if all customers always violate a contract, is enforcement legally impossible? Hypothetical case for U.S. law (close to reality but simplified here): A company offers advertising. Customers may get paid by publishing the advertising. The customers presumably want to do this in order to make profits. Some customers may be organized as nonprofit and they're not allowed to make profits, but individuals are not nonprofit and nonprofit organizations presumably want to do this in order to make surpluses. The company does not appear to serve primarily nonprofits. The company requires a contract, which is a contract of adhesion. Ignore that the contract may have been sloppily drafted. Assume the company will defend it as written now. The contract forbids customers from doing anything "commercial". The contract does not explicitly define "commercial" but implicitly relies on one or more legal definitions inferrable from outside of the contract. While it is possible for a customer to enter into the contract and then do nothing so as not to do anything "commercial", the customer would then earn no revenue and therefore no profit or surplus, and such a possibility is therefore a trivial case not considered here. Therefore, while the company is not in violation of the contract, all customers, except nonprofits, are always in violation. The only cure is to cease doing anything with the company. If I, an individual, enter into the contract and I then do something "commercial" in relation to the company, is the company barred from treating me as violating the contract because what I do under the contract is "commercial" when what everyone is doing under the contract is "commercial"? For example, might the bar be due to estoppel? Companies are usually presumed to legally exist in perpetuity, so assume perpetuity for this company. Does it add fuel to the legal fire if enforcing the bar to commercialism against all customers would put the company out of business? In this case, customers would not publish the advertising supplied by the company, no one in the world would act on the advertisements, advertisers would stop advertising through this company, the company would stop receiving any revenue, and the company therefore would have no more profit. Indeed, the company could not pay any obligations still outstanding, and that would force it into bankruptcy. Does that mean the company cannot enforce contractual violations grounded solely on commercialism?
If such a case came to court, the court would presumably rule that merely publishing the advertising could not be considered to be doing something "commercial". (Otherwise the contract would be absurd, as the question points out.) The court would therefore define "commercial" as some act beyond merely displaying the advertising -- perhaps charging for the website on which it is displayed, or using it to sell goods. Moreover, since the company apparently wrote the contract, any ambiguity in it would be construed against the company, if there is another reasonable interpretation. Thus the contract would not be void, and could be sued on, but the company would win only if it established some conduct that the court was prepared to consider as "commercial" in light of the circumstances and the purpose of the contract. By the way it is not really on point, but it is a common misunderstanding that: some customers may be organized as nonprofit and they're not allowed to make profits Nonprofit entities may do business and make income that would be considered "profit" for an ordinary corporation. What they cannot do is distribute that income as "profit" to owners, shareholders, members, or other individuals.
Excluding "ridiculously unacceptable conditions", it is legal to have "non-uniform" contract terms (where a company treats different classes of individuals differently), provided that the basis for distinction is not statutorily prohibited (race, religion, age, sex... depending on jurisdiction). There is a extremely slim chance that apparently legal income-discrimination can be a proxy for another form of illegal discrimination. However, "ridiculously unacceptable conditions" are unlikely to be found to be enforceable, regardless of any demographic properties associated with the condition. E.g. a clause requiring the surrender of a first-born female child would be unenforceable as "unconscionable". The specific circumstances surrounding such a finding by the court can't easily be summarized, since it relies heavily on prior case law, statutes, and legislative declarations. The underlying premise behind using the doctrine of unconsionability in such a case is that the clause in question is not something that a reasonable person would agree to, but they have no power to disagree. In the US, the case Williams v. Walker-Thomas Furniture is the leading case on this view. The clause in question was about a payment plan for furniture and the condition that no furniture could be paid off until all of it was. The consequence of the clause was that all of the furniture could be repossessed if any payment was missed, regardless of how much had already been paid. Various factors went into the court's ruling (that the condition was unenforceable), such as "absence of meaningful choice", "terms which are unreasonably favorable to the other party", :gross inequality of bargaining power". In the circumstance that you allude to, it is not obvious that the courts would follow Williams in making their ruling – it would depend on the extent to which one could reasonable conclude that the customer understood and freely accepted the term. There are upper limits on what a court can enforce, so a contract requiring a party to commit suicide would be utterly unenforceable (in most countries), and a contract requiring a party to break the law would be likewise.
No Such a contract would be an attempt to evade the court order mandating a given level of support, and would not be enforceable. However it is not the case that no contract can deal with Child Custody or Child Support. A couple could surely make a contract to pay more than a court had ordered, that in no way violates the order. A contract could specify a default or initial amount of support, to be paid until and unless a court orders a different amount. Similarly a contract could specify initial custody, pending any court decision to the contrary, but it cannot preclude the court from making an order in accordance with the best interests of the child.
Yes From clause 7 of the Ebay agreement: When you enter into a transaction you create a legally binding contract with another user, unless the item is listed in a category under the Non-binding bid policy. You have a contract, if you don't fulfil your obligations under it you can be sued. You can only terminate a contract a) if the contract provides for termination and the relevant circumstances have happened, or b) due to a breach of a condition (but not a warranty) of the contract by the other party or c) some very limited and highly technical circumstances at law. The fact that the other party is rude doesn't fit within b) or c) and, barring some very unusual contract terms, won't fit in a) either. Make good on your legally enforcable promise.
