Can a person be charged above the amount of damages by laws as a fine? Added after edit: Is there any clause in the Constitution of California that prevents a law from attaching fines that are worth more than the actual damage that was caused by violation of the law?Has there been any such cases? _______________________________________________________________________ The jurisdiction is : USA -&gt; California The law used as example is: CCPA The CCPA states that if someone fails to respect a user's privacy rights, the website owner may be charged $7,500 per visitor or violation. Now, let's say a company has 10 million users from California. The website either fails to delete IP logs of the visitors or suffers a data breach. The company only makes $100,000 per month through ads, with operations costs of $10,000 per month. Can the company be given a $7,500 * 10 million = $75 billion dollar fine? Are there any laws that prevent this? In general, can any law just demand any amount from anyone?
Damages are (generally) not constrained by the defendant’s ability to pay The purpose of a fine is to punish the wrongdoer and dissuade others from offending. The purpose of damages is to restore the wronged party to their original position. In recent times, there is a tendency to link fines to corporate profits or revenues but that is generally as a means of increasing the fines rather than limiting them. If a fine or lawsuit bankrupts the defendant then it bankrupts the defendant.
In California, the small claims court has jurisdiction over claims up to $10,000. In order to have personal jurisdiction over him: He must have a summons and complaint hand delivered to him (or to certain other people such as an adult who lives in his household, or to his secretary if he has one). This is called "service of process" and there are professionals called "process servers" who can do this for you in most cities. The service of process can take place anywhere in the world and still be valid. The summons and complaint must be hand delivered by a person over the age of eighteen who is not a party to the lawsuit and is not your attorney. The events that form the basis of the lawsuit must have happened in California, not merely the United States (long arm personal jurisdiction), or he must have the summons and complaint personally hand delivered to him in the State of California (tag jurisdiction). If you win, either by default if he fails to respond by the deadline, or following a trial, you will get a piece of paper called a judgment that legally determines that he owes you $X, which you must then enforce. A judgment can be enforced, for example, by garnishing his bank accounts, garnishing monies due to him from an employer or from a sole proprietorship he operates, seizing tangible personal property that he owns with the assistance of a sheriff, or putting a lien on real estate he owns. A judgment from a California small claims court can only be enforced against assets in California. There is a relatively simple process for having a judgment from California turned into a judgment from any other U.S. state. There is a relatively difficult and expensive process for having a judgment from California turned into a judgment from England that only sometimes works because some aspects of the U.S. civil court system (like punitive damages) are considered to be against public policy in England and are thus not enforceable there. You cannot have someone arrested for failure to pay a civil judgment. Enforcing the judgment is likely to be much more difficult than getting the judgment in your case. It is also possible to make a criminal complaint if the acts genuinely constitute theft. If a prosecutor finds that there is probable cause to back up your claim, the prosecutor could obtain an arrest warrant from the court in the place where the theft took place and that could be served within California when the individual is present in California (i.e., he could be arrested in California, after which the criminal justice process would proceed). Generally, to constitute theft, it must be intentional and must not be a mere breach of an agreement, in which case it is a breach of contract rather than theft. Any theft small enough to be addressed in small claims court would probably not be considered serious enough for the government to request extradition from the U.K. for, a step usually reserved for serious felonies, but if extradiction was sought from the U.K., the process on the U.K. side is described here. Any extradiction request would be handled by the prosecutor's office and law enforcement, in cooperation with federal law enforcement agencies.
