Are orders to be followed only to the extent practical and doable? If a competent authority issues an order that is (technically or financially or economically or legally) infeasible or absolutely impossible does an organization have to follow it? For example if a party A maintains a document that is requested by order under a law, but the document belongs to party B and is stored in a way only accessible to B following contract or industry standards?
There are two kinds of competent authorities: courts, and government enforcement agencies (tax offices, building inspectors, etc.). A court might order X to do something if Y petitions, but X is notified of the proceeding to which they are a party, and X will (should) object to the petition on the grounds that the petitioned relief is impossible or imposes an extreme burden on them. If, having objected that it is impossible to comply the court still orders you to do the impossible, you have to appeal the ruling. Ultimately the Supreme Court may order you to squeeze blood from a stone, and there is nothing practical that you can do – you must do the impossible, or suffer the consequences. However, courts do not order people to squeeze blood from a stone. A government agency may make such a demand, with minimal opportunity for you to object. Your recourse is very similar to the case where a party petitions the court to order you to do something. A law may exist whereby an agency is authorized to &quot;order&quot; a person to act in a certain way: there may be a requirement for a hearing, or you may have to sue the agency to overrule their demand. It is possible that you can appeal agency-internally that it is impossible, or too burdensome, to comply, or you may have to make that argument in court. It is usually best to persuade the agency that they are asking the impossible, since the courts tend to defer to government agencies that issue orders, unless your case is particularly egregious. &quot;It would be inconvenient for us&quot; is generally not a viable defense. The general rule is, you must follow the law, period.
Not for normal correspondence There are laws that require a specified channel of communication for specific purposes such as a physical address for the service of legal notices, but there is no general requirement. How, or if, a company communicates with its customers about complaints will either be specified in the contract or up to the company to determine and advertise. For example, this site specifies “ will be deemed to have been duly given when received, if personally delivered or sent by certified or registered mail, return receipt requested; when receipt is electronically confirmed, if transmitted by facsimile or e-mail; or the day after it is sent, if sent for next day delivery by recognized overnight delivery service” - any other method of delivery (Whatsapp, Facebook, even their own chatrooms etc.) is not a valid method of service, if you use those methods, then legally, you have not communicated. So, if the company requires complaints to deal with by online chat, they can safely ignore any letter or email you might send them.
Everything is allowed unless the law says it isn’t Common law systems like the USA are ‘exceptions based’ - the law permits everything except what it prohibits. So, your question is backwards - rather than looking for laws that allow it, you need to look for laws that prohibit, restrict or regulate it. There are laws that regulate this but none that prohibit it.
should you tell the third party to sign it using the standards of the U.S.? In most cases signing a contract is not subject to country-specific standards. All that matters is that it can be ascertained from the contract who the parties are as well as and their willful, informed formation of that contract. It is more typical for a contract to specify that it is governed by the laws of country X and/or jurisdiction Y. That places on the counterparty(-ies) the burden of ensuring that they know the legal framework that underlies the contract at issue. Lastly, note that a party entering a contract is &quot;by definition&quot; not a third party. At most, a third party might sign a contract in a witness capacity, not than in the capacity that implicates rights and duties pursuant to that contract.
From point 4: transferring all rights and obligations of Company A to Company B Among those rights and obligations are the rights and obligations arising from Company A's agreement with Employee. Employee is therefore still subject to the agreement, which is enforceable by Company B. If the agreement is carefully drafted, it will make explicit mention of Company A's &quot;successors in interest&quot; or some similar phrase or phrases. Even if there is no mention, the rights and obligations associated with this agreement will transfer (perhaps unless the agreement explicitly provides that they will not, but, let's be realistic, of course it does not so provide).
