Proving the contents of an item delivered via post I have recently sold an item online of a moderate value (~$5k USD) that now must be delivered to the buyer. Short of personally delivering the item or using a neutral third party, I must rely on a parcel carrier. Let's assume that the method of payment is one that carries a money-back guarantee for the buyer to ensure that the item is delivered. An unscrupulous buyer could easily invoke this guarantee and receive a refund while keeping the item. Perhaps they would claim that a box was delivered which contained nothing but junk weighing the same as the real product. I've spent a while trying to decide how best to protect myself as a seller from this kind of situation. While I ultimately decided that it's a pointless exercise and there will be some measure of risk involved, I'm still curious as to what lengths someone would need to go to in order to prove that they mailed a specific item instead of a bag of rocks. Would we need a continuous video of the item being packaged inside of a shipping facility? Is it impossible to guarantee something like this short of a special lockbox with a one-time use code which is set by the buyer? My question is similar to [this one]How to prove a party received a specific letter? but that question deals with a case where the letter is incidental to the case at hand. My question places the contents of a package as the core argument between two parties.
Bad people are quite uncommon Most people behave in good faith most of the time - don't tie yourself in knots over the very few people who would be unscrupulous enough to try to do this. Burden of proof The person who makes the allegation has the burden of proof on the balance of probabilities. So the person who claims they didn't receive it has to prove that. If there are two equally credible witnesses, one saying they packed and posted the thing and one saying the thing was not packed then the burden has not been met. If the person who packed it has a photo of it packed and addressed then the other person has definitely not met their burden of proof. Insurance Insure it against loss or damage in transit. Then you can just replace it and claim on your insurance.
These all seem to be issues with how the local post office is handling your mail (and no doubt that of others). I would start by asking to see the person in charge of that office, and asking that person the same questions that you asked here. I am not sure that, under US law, the "envelope information" of your mail is protected in the way that the contents are.
You are conflating the crime against the state of possession stolen goods with the common law tort against the owner for conversion. To your questions: How would this proceed? It seems like it would be very difficult to prove (short of getting public surveillance footage) that I even bought the item. If you read the second paragraph of the page you linked it says: In many jurisdictions, if an individual has accepted possession of goods or property and knew they were stolen, then the individual is typically charged ... If the individual did not know the goods were stolen, then the goods are returned to the owner and the individual is not prosecuted. Proof of the crime involves a "beyond reasonable doubt" standard of evidence of both the fact that you have the goods and that you knew they were stolen. If you become aware that they were stolen (e.g. the police tell you) and try to keep them then you have just committed the crime. Proof of the tort requires a "balance of probabilities" standard of evidence that you have the goods and that they belong to someone else; your knowledge that they were stolen is immaterial. In the first instance, the police would probably knock on your door, tell you why they were there and ask if the version of the story they have from the thief is essentially true. What happens next depends on your response: "Yes, I knew it was stolen; you better arrest me and I will plead guilty." This will play out as you expect. "Yes, I didn't know it was stolen, I will go and get it for you." You return the goods, give a statement and may have to act as a witness in the prosecution of the thief. You are down $1,000 but are now older and wiser. "No, I have no idea what you are talking about." Well, you have now committed the crime of hindering a police investigation and have also committed the crime of possessing stolen goods - you can no longer claim that you didn't know the goods were stolen; the police have told you they are. What happens next depends on if the police believe you or the thief. Surely they couldn't/wouldn't get a warrant to search my house? Want to bet? They certainly have enough to get a search warrant if they want one (probably). Whether they seek one probably depends on the value of the goods, how busy they are and how much you pissed them off. Could I be prosecuted if I didn't know it was stolen? Not if you return it as soon as practicable after being made aware that they were. The scam This seems like a lot of work for a very small return - spend your time worrying about things that are more likely to happen. Good Title All of this is tied up with the concept of good title. Basically, you cannot gain good title to property from someone who does not have good title themselves; if you buy goods from a thief you do not own them. For example, if A has good title to the goods, B steals them and sells them to C who sells them to D then A still owns them and can demand their return from D, D could demand the return of their money from C and C could do likewise with B but as far as A is concerned it doesn't matter that C &amp; B have lost money; that is simply too bad for them.
