Intra-community civil actions in the EU 'A' (in an EU member state) contracts with 'B' (in another member state) who then breaches the contract. Can 'A' sue 'B' under some harmonised community-wide procedure? If not, in which state does 'A' bring his action (if not stated in the contract)?
For the first question, assuming EU legislation being applicable here, EU regulation No 1896/2006 of 12 December 2006 on creating a European order for payment procedure may be relevant, foreseeing a unified procedure for payment claims. On the second one, the answer is likely to be found in EU regulation No 1215/2012 of 12 December 2012 on jurisdiction and the recognition and enforcement of judgments in civil and commercial matters. This regulation has in its Article 4 a general rule (persons domiciled in a Member State shall [..] be sued in the courts of that Member State) but of course also several exceptions to this rule. A relevant exception here is contained in Article 7: In matters relating to a contract, the courts for the place of performance of the obligation in question are competent.
One of the conditions for a contract to be enforceable is that its undertakings must be legal. This would mean that you cannot, contractually, be indemnified for murder - at least, not in any jurisdiction where homicide is illegal.
If you dispute the assertion, yes At this point the company has made an unevidenced assertion. You can either accept that assertion or dispute it. The exact dispute resolution terms will matter if you do dispute it but, notwithstanding, they will all necessitate that each party provide some evidence to support their position. That will either convince the decision maker (you in a negotiation or mediation; someone else in an arbitration or court) or it won’t. In a determinative forum like an arbitration or court since they are relying on the assertion, they have the burden of proving it on the balance of probabilities. In this case, they would have to prove the transformer failed, that it failed because of the weather and that that event falls within the scope of the specific force majeure clause.
Variations of contracts must be consented to by all parties. This means that if the company sent your friend varied terms, it would have included means by which she would have consented - this may be by continuing to use a service. You cannot unilaterally change the terms of a contract. You could try to charge the company PoS terminal storage fees, but it's highly unlikely to be enforceable if they don't agree to it. In theory if they are aware of the change and they accept them in some way then they are bound to the terms just as she would be, even if they later claimed that they were not aware of them. There is some precedent - in Russia - for this with a bank and it made the news some time ago. There's plenty of cases in which people who don't read EULAs or loan contracts thoroughly are still forced to honour their obligations to their creditors under them.
I am not knowledgeable about UK law, but since almost everywhere in the U.S. employment is at-will by default, in all three scenarios Company B is entitled to terminate the employee very easily. The assumption that the employee was accurately found guilty of harassment elsewhere precludes more interesting analyses where matters such as defamation and public policy are involved. If the contract between the employee and Company B establishes that termination will be for good cause, the employee has only a mild chance of not being terminated for what he did in Company A. However, I say "mild chance" because in most cases Company B can reasonably argue that it seeks to protect its other employees and/or customers from the possibility that the employee's misconduct may occur in the current workplace. A very detailed analysis of the factual circumstances might be required for discerning whether Company B's decision to terminate the employee is merited. Additionally, in cases where The Employee is a publicly visible figure and a figure of authority having a management role there could be a concern that the employee's misconduct elsewhere may harm the image of Company B.
Did I lose possession of my goods? That seems unlikely. But enforcing it sounds complicated, at least from the standpoint of substantive law (the Code civil). I am not knowledgeable of French procedural law. The difficulty begins with identifying whether your claim is cognizable as unjust enrichment, or --per your subsequent oral agreement-- breach of contract. You might want to read sections "The French Law of Unjust Enrichment" and "Enrichissement sans Cause" in this post. Please note that the French Civil Code recently underwent significant reforms, whence references of its articles are likely outdated. Here I pointed out one example of statutory renumbering in the Code. In the second link, you will read that originally [...] the action in enrichissement sans cause would not be available to the claimant if he or she had any other cause of action, even if that cause of action was blocked for some reason. [...] [B]ut it is perhaps here that the law has relaxed most in recent cases. Thus, the subtleties of your matter can be decisive for identifying the type of claim that is applicable to your situation. Lastly, according to this treatise (on p.54), "[t]he French legal system does not have the principle of [reasonable] reliance as it exists in the American legal system" (brackets added). That makes it easier for a plaintiff to prove his claims under French law.
"There's no ... contract" - wrong! The emails are the contract, see What is a contract and what is required for them to be valid? If you didn't agree on which laws will apply then that is a matter for the court to determine. In general, they will tend to look at where the bulk of the work was done - since you are being charged I assume the work was done in the UK so probably UK law applies, noting that the UK is actually 3 different jurisdictions (England &amp; Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland). That said, many jurisdictions have non-excludable laws around contracts, particularly consumer contracts that apply irrespective of the substantial law applying to the contract. It is therefore possible that you apply English contract law subject to, for example, Australian Consumer Law. Usually any consumer protection law in the vendor's jurisdiction will also apply. General contract law dictates that where a price was not agreed a reasonable price must be paid. If its reasonable that the editing should have been included in the original price charged then you don't have to pay more but if it isn't then you have to pay a reasonable amount for it. There is generally no requirement for estimates or any other method of determining the price - you just have to do what's reasonable. However, consumer protection law generally imposes more obligations on a business than general contract law. It is likely that your contract is ambiguous - courts will endeavor to fill in any ambiguities to make the contract work. techniques include read in implied terms to give "business efficiency", from custom or business usage (e.g. if particular industries typically deal with particular issues in particular ways), from previous dealings (i.e. what the parties have done in the past), from statutes, whatever works to resolve uncertain, meaningless or ambiguous terms, from the express words used or from the nature of the contract or from the common intention of the parties (i.e. the court might ask you what you meant). "Breach of contract" is a very broad term - it simply means that one of the parties hasn't done what they were required to do and allows the other party to sue for damages.
NO (mostly). Servitude means that the employer, or owner of the indenture, or whatever, can use physical force to make the indentee carry out the work given. If the indentee runs away they can be arrested and forcibly returned. This is distinct from the law of contracts. If Alice agrees to provide labour for Bob and subsequently fails to fulfil the contract then Alice may have to pay damages, but that is all. Even in cases of crminial fraud where Alice never meant to provide the labour in the first place, the penalty is defined by law, and would not be the provision of the contracted labour. As the OP notes, military service is generally an indenture-style contract; desertion is a crime. However the other party in that case is the government acting under law rather than a third party acting in their own self-interest. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights prohibits all forms of servitude.