Free, conditional permission/service: contract or not? This can be seen as another &quot;is a free licence a contract?&quot; question (inspired by this and this), but it focuses on the very basics of the underlying relation between parties. Alice and Bob do not know each other but sit on adjacent seats on a plane flying internationally. The flight attendant hands over immigration/customs cards. Alice digs out her pen and fills in her form. Bob carries on with his meal in not so tidy way: his hands clearly become fat smeared. Alice finishes with her form, and Bob finishes with his meal. Now Bob wants to fill in his form but he hasn't got a pen. He asks Alice to borrow hers. Alice doesn't want her pen to be held by Bob's fatty hands but she doesn't want to appear rude either. She says that she will let him use her pen provided that he first goes to the lavatory and washes his hands with soap. Setting aside the apparent absence of intention to create legal relations, and the obvious de minimis, does this situation otherwise satisfy the legal requirements for a contract? Is the act that Bob washes his hands valid consideration on his side? If the answer to the above is Yes, is there any line dividing contract and mere permission to use things subject to certain conditions? Answers for any jurisdictions are welcome, though mostly interested in common law ones.
Consideration Consideration is essential on both sides of every simple common law contract (civil law is different). It is the quid pro quo or "something for something" that is the essence of a contract - it's what turns an unenforcable agreement into a contract. A formal contract supported by a deed does not need consideration. The rules of consideration are that it: must move from the promisee, but need not move to the promissor. For example, you promising me to wash someone else's car is good consideration. may be 'executed' (something for something now) or 'executory' (something for something in the future) but it cannot be 'past' (something that has already occurred before the contract came into existence - noting that that exact moment might be somewhat nebulous). need not be adequate. If I agree to sell you my home for $1 this is clearly not adequate (in most circumstances) but the $1 is good consideration. must be sufficient. This is not the same as adequate. Insufficient consideration falls under the following headings performance of a duty imposed by law performance of a duty already imposed by another contract moral obligations uncertain or indefinite promises. Possible to perform - both legally and practically. What is promised does not need to have intrinsic value and can be a promise to do something or to refrain from doing something. Condition "Condition" has several meanings in contract law. Condition of a Contract A condition in a contract is an essential term the breach of which entitles the innocent party to either: affirm the contract and sue for damages, or treat itself as no longer under an obligation to perform the contract - but rights which had accrued up until that time continue. A term that is not a condition is a warranty. Breach of a warranty allows suing for damages but does not allow the innocent party to escape their obligations. Whether a term is a condition or a warranty depends on how essential it is - if it was so essential that the innocent party would not have entered the contract without it, it's a condition. The egregiousness of the breach can affect this as well - a term requiring payment on the 1st of each month is likely to be a warranty if payments are consistently made on the 3rd but a condition if they are constantly 2 months late. Condition Precedent A condition precedent is one which must be satisfied before a contract becomes binding. A condition precedent to the formation or existence of a contract. There are no enforcable rights on either party until the condition is fulfilled. Usually, this condition depends on a third-party. For example, an offer to buy real estate "subject to finance" is not a contract if the finance is not forthcoming. A condition which is precedent (a pre-requisite) to the obligation of a party to perform its part of the contract. For example, a requirement that delivery must be before 9.00 am on Wednesday or there is no binding contract. This can alternatively be thought of as the parties providing within the contract a mechanism for its discharge. Condition Subsequent Is a condition terminating the contract (either automatically or on the election of one of the parties) when it occurs. For example, a contract for the supply of iron ore while the price is above $X/ton - if the price drops lower the contract ends. Other uses Outside of contract law, the word "condition" is used a lot; most usually in its common English construction of "If [condition] then [consequence]". For example, "if I put the basketball through the hoop, my team gets 2 (or 3 or 1) points" - that's a condition of getting the points but it's not a contractual obligation. Bob and Alice Bob washing his hands It moves from Bob - that is, Bob has to do something. It doesn't move to Alice (apart from her not having to sensorily experience Bob's greasy fat-smeared hands anymore). It is executory - Bob may have washed his hands in the past (we can hope) but this particular contract requires him to wash them in the future. It doesn't have to be adequate although in the context of this contract it probably is anyway. It is sufficient - Bob is under no legal or moral obligation to wash his hands. It's possible to perform - it is neither illegal nor physically impossible for Bob to wash his hands. Alice lending the pen It moves from Alice and it this case, to Bob. It is executory - Alice will lend the pen in the future. It doesn't have to be adequate although in the context of this contract it probably is anyway. It is sufficient - Alice is under no legal or moral obligation to lend Bob her pen. It's possible to perform - it is neither illegal nor physically impossible for Alice to lend the pen. Bob washing his hands is also a condition of the contract - if Bob does not wash his hands, Alice can either affirm the contract and sue for (admittedly small) damages or terminate the contract and keep whatever benefits she has accrued (none). And, it's a condition subsequent, until Bob washes his hands, Alice has no obligations under the contract.