The executive branch of the US government, or specific parts of it, can demand that a person do particular things, when a statute has authorized such a demand. Such demands are not usually made at the level of the President of the United States, but the president could order a specific official to take such action. For example a National Security Letter orders a person to turn over specific information, and not tell anyone about doing so, as described in this article from The New Yorker. 50 USC 3162 provides that: (a) Generally (1) Any authorized investigative agency may request from any financial agency, financial institution, or holding company, or from any consumer reporting agency, such financial records, other financial information, and consumer reports as may be necessary in order to conduct any authorized law enforcement investigation, counterintelligence inquiry, or security determination. Any authorized investigative agency may also request records maintained by any commercial entity within the United States pertaining to travel by an employee in the executive branch of Government outside the United States. ... (2) Requests may be made under this section where— ... (B) (i) there are reasonable grounds to believe, based on credible information, that the person is, or may be, disclosing classified information in an unauthorized manner to a foreign power or agent of a foreign power; (ii) information the employing agency deems credible indicates the person has incurred excessive indebtedness or has acquired a level of affluence which cannot be explained by other information known to the agency; or (iii) circumstances indicate the person had the capability and opportunity to disclose classified information which is known to have been lost or compromised to a foreign power or an agent of a foreign power. "authorized investigative agency" is defined as: an agency authorized by law or regulation to conduct a counterintelligence investigation or investigations of persons who are proposed for access to classified information to ascertain whether such persons satisfy the criteria for obtaining and retaining access to such information; Accordingn to this ACLU page: In April 2007, the ACLU filed a FOIA request seeking information about the Department of Defense and CIA's use of National Security Letters. After filing a lawsuit, the ACLU received over 500 documents from its request. According to this ACLU page: An ACLU lawsuit revealed that the CIA has also used National Security Letters to demand Americans' personal financial records without prior court approval. The CIA has acknowledged using National Security Letters "on a limited basis" to obtain financial information from U.S. companies. According nto this NY Times article from Jan 13 2007: The C.I.A. has also been issuing what are known as national security letters to gain access to financial records from American companies, though it has done so only rarely, intelligence officials say. There are other circumstances in which an executive branch government official may order a private citizen to take specific action. Indeed, this happens in almost every case of a police arrest, except those done by an arrest warrant (which is a court order). During the Korean War, President Truman issued an order seizing a number of steel mills, to be operated by the government, in order to stop a strike which was, he said, impeding the military effort and thus the security of the United States. This order was challenged in the case of Youngstown Sheet &amp; Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 343 U.S. 579 (1952) and was overturned on the ground that the President was not only not-authorized by any law, but had failed to follow the provisions of a law dealing with situations of the kind at issue. In that case the Court made it clear that such a seizure would have been permitted if done in conformance with a statute, and might have been permitted had no law dealt with such cases.
At this point, since it's been more than four weeks since the order was issued, you are able to enforce the order. The delay is just to allow appeals or corrections. It is up to you to arrange enforcement, so at a high level your choices are to do nothing, or to proceed. If you do nothing then you will not get any money. If you proceed then you will spend more money, which you may or may not get back, as with the original sum. The Scottish procedure is conceptually similar to the English one that is more normally described in online resources, but the words are different. To decode things a bit, You are now trying to proceed with &quot;diligence&quot;, which means enforcing the court order. The court itself is not involved, having moved on to other things. There are several ways the money could come to you, such as &quot;arrestment&quot;, &quot;attachment&quot; and &quot;inhibition&quot;. Or, X might give you the money voluntarily. The next steps must be taken by a &quot;sheriff officer&quot; on your instruction. Despite the name being similar to &quot;sheriff&quot; as in &quot;Sheriff Court&quot;, these officers are private practitioners who are licensed by the courts to pursue debtors. You can use https://smaso.org.uk to find a sheriff officer you like. Most likely you will be able to give them all the information online. Then, they will go ahead with the first step, formally serving a &quot;charge for payment&quot; on X. Then, X has 14 days to come up with the money; if they don't, then the sheriff officer can proceed with more drastic steps. They will be able to advise based on the particular circumstances, but some broad possibilities are &quot;arrestment&quot; of X's money directly from their bank, or &quot;attachment&quot;, which is seizure of X's property to be auctioned off. If X is an employed person (rather than a business, say) then you might also arrange &quot;arrestment of earnings&quot; whereby the employer diverts a sum from X's pay to you, for whatever necessary period of time. All these come with their own rules and timescales, including processes if X's bank or employer does not comply. The sheriff officer will have to be paid for all this. The usual way is that you pay them up-front, and then that fee can be added to the diligence. All officers charge the same rates, but the fee schedule is a bit complicated depending on exactly which services are involved, how long it takes the officer to do the work, and their travel time. It is up to you to make the decisions about how much you want to spend in pursuit of the money, also taking into account the likelihood that you will actually get it. For the sheriff officer, since this is a completely routine part of the job, they will be able to give you their impression of the range of outcomes based on the specifics of X's situation.
The internal organizational documents and practices of the company would determine this in terms of actual authority and would vary from company to company even within the same jurisdiction of organization and entity type. For example, one company might give that authority to the general counsel, another to the corporate secretary, a third to the Vice President for Information Technology, and a fourth to their Chief Innovation Officer, yet another might allow any officer of the company to do so, or might allow any employee of the company to do so. Usually, the more often a company does something and the more routine it is to do that, the lower down in the organization the authority is allocated. Anyone who appeared to have the authority to do so to a reasonably third-party, however, could bind the company even if they didn't actually have the authority to do so.