It may be illegal under product labelling regulations that apply to that kind of product (or under a general deceptive trade practices act), but even then, only if you are interpreting the numbers, whose meaning is not clearly spelled out, correctly. But, to be actionable as fraud it must, among other things, be a misrepresentation as to a material fact (which if the goods, such as cordless drills, are not perishable it probably isn't) and the recipient of the misrepresentation must have justifiably relied upon the misrepresentation (which is necessary not true in the case of a representation that it was made in December 2018 on a product sold no later than July of 2018). It is also not entirely clear that this is a "made on" date. It could refer, for example, to the the twelfth batch or lot or shipment of products made in 2018, and not to the month of December, or it could refer to a product made in 2018 at factory number 12. @NateEldredge in the comments also makes the plausible observation that it could be a week number which is a common system in manufacturing which would put it in a more reasonable March 2018 time frame. You probably shouldn't do anything, because you haven't been harmed by this cryptic string of numbers embossed on the product, and even if you were, your damages would not be worth the time or money involved to pursue it as anything other than part of a class action lawsuit.
The courts are never in such a broad position to rule on generic wikileaks evidence. Theoretically, a court could have to rule on the admissibility of a specific document, so in that sense the matter is always dealt with on a case by case basis. There is a &quot;document&quot; that purports to be somehow from Amazon, reporting that a certain grey building with no architectural charm in a nearby village is an Amazon data center. Legally speaking, nobody cares, but let's say that there is some legal reason why it matters whether the claim is true (I stipulate that the document passes the relevance test). The publicly-posted document has no probative value, because anyone can create a file containing the word &quot;Amazon&quot;. It looks like a cleaned-up OCR scan of a printout (hence the complete failure at non-English characters), and lacks any clear indicia of Amazon origin. Thus the party would have to establish that the document is authentic, and there must be a provable chain of custody from the author to the submitted document. Federal Rules of Evidence cover questions of authenticity and contents of admissible evidence in art IX, X. Nothing in rule 901 suggests that such a document would be admissible. Very theoretically, if they happened to also have the original paper document, there might be sufficient forensic evidence to prove that the document is traceably come from the purported source. The wikileaks document per se would still be inadmissible, but the (more) original document could be admissible.
The first thing that has to be done (in court, or via lawyer-to-lawyer communication) is that The Company has to prove that they own the copyright. If they accomplish that, you can defend yourself by providing proof of a license to download and redistribute. From what I can tell, you cannot directly prove that, since the rights-holder did not give you the license. The issue is that a third party cannot impose a license on a work simply by putting it out there with a file that claims to be a license from the artist. So this brings in the Free Music Archive: they presumably have some evidence that the rights holder did indeed grant the alleged license, and may be able to provide proof. Your argument may be credible, in the sense that you had a good-faith belief that the item was so licensed, and the website would provide a basis for concluding that that belief is reasonable. If the work was licensed, then the some rights holder would know that, but not necessarily the current one. Assume the artist made a recording, transferred the rights to Company A, who later sold the rights to Company B who is now coming after you. Artist may have licensed it when it was his, and forgot to tell A. A may have licensed it when they sold the license to B. Artist may have improperly licensed it after he sold the work to A (under the "I wrote it, I have the right to do whatever I want" non-legal theory). A might have improperly licensed the work after selling the right to B (maybe by mistakenly including it in a package deal, i.e. via bookkeeping error, rather than ignorance of the law). Or, they may simply have forgotten. If this is a DMCA takedown notice, the notice-giver could just be abusing the system. But we don't know how you were contacted, so I'll leave DMCA out of this for now.
None You broke your contract with ParcelHero - they could take action against you. You say you sent a passport, which is clearly on the list of prohibited items and this makes it an Undeliverable Consignments. And “Customer shall be liable at all times for any and all Charges incurred by PH in returning, storing or disposing of an Undeliverable Consignment.”
There are vendors providing software to facilitate this sort of task. Avalara is perhaps the best known, but I don't have any experience with it and couldn't say whether it's actually any good or not. But the bottom line is that in a destination-based sourcing regime, sales taxes must be computed based on the address of the destination, not city or ZIP code associated with that address. As Avalara has noted, this is a giant hassle, but it's nonetheless the current state of the law. Of course, this assumes the seller has sufficient nexus with Louisiana to trigger a duty to collect sales taxes in the first place. From the question, it is not clear whether this is true.