Am I correct in arguing that the LHD never really had implied consent to begin with? In other words, does the failure to honour the express refusal inform us about the legitimacy of prior claims of implied consent? No. They had implied consent and had not intent at the outset to dishonor it. They have violated the patient's privacy right when consent was expressly withdrawn, and they discovered that they cannot easily comply and therefore did not comply. The fact that they have made it expensive for themselves to comply with their legal obligations going forward does not imply that they lacked implied consent at the outset, so they should have no liability for the time period from when the training materials started to be used until the time when implied consent ended. They are only responsible going forward for their failure to honor the patient's wishes. It is not at all exceptional for a legal obligation to turn out to be more difficult to comply with when it arises than was anticipated when the systems that make the legal obligation difficult to comply with were implemented. Health care companies aren't expected to be prophets who can foresee the complex confluence of factors that has painted them in a corner, particularly when a situation has never come up before the current one. It is likely that no one person was ever even simultaneously aware of all the facts necessary to know that this could happen. Someone in the IT department will often not be intimately familiar with what is going on in the training part of the operation and what the privacy rules that apply are and even if someone was, that someone may have been in no position to do anything about it at the time. Health care providers aren't supposed to be evaluated with 20-20 hindsight. Given that they almost surely did not and could not easily have known that they had made a future express withdrawal of consent very difficult to effectuate, scienter can't be attributed to it. And, honestly, they are in more than enough trouble simply trying to deal with the problem post-express withdrawal of consent when they did start to violate privacy laws.
Are my assumptions correct? Yes, this is precisely the sort of thing that would fall under the purview of "the purposes of the legitimate interests pursued by the controller or by a third party", as it fundamentally enables you to deliver the service to the data subject, and its also difficult to argue that "such interests are overridden by the interests or fundamental rights and freedoms of the data subject" given its a fundamental part of delivering the service before any consent can be given. Its not the intention of the GDPR to solely require a direct relationship between the data controller and data subject, its intention is to allow the data subject to control more of the relationship than they did previously - in some cases, that control remains with the data controller, which is why not all of the lawful basis for processing rest on consent. So long as you ensure that the CDN provider has a relevant privacy policy and is identified as a data processor in your privacy and data policy then you are good to go. In my mind, this is similar to the issue of how the data subjects packets get to you from their computer - we aren't including all of the network providers who carry the packets between the data subject and the processor (despite the fact that those providers will have access to much of the same information as the CDN, such as IP address, source, destination etc), even though in many cases we don't know that information (for example which route it will take over the internet). The only difference here is that as the data controller, you know about the CDN and can include it in your policies, so you should.
In general, you cannot contract to do anything illegal. However, ... An argument could be made that permission has been granted to, for example, enter property and remove the item. If permission has been granted, entering property and taking an item is not a crime.
