Legal principles in refusing to pay advertised reward for return of lost item if it was returned without knowledge of the ad Say person X lost his valuable item and advertised a reward for the return of it. Person Y, who knew X personally, found the item before reading the ad, and returned it to X, who just thanked Y for that. Later Y read the ad and demanded the reward. X refused. Contract Law teaches us that it was perfectly legal for X to refuse as there was no contract. Which legal principles apply here? P.S. It was a question in a test, to which I answered that the principle was past consideration as Y returned the item before reading the ad and so without expecting any reward. However, the tutor did not give any credit for my answer and explained that "X never agreed to pay Y anything. To accept an offer, you must be aware of it.".
The formation of a contract occurs at the point where an offer is made and accepted by a person to whom it was made. The acceptance must be in reliance of the offer - if you don’t know the offer has been made you cannot accept it because you lack the intent to create a legal obligation. The reward for the lost dog is the textbook example. A real example is R v Clarke (1927) 40 CLR 227 in the High Court of Australia.
Absent a specified jurisdiction, I'm going to assume the US state of New York. This conduct falls squarely within the definition of extortion under New York Penal Law section 155.05(2)(e): A person obtains property by extortion when he compels or induces another person to deliver such property to himself or to a third person by means of instilling in him a fear that, if the property is not so delivered, the actor or another will: [...] (iv) Accuse some person of a crime or cause criminal charges to be instituted against him; There is a defense under section 155.15(2): In any prosecution for larceny by extortion committed by instilling in the victim a fear that he or another person would be charged with a crime, it is an affirmative defense that the defendant reasonably believed the threatened charge to be true and that his sole purpose was to compel or induce the victim to take reasonable action to make good the wrong which was the subject of such threatened charge. However, in your hypothetical, the customer is just seeking a payout. This defense is meant for situations like a theft victim telling the thief "give me back my property or I'll call the cops;" unless paying the customer is actually a reasonable action to make up for the crime, the customer can't use this defense. If the crime is a federal one, this is also blackmail under 18 U.S. Code &sect; 873: Whoever, under a threat of informing, or as a consideration for not informing, against any violation of any law of the United States, demands or receives any money or other valuable thing, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both. If interstate communications are involved, 18 U.S. Code &sect; 875(d) can also apply: Whoever, with intent to extort from any person, firm, association, or corporation, any money or other thing of value, transmits in interstate or foreign commerce any communication containing any threat to injure the property or reputation of the addressee or of another or the reputation of a deceased person or any threat to accuse the addressee or any other person of a crime, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.
You're missing some pretty important details in describing the facts of this case. The most important of which is: What were the agreed terms upon which Alice obtained possession of the car prior to paying? Your description says: Alice takes the car and doesn't pay. If that's literally true, then this case is both criminal theft and the tort of conversion — not breach of contract. Since the remainder of your question references a breach of contract, then I have to conclude that the fact as you stated it is not literally correct and there is some important missing detail about the terms upon which Alice was in possession of the car when she crashed it. So, I will have to invent some scenarios that would fit two other facts you describe: The jury awarded Bob $5,000. The jury found Alice to be in breach of contract. The following are the scenarios I can think of that would match the facts (as I understand them and speculated where important details are missing from the question). Maybe this is a small claims court and the damages are capped at $5,000? I never heard of a jury trial in small claims court but I guess it could be possible. Or maybe it was actually a judge and use of the term jury was careless or otherwise inaccurate? Maybe the terms under which Alice was in possession of the car when she crashed it put the parties in position where they effectively shared liability or risk of damage to the car? Like maybe Bob (or both parties) was/were required to carry insurance on the car while Alice was "test driving" it. I only use the term "test driving" as a placeholder for whatever she was doing with the car prior to paying for it which is left unclear by the question. Maybe Bob was found to have contributed to the breach of contract by something he did or didn't do. Similar to the above speculation about insurance. All this would be much easier to analyze if we knew how and under what terms Alice came to possess the car. Maybe there was only $5k of damage done to the car? Or, alternatively, the car was only found to be worth $5k and, for whatever reason (again, which we can not fully analyze given only the partial set of facts presented) the liquidated value of the car was the basis for the damage award and not the contracted price. (Consistent with @jimsug's comment.) I can easily imagine a scenario where Bob and Alice are close friends or family so the entire transaction is handled very loosely and informally and Bob let's Alice drive the vehicle while she is gathering the money to pay him. In this case, the jury might decide Bob shares the liability with Alice since the terms of the sales contract did not transfer the risk of liability to Alice during the time she was driving prior to payment.
You had bought product A. That constitutes you offering the seller a contract for you to get product A for your money. They keep the money and send product B - and now are in breach of the contract, as that is materially different from the contract both agreed to. Legal recourse is, depending on the customer protection laws, a refund of the payments or getting the correct product A. If you have a right for the Product A depends on exactly how it was advertized and the exact ToS.
One possible reading of this clause is: The tenant is required to pay for the preparation of a forfeiture notice, even if ("notwithstanding that") the forfeiture doesn't actually happen ("forfeiture is avoided")--but the tenant doesn't have to pay for the notice if the forfeiture doesn't happen for the following reason ("avoided otherwise than by"): because the court said so ("by relief granted by the court"). In other words: if the Court says the forfeiture notice is bogus, the tenant doesn't have to pay for it. Otherwise, he or she does.
You have read it: legally It doesn’t matter if you haven’t read it in fact. At law, you have. Therefore you cannot avoid obligations or consequences by saying “ I didn’t read it”. It’s an extension of the common law principle that if you affix your ‘mark’ to a document you were acknowledging that you understood it and would abide by it: even if your mark was an X because you were illiterate. There are protections. At common law an unconscionable term is unenforceable and may void the contract entirely. Additionally, many jurisdictions have passed legislation to make unfair contract terms unenforceable, particularly in contracts of adhesion. Further, consumer protection laws often have non-excludable warranties that operate in spite of the contract.
I think the law there is quite clear - you have 14 days to return the goods for a full refund, except for digital content, which you can't return once you started downloading it. That's what it says. The arguments that you try to give were quite obvious to the law makers. I think you can assume they were aware that "digital content does not have a physical form". Now if you purchased, but haven't downloaded or started downloading yet, then obviously you can get your money back. You came up with some theory that this is a "visual vanity item". You can't see it unless you download it. Once you download it, that's it. If you don't download it, you can return it. Let me repeat this: Your fancy analogies mean nothing. There are in the EU laws about being allowed to return goods for a refund. There's the general rule for buying in a store (no right other what the store offers voluntarily), online purchases (some days to return), and online purchases of digital goods (no return once you started downloading). That's the law. Your attempts at redefining the situation are totally pointless. The law says what it says. What you try to redefine doesn't mean one thing. The law clearly distinguishes several situations, and analogies don't count. What happens counts. You bought from a digital item from an online store that needs to be downloaded. And as soon as you start downloading, there is your right to return it gone. And your reasons for wanting to return the goods are completely irrelevant. You don't need any reasons, and having reasons doesn't help you.
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.