No. I'm going to assume we're talking about the US, where being convicted of a crime requires proof "beyond a reasonable doubt." Thus, our hypothetical friend has NOT committed murder. Nor has he committed manslaughter (as this too requires that somebody die) or attempted murder or manslaughter (as that requires an intent that the person should die). If it could be proven that the person our hypothetical scumbag ran over died as a result of being run over, our hypothetical scumbag would likely have committed negligent homicide or involuntary manslaughter; however, as these imply a lack of intent, they lack "attempted" versions (see People v. Hernandez, http://law.justia.com/cases/colorado/court-of-appeals/1980/76-813.html though state laws differ and some may be weird). In short, he has not committed any flavor of murder or manslaughter. So, what other enterprising charge or legal proceeding might we be able to level against him? I'm sure one exists. I'll edit it in once I find it. Civil suit for wrongful death Normally, our hypothetical scumbag would find himself on the receiving end of a wrongful death lawsuit. This would require that he (1) owed the dead man a duty of care (which he clearly did; all motorists are obliged to exhibit reasonable care in operating their motor vehicles) and that he (2) breached that duty (which he presumably did), but also that (3) this failure caused the death of the guy he ran over (which you have stipulated that we cannot "even guess," which precludes a "preponderance of the evidence" (the standard for civil matters)) and that (4) that person's death has caused actual, quantifiable damages to the plaintiff (which it can't as "nobody knows him"). Reckless driving charge In most states, our hypothetical scumbag's behavior meets the threshold for reckless driving. For example, in VA law: [In reckless driving cases, e]ither the driver is believed to have driven recklessly in a manner that threatened people or property, to have driven 20 miles per hour or more in excess of the speed limit, or to have exceeded 80 miles per hour, no matter the speed limit. http://manassascriminalattorney.com/2015/10/can-reckless-driving-in-virginia-be-a-felony-charge/ In some states, this may be felony reckless driving; in others, it may be a mere misdemeanor. Misc links https://www.virginia-criminallawyer.com/homicide-laws-virginia-code.html http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/proving-wrongful-death-civil-case.html A forum discussion that (thank heaven) cited its sources: http://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=155412
Bankruptcy does not obliterate legal financial obligations (taxes that you owe, fines, etc.). Fines either do or do not (any more) accrue interest, depending on jurisdiction. Fines for criminal conviction can accrue interest. By law, no fine can be unreasonable, but there is no simple determination of what is reasonable versus unreasonable. The matter reduces to whether the penalty would be grossly disproportionate to the gravity of the offense. Federal law suggests a upper-ballpark of $250,000 for an individual felony or $5,000 for an infraction, but there is no actual upper limit, for example a crime resulting in pecuniary gain may receive a fine of twice that gain, so fines can be in the hundreds of billions of dollars. The government can seize property including wages in order to satisfy a legal financial obligation. However, you can not be imprisoned because of an unpaid fine, although you can be imprisoned for willfully not paying a fine when ordered to do so (there is no legal clarity as to what constitutes "willful" non-payment). As noted in this article, seemingly small fines can balloon to large sums (they cite an example of a 4-fold increase in initial fine owing to interest and similar increases.
If you commit a robbery but then return the money, can you be prosecuted? Yes. Similarly, if you breach copyright and then stop, can you be prosecuted? Yes, however, you will probably not be because: Your offence may not have been noticed by the copyright holder, and/or The damages they would get are probably not worth the effort.
There is no provision allowing monopolization "for the good of the consumer", regardless of your standards for judging that. The law simply says Every contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, is declared to be illegal. It is not clear what actually counts as a violation is the law: it's not the fact of being the only game in town, per se, it's what you do that might bring that about, it's doing so through improper means. The Dept. of Justice, which may prosecute a case, has guidance on what the law could mean, in particular, the willful acquisition or maintenance of that power as distinguished from growth or development as a consequence of a superior product, business acumen, or historic accident As you describe it, this is a clear violation of the law. "Noble intentions" is not a valid defense to prosecution. However, prosecution is discretionary, so a favorable government could reach an agreement to not prosecute, as was the case with AT&amp;T (before WWI, not the breakup). Further however, under 15 USC 15c a state attorney general can also bring a civil suit against a monopolizer, so you'd have to get a lot of agreement to not take legal action.
The website owner brings in an expert programmer who testifies that the user cannot have gotten to a certain part of the site (or download, etc.) without having clicked to accept the terms of service, and that this document they're holding is a true and correct copy of the terms of service as of that date. That's evidence in favor of the site, and an adverse party has to have stronger evidence in order to overcome it. If the person didn't save a copy of the terms themselves, they'll have a hard time on this. Then the other party's attorney tries to discredit the programmer by asking questions like "how do you know there are no bugs in the software which could have allowed somebody to reach this without agreeing to the terms of service" etc. Apparently, some sites don't require users to click indicating agreement. If the company has significantly changed the site, terms of service, etc. since the time the user registered, and doesn't keep any copies of old versions around, and admits this, they'll have a hard time enforcing an agreement (as they can't produce a copy of it). If the user kept a copy, the user might be able to present that. It's up to the finder of fact to decide what to believe and how much weight to give the various witnesses' testimony.
In contract law in the United States, this is a "liquidated damages" clause. It provides that when one side breaches the contract, it has to pay a certain amount of money to make up for it. Normally this is done where it is difficult to calculate the actual damages in the event of a breach, or where the parties would rather avoid calculating the actual damages--a common example is where you put in an earnest money deposit on a house and then forfeit the earnest money if you do not buy. However, there are restrictions on what kind of damages are permitted. Notably, a "penalty" usually refers to an unreasonable amount that is unenforceable as against public policy. It would ordinarily be unreasonable to make someone pay a hundred million dollar penalty for breaking a ten thousand dollar contract, for example. Liquidated damages clauses frequently say "this is not a penalty" and "the parties agree this is reasonable" to make it harder to invalidate them on public policy grounds. Instead, if the liquidated damage payment is a payment meant to reflect actual damages that are just hard to calculate, it is much more likely to be enforceable. You would need to research liquidated damages and penalties in the state whose law governs the contract to determine whether the particular clause is permissible under state law. See https://www.google.com/search?q=restatement+of+contracts+penalty&amp;ie=utf-8&amp;oe=utf-8