In the United States, can I sue my ex significant other for turning me gay? Suppose that a person A happily entered a mutually romantic heterosexual relationship with another adult B and after suffering through three years of daily abuse, deliberate cruelty and elaborate attempts by B to make A feel jealous A separated themselves from B and swore off B's gender as a whole. Suppose that A is now an active homosexual and A and A's same gen partner C have decided to marry. Can A sue B for deliberate cruelty, abuse and emotional distress so severe that it turned A into a homosexual?
For cruelty and abuse, yes. For sexual orientation change, you would need to prove a loss, i.e. that you are damaged or diminished as a result of that change, and your current partner might find that rather offensive! You would also need to prove your partner's culpability for that. Those are very, very bold claims, which will require very, very bold proofs. Realistically I think your prospects are very, very poor. You have much better prospects on the ordinary abuse. Further, the conversion claim will have terrible optics. It will gain national notoriety and will be the butt of jokes on late-night talk shows and &quot;what is wrong with the world?&quot; editorial columns. And I don't think I'm telling you anything you don't already know. It will generate a great deal of negative publicity for you, will reflect badly on LGBT (which is something you ought to think about since you're part of it)... and you will be widely viewed as publicity-seeking opportunist and drama-maker, including by the judge and jury, and it will undercut your abuse claim. For that reason, the opponent's legal team will do everything possible to amplify that. The long-term effects will be that you'll be &quot;Oh yeah, that person&quot;, and people won't take you seriously for decades to come. It'll hurt your long term social and employment prospects. It's the hard way to get your own page on Wikipedia.
A business has the right to refuse service, except in the case of unlawful discrimination. &quot;Sued us&quot; is not a protected characteristic. Unless part of the settlement was that the business must serve that customer in future, there is no way this could be considered contempt.
Yes Unless your business is a sole proprietorship it operates as a legal entity seperate from its owners. It owns its assets an acrues its own liabilities. It can be sued and it can sue others. It can also agree to its own contracts. Typically the only thing a legal entity that is not a natural person cannot do is sign a marriage contract. Depending on the industry there may be no need to sue. There exist many mandatory workplace insurance to cover accidents in the workplace. You may have to share details of the injury with them but they may be uninterested in whos at fault.
Canada: Not since 1962. The nail in the coffin for alienation of affection torts in Canada was the 1962 Kungl v. Schiefer Supreme Court of Canada decision which held 'there is no separate cause of action for “alienation of affections” known to the law of Ontario.'
The question actually asked, "what legal theories would support or harm...", is somewhat unclear. But what the questioner seems to be asking is, basically, what would happen if you tried it? The answer, it seems to me, is pretty straightforward. In the hypothetical case, you have been publishing a notice for years, saying "I have not been served with a subpoena." You then get served with a subpoena that includes a gag order. The gag order, presumably, includes wording prohibiting you from revealing the existence of the subpoena. You then cease publication of the warrant canary. By doing so, you have revealed the existence of the subpoena, and you are in violation of the gag order. You will be subject to whatever penalties you would be subject to if you violated it in some other way; for example, by publishing a notice that said, "Hey! We got a subpoena! It's a secret!" The distinction between revealing the existence of the subpoena by action, rather than by inaction, is a false one. It's exactly the kind of cutesy legal formality that non-lawyers love to rely on, but real judges ignore. If you tell someone: "Hey, you know John Smith's three sons, Joe, Ted, and Bill? Joe and Ted are good people; they have never molested any children. As for Bill--well, I don't have anything to say about Bill." If Bill is not a child molester, you have defamed him, and you are not going to convince a judge otherwise. The EFF link you link to tries to claim it'll "work" because courts are reluctant to enforce speech. Even if that were true, that might mean your canary would be effective in the sense of giving the public notice of the subpoena. That doesn't mean you wouldn't be liable for giving the public notice. For example: I put up a billboard saying "Bill Smith is a pedophile." Even if the court can't force me to add the word "not", that doesn't mean the billboard isn't defamatory. Realistically, though, courts compel speech all the time. Court-ordered apologies, disclosures, and notices are not unusual. And if ever a court would be inclined to compel speech, it would be in a situation like this one, where a company intentionally set out to get around a gag order with this kind of convoluted sea-lawyering.