Permission is not a physical thing that disappears when a piece of paper evidencing that permission is lost or handed to another party. When someone gives you permission as part of an agreement having the necessary characteristics of a contract, then the revocation of that permission is governed by the terms of the contract itself and your jurisdiction's contract-law. You may not need any permission to use the photos you paid to have taken. (For example, in the U.S. if they were taken in a public place and you are not displaying them for profit.) Or, you might need permission due to various rules or laws protecting minors – only an IP lawyer familiar with your jurisdiction can confirm this is the case – and, unless it was drafted by a competent lawyer, it is quite possible that your "permission statement" was legally insufficient or defective. Or, you might have legally secured necessary permission and still have that permission even though you handed the "permission statement" back to the parents of the subject. In practice: Only a lawyer in your jurisdiction can offer an opinion on which of these scenarios is in fact the case. And only via litigation can you establish further confidence that legal opinion is correct.
Working a mobile car cleaner now, my manager asked me to take some pictures before cleaning and after clearing, privacy issue of the car owner California law creates an expectation of consent for taking photographs of people for purposes of commercial distribution of the image to the public. California Civil Code § 3344. But, absent copyright or design patent issues (which would only very rarely come up since most people don't own the copyrights or patents to the designs of their cars, and the owner of the copyrights generally grants an implied license for the owners of the cars to display the copyrighted or patented designs), there is no parallel requirement of consent for taking photographs of things. Furthermore there is no common law expectation of privacy in anything that someone you do business with must necessarily see with their own eyes. So, if you must see the car to clean it, then taking photographs before and after the work is done does not violate any expectation of privacy to which the customer has not implicitly consented and does not violate any California or federal statute. Better practice would be for the business to explicitly have the customers consent in writing to the photographs, to remove all doubt. But the implied consent to having someone see your car when they are cleaning it would be unreasonable to deny in almost all circumstances. A company might voluntarily have an agreement to keep any photographs taken confidential and to have its employees sign non-disclosure agreements not to reveal what they see while working. If it did, this would create a legally enforceable expectation of privacy for the customer. For some VIP clients, this contractually enforceable discretion might be something that would induce them to pay a higher price for the same services. But those kind of protections are not the default standards of law that apply in the absence of an agreement. And, even then, taking photographs for purposes of internal use only would probably not violate an agreement of this kind. The work still requires that people inside the business, including remote supervisors, be able to see the cars to do their work.
The &quot;contract&quot; (sometimes called a charitable pledge or a pledge to make a donation) is not enforceable under contact law because there is no consideration. From a contract law perspective, it isn't really a contract at all. This fact pattern is literally the &quot;standard&quot; example of a &quot;contract&quot; that is unenforceable for lack of consideration. The promises made in the charitable pledge might be enforceable under an equitable doctrine called promissory estoppel, if someone detrimentally relies upon the promise made in the contract and it is not inequitable to do so. As a practical matter, however, donees almost never sue to enforce a pledge to make a donation. A donative pledge should also be distinguished from a transfer document, which is also not a contract. In a transfer document, the donor is unilaterally giving something to someone, and the recipient is signing merely to affirm that they accept the transfer being made to them, rather than rejecting the donation and disclaiming it.
Law does not have an all-encompassing syntax and structure that, if not followed, makes it null and void. If a reasonable person could determine that (in the example of the sign you have) you are required to get written permission from any or all of the Paulding County Commissioners, then the sign is enforceable. I honestly don't see anything wrong with the sign you are displaying, it is reasonably clear. If, for example the notice contains an ambiguity or unclear phrase, the &quot;spirit&quot; of the law or sign is upheld. If the sign had said something to the effect of &quot;No trespassing without permission&quot;. It doesn't say who you need permission from, but you can reasonably ascertain that you must have permission from somebody in control of the land. There is no line in the sand here. Often when a dispute in a contract comes up where it could be interpreted more than one way, it is often interpreted in favor of the person who did not write the contract. &quot;Offer ends October 30 or while supplies last&quot; Isn't really &quot;ill-phrased&quot; either. I assure you that those statements are vetted by highly paid lawyers from many jurisdictions. I'm not sure what &quot;nonsense&quot; you would be referring to in there. If the vendor runs out of promotional materials the promotion ends... If they had said &quot;free hats to the first 100 customers on December 31st&quot;, you can't show up as the 101st customer and demand a hat, nor could you show up on January 1st (even if there were not 100 customers the previous day) and demand one either.