, it would be inconsistent with the assignment for A to receive any benefit from it, which would be held on constructive trust for C.
It would be terribly risky for you to simply link another company's terms of service. What if they take their server down? What if they change their terms? You would not even know when exactly the changes were made. Copying their terms means you might run into copyright issues on the text. Either pay a lawyer to write your ToS for you, or see if you can find something in the public domain.
When a platform has the right to kick you out as they deem fit, without any evidence why they did it, does that change if you have a paid? It depends on the purpose of payment and the terms &amp; conditions it triggers. Your description reflects that payment entitles the user to have no ads &quot;and stuff&quot; (?). Payment does not necessarily entitle the user to continued access, diligence from customer service, or other features. Without fully knowing the platform's terms &amp; conditions regarding payment it is impossible to identify what obligations (other than not displaying advertisements) your payment creates on the platform. The information you provide here is insufficient for assessing whether you have a viable claim such as fraud or breach of contract. On the other hand, the platform's apparent arbitrariness and lack of response might support a finding of unfair or deceptive practices if the platform does not honor or proportionally reimburse your payment. Many jurisdictions have legislation prohibiting practices which are unfair, deceptive, or unconscionable (example: MCL 445.903). Oftentimes statutory law establishes an agency in charge of addressing customers' complaints.