There are several. First of all, the suit must state a claim for action under the law. This means there must be some law, or case law, which permits a person to sue in the kind of situation at hand. The claim for &quot;looking at me funny&quot; would probably be thrown out at this stage, unless perhaps it could be framed as a case of harassment. This often has a good deal to do with how the case is framed and what laws it cites as giving the plaintiff the right to sue, and the right to a remedy. Secondly, the plaintiff must usually allege significant harm, actual or in some cases potential. In federal courts, and some state courts this is often part of having standing to sue. A person only has standing when that person can show a real and significant actual harm, or a likely imminent harm, as a result of defendant's alleged actions. For example if a person claims that Congress has passed an unconstitutional law, but that person is not personally affected by the law, that person has no standing to sue. Thirdly the claim must be one that is within the jurisdiction of the court. That means both that it is the kind of claim that the court is authorized to handle, aka subject matter jurisdiction, and that the court has authority over all parties (personal jurisdiction), You can't sue for slander in a landlord/tenant or a traffic court court, the court lacks subject matter jurisdiction. Nor can you sue for theft under a state law in a federal court, it only has jurisdiction over &quot;federal questions&quot; (or in some cases over issues between people in different states, diversity jurisdiction). And if person A in Georgia did something to person B in Georgia, B cannot normally sue in a California court, although if the is some connection to California, the court may find it enough. Thirdly the suit must present a claim for a remedy which the court is authorized by statute or precedent to give. In some kinds of cases, the law may permit an injunction. but not a claim for money damages. In proceedings for action under the California Consumer Privacy Act (for example) most provisions can only be enforced by the California Attorney General, not by a private litigant. This will vary widely depending on the specific law involved. A classic example of a frivolous suit is United States ex rel. Gerald Mayo v. Satan and His Staff, 54 F.R.D. 282 (W.D.Pa. 1971) in which a prison inmate sued Satan and his assistant devils, claiming that &quot;Satan has on numerous occasions caused plaintiff misery and unwarranted threats, against the will of plaintiff, that Satan has placed deliberate obstacles in his path and has caused plaintiff's downfall&quot; and had therefore &quot;deprived him of his constitutional rights&quot;. The judge noted that Satan was not under the control of the prison, and it was not clear if he was a US resident, but dismissed the suit on the technicality that the prisoner has not told the US Marshals where and how to serve the needed papers on Satan. Dismissal of a lawsuit as frivolous, or as &quot;not reasonable&quot; is a judgement call by the court, guided by past cases on the topic, of which there are many. Details will matter. A good lawyer should be able to advise if such a dismissal is likely.
No. I can't give a more detailed answer without reference to a specific statute. But just about every state anti-bullying statute in the U.S. restricts the definition to...well, bullying. There is a good summary of state bullying and cyberbullying statutes here. The laws are varied, but they invariable contain words like "harassment", "abuse", "threatening," "fear," and "hostile environment." Would it be possible to "cyberbully" someone on Stack Exchange under some of these statutes? Sure. You could do it in comments; in answers; even in questions. "Question: Is Bill in my algebra class a dork, or a tool?" Comment: "This is a terrible question, and I'm going to burn your house down. Downvoting." You could probably fit something like that under some of the broader statutes--although they still for the most part haven't been tested for First Amendment issues. But I don't know of any statute broad enough to include downvoting a question or answer, on a site people post on knowing that the whole purpose of posting is to allow their posts to be upvoted and downvoted. If there was such a statute--and again, I don't know of any--it would almost certainly be unconstitutional. There is no law against hurting people's feelings, at least in the United States, and a law that allows people to seek legal redress for someone saying "I disagree with you" is pretty much the poster child for a First Amendment violation.
You sue the legal person One of the things that distinguishes legal personhood from other structures is the ability to sue and be sued. You can't sue a business name or a trust for example but you can sue a company. I have in fact been required to make adjudication decisions that I know will be unenforceable in court because the applicant named a trust rather than the trustee.