Can a company officially decide to break the law since the penalty for breaking it is cheaper than following it? For example imagine a company in Washington that needs a temporary building for its workers to live in during the summer. Instead of bothering with permits, they rapidly construct a dormitory for their employees which is a violation punishable for up to $500/day. They keep the building up for 3 months and then pay a $45k penalty to the state government. For their purposes this is cheaper than getting those employees hotel rooms or waiting for the permits to arrive. Is there any issue with the company’s management officially deciding to ignore the permit system and just pay the fine? Or in other words, can they be charged with anything besides the known $45k penalty for openly deciding to break the law? In more general terms, I’m trying to understand if the concept of “treat fines as a convenience fee” applies to businesses as well. I.e. it is commonly said that smoking in hotels is allowed, you just have to pay a $250 fee to do it.
Yes, but there is a risk If a company persistently violates the law, the regulator can go to court to get an injunction for them and their agents to stop. If they don’t they are now in contempt of court and the fines for that are much steeper. Also, the people in contempt can be jailed until the contempt stops.
That's the entire point of a summary proceeding. You're allegedly found committing an offence, that isn't worth the court's time to hear but nevertheless requires some penalty. The only way to "unambiguously deny liability" is by requesting a hearing and denying liability in the notice of this. The court doesn't care what you say to everybody else, it cares what you say on its record. The reasoning is, if you're so sure you're not guilty of an offence, why haven't you sought to argue this in court? And if you weren't committing the offence, why did the informant serve the infringement notice in the first place? The act is not silent at all on this. If you don't request the hearing and serve such notice by the date required, you are liable to enforcement action - whether you deny liability out of court is irrelevant.
What do you mean by "a public building"? Just because a place is owned by the public, doesn't mean anyone can go there any time they wish. Military bases, firehouses, and jails are owned by the public, but many of these have limited access to the public. It may be open to the general public, but that does not mean restrictions cannot be put into place, either on times, or activities, or individuals. For example, public parks often have time and activity restrictions; schools have the power to restrict individuals from their premises, either specifically or by general category. As a general point of law, the owner of any property, or their agent, can order anyone without the right to stay (e.g. not a co-owner or tenant), and that person must depart, otherwise that person is tresspassing. Assuming that the Senior Center is owned by the town, it is probable that the Administrator is empowered to act as the town's agent in this matter. Now, since this "No Trespass order" is specifically directed at you, there is a reason behind it. It may be something you've done. It may be that complaints have been received about your behavior. It may be an actual abuse by someone who doesn't like you. We have no way of knowing. It the order itself doesn't give you a hint as to why, you can ask the town administrator for the reason. As for being against your rights, there is nothing inherently illegal about this situation(that is, an agent of a property owner exercising the latter's right to prohibit an individual from said property), but some of the details, especially why it was specifically applied to you as an individual might be a civil rights violation.
You would report unpermitted lock replacement to the home owner. The building code regulates new construction and renovations, and is not a requirement of any and all residences. This seems to correspond to a "secondary suite", which is supposed to be registered with the city (if it is allowed in your city). Here is a link for Vancouver, for instance. Such suites are supposed to be registered and inspected, the inspection being carried out by Development, Building and Licencing: By-Law Compliance &amp; Administration (a division of the city government). This article discusses some of the legal problems that can arise from an illegal secondary suite, however the penalties would land on the property owner, and he may not have approved of this subletting or the basement suite. A less-nuclear first step would therefore be reporting it to the property owner.
Landlord-tenant law is an area that is heavily statute-based, jurisdiction-dependent, and far from uniform across the country. A complex, specific, multi-part question like this one is not going to get a simple answer. In general, though, I can clear up some of the confusion with a quick example. Let's say you abandon your lease, but as you do so, you write a letter to the landlord saying: "While I won't be living there any more, my friend's band needs a place to practice. They have agreed to pay half my rent if you let them play there 4 nights a week. They'll be starting on Tuesday at 11 PM: please have a set of keys waiting for them at the front desk." The landlord does not give your friends the keys. They re-key and clean the apartment and rent it two months later. Are you going to stand up in court and argue, with a straight face, that you should only be liable for half the rent for those two months because of the landlord's "failure to mitigate"? Again, jurisdictions differ, but the duty to mitigate is not absolute. If the landlord could rent out a $1,000/month apartment for $5 a month, it doesn't have to do that, and you can't make the Court take $5 a month off their damages if they refuse to do so. Also, you seem to be confused about what subleasing is. A sublessor owes duties to you; you still owe the duty to your landlord to get the rent paid. A sublease is an agreement between you and a third party to pay you rent. It does not affect your relationship with the landlord at all, unless it's a breach of your agreement with the landlord or of local law protecting the landlord from unauthorized subleasing.
Lying in itself ("of course you will get a wifi signal here") is not a crime. However, if you have proof that the lies were intended to benefit your landlord at your expense ("You won't sign the lease unless there's wifi? No problem") and that they actually did so ("You've signed the lease, it's too late to back out"), he may be guilty of fraud, which is a civil wrong and may be a crime. You would be well advised to consult a lawyer before going amy further, since there are probably ten people believing themselves to be victims of fraud for every one who actually is so in legal terms. The lawyer will also probably tell you that the best you can hope for is restoration to the state before the lies (in my example, the lease is cancelled and you get your deposit back), though the authorities will look at prosecuting the landlord.
Technically the signage implied an agreement, and allowed you to infer one. But yes, I think that management could not legally insist on more than the posted price, whether for a lost ticket, or for a particular duration. (Unless the sign included "prices subject to change without notice" or something of the sort.) As a practical matter, challenge this is going to be a pain. The employees on the spot probably have no authority to vary the price merely because the amount programmed into the register differs from the posted sign. At least they will claim not to have such authority. And they won't release the car without being paid the $80 that they will insist is the proper price. To challenge this, a person would probably have to pay under protest, and then sue for a refund, I would hope in a small claims court. Most people will not go to that trouble for $10, which perhaps the management counts on. Publicity might be more effective.
I cannot recall an example where a breach of such guidance in-and-of-itself is an offence: it's when the underlying legislation is contravened that one is committed. Note that the cited article say this: this guidance is of a general nature. Employers should consider the specific conditions of each individual place of work and comply with all applicable legislation and regulations, including the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974. This guidance does not supersede existing legislation or regulations across the UK More broadly, and away from the NHS, the relationship between guidance and statute was examined in The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) v Arch Insurance (UK) Ltd &amp; Ors [2020] EWHC 2448 (Comm) where adherence to social distancing measures impacted on safe working practices on building sites, causing delays and an increase in costs. The court determined that: It follows that government advice or recommendations, whether before or after either set of Regulations came into effect, cannot have imposed or ordered a denial of access or a hindrance in access, however strongly worded the advice or recommendations were, since they did not have the force of law.