In Australia a person must have ostensible authority as an agent (agency by estoppel) to bind their corporation. If a person claims the authority and a reasonable person would believe in the circumstances that they have the authority then their actions bind the company. See http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/ca2001172/s769b.html for the law and http://www.mondaq.com/australia/x/386390/Contract+Law/Companies+and+perils+of+ostensible+authority+the+danger+of+paying+money+to+a+third+party+and+not+to+the+creditor for a case. To take your example (and putting aside the fact that the purported contract is probably unenforceable in itself), if a reasonable person would conclude you had the authority (in your capacity as director or senior executive) then it would bind McDonalds; if you were a store manager or burger flipper, it wouldn't.
There are three answers here. First, as is common on this site, you are using the term, "legal" and "illegal." Those are not legally meaningfully terms. A good lawyer won't use those terms to mean allowed or disallowed. We talk in terms of potential civil or criminal liability, or other sanctions and consequences. To say that something is "legal" does not communicate much. Second, all contracts are governed by a duty of good faith. That means that you cannot try to "trick" someone with the terms of the contract and expect to enforce that contract against them and you cannot try to skirt your obligations by finding a tricky form of compliance not within the mutual understanding of the agreement. As with all things, defining good faith is not easy, and depends on the specific context of a situation. It is worth distinguishing between the duty of good faith, and the duties one owes to a fiduciary; good faith is surely far less, but nevertheless still meaningful. Third, a defense to non-performance of a contract is that the agreement as written is unconscionable. A contract that is a grossly unfair deal where the contract was not actively negotiated (i.e. Blindly signing a bad form contract), may fall under this category. Note: I am not your lawyer; this is not legal advice; contact a licensed attorney in your area; do not rely on my statements; I merely am providing a general answer that is academic in nature.
The relevant law is Section 2 of the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890. The elements for contravening it are: the possession of monopoly power in the relevant market; and 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. Google is not an illegal monopoly primarily because its present market position is the result of &quot;a superior product, business acumen, or historic accident.&quot; Whether it is a practical monopoly depends on how you define the market. I'll start by stating that there is no &quot;search engine market&quot; because the users of search engines do not pay for that service. The market that Google is part of is the advertising market. So, having decided that, how does one define the market? If you define it as the market for advertising on search engines then Google has significant market power. However, if you define it as all advertising - search-engine, website adds, Facebook/Twitter etc. feed advertising, print media, television, cinema, radio etc. then, while still a large player, Google is well short of a monopolist. As to your particular questions: Is there a fixed threshold of market share above which you are considered a monopoly (for example, 80%?) No. &quot;Monopolize&quot; is not defined in the act but the courts have held that a business is a monopoly when it can exercise monopoly power, primarily, that it can charge monopolistic prices because consumers lack alternative substitute goods or services. As such, there is no fixed percentage. How is a market delimited? Defining the boundaries of &quot;the market&quot; is a major part of these types of court cases. Modern decisions tend to be sophisticated and are based on answering the question: &quot;If a consumer cannot buy this good or service, what alternative goods and services could they buy to achieve the same objective?&quot; For example, sea freight, road freight and air freight might be a single market or they might be three (or more) different markets depending on what is being transported. For example, sea freight is not a substitute for air freight for highly perishable goods (like radioactive isotopes or fresh fish) and air freight is not a substitute for sea freight for very heavy items (like motor vehicles) but they might be substitute for other things (like smart phones). Can Google elude accusations of being a monopolistic search engine by simply expanding its operations to other fields (automobile, consumer electronics) and define itself as more generic company? No. Monopolies are defined market-by-market, not by how many markets a business operates in. Can a company be legally deemed a monopoly but still not subject to any punishment because it is not using the power derived from this monopoly to influence market fairness? Yes. That is the second element required before the operations become illegal; a monopolist must have either acquired their monopoly power willfully or, once acquired, use it in an illegal way. A &quot;benign&quot; monopoly does not fall foul of anti-trust law but it can still be broken up by legislative action.
In European anti-monopoly law, does that not represent some kind of abuse and monopoly of communications? As a general rule, governments are allowed to award monopolies to individuals or private firms, or to governmental entities, and governmental entities are not, in general, subject to anti-trust liability. For example, governments may nationalize a particular industry, government may authorize a firm that is regulated as a utility to have a monopoly in lieu of using private competition between firms to provide utilities, governments can award patents to inventors which are monopolies, governments can establish a national health service, and so on. Anti-trust law is a create of statute and only prohibits what national governments decide to prohibit by statute, which rarely includes their own activities. In the E.U., this is somewhat complicated by the fact that the E.U., generally speaking, tries to put government contracts from within the E.U. but outside the country offer government contracts on an equal footing. But that does not, in general, prevent the government from nationalizing a good or service and making it an exclusively governmental function. The Postal Service is a governmental entity and/or regulated utility, so this would seem to be proper. In the same vein, across Continental Europe, notaries public have transferrable, non-exclusive license to a particular territory in the country (that can be bought and sold between licensed notaries) and only a small number are allowed in any jurisdiction. Anyone who wants to do business transactions that require notaries must deal with one of them and in low population areas there may well be a monopoly. Anti-trust law is generally directed at preventing unregulated anti-competitive conduct by private firms. Also, as noted in the original question, the use of means other than mail to cancel contracts isn't mandated, it is a choice of the parties in the context of laws that allow for alternatives. And, while the statutes disfavor electronic communications, the statutes do not, as a comment notes, state that contracts may not be terminated by a letter delivered by hand, signed in person and in presence, or delivered by another carrier providing traceability. The government post office means is presumably less expensive than a private courier providing hand delivery, but termination by hand delivery or courier of a signed dead tree paper letter appears to be allowed to cancel a contract without counter-party consent. So, it isn't a true monopoly. In the same vein, the law does not mandate that apartment leases require payment of a security deposit, but the prevailing legal rules create an incentive that makes this practice very widespread.