Can one turn down a settlement offer if it&#39;s for more than the amount being claimed? Suppose Joe is suing Acme Corp for $1000 over damages to his property. After some time, Acme Corp offers a settlement to Joe for $1500, on condition he signs a non-disclosure agreement. Is Joe allowed to refuse this offer and go to court anyway? I wonder if this is legal since it may seem as though Joe is not interested in the actual amount but simply is interested in the fight and/or defaming the corporation.
Based on other questions you have posted, I will assume you refer to some jurisdiction in the U.S. Is Joe allowed to refuse this offer and go to court anyway? I wonder if this is legal since it may seem as though Joe is not interested in the actual amount but simply is interested in the fight and/or defaming the corporation. Yes, it is legal, especially if Joe prevails in his claim of damages to his property. For instance, Michigan MCL 600.2591(3)(a)(i) awards attorney fees and other costs to the prevailing party if the primary purpose in the lawsuit is "to harass, embarass, or injure that prevailing party". But with Joe being the prevailing party, MCL 600.2591 is a moot point (that is, devoid of relevance). Even if Joe did not prevail in the claim, it would be hard for Acme to prove that Joe's primary purpose was to harass or unlawfully injure Acme if Joe's position has some legal merit (see the statute at (3)(a)(ii)). Acme Corp offers a settlement to Joe for $1500, on condition he signs a non-disclosure agreement. This portrays that Acme's settlement offer to Joe is not merely devised to make him whole. Instead, Acme is trying to obtain a very different benefit: Joe's silence. As such, Joe is entitled to refuse Acme's bid for non-disclosure, and commence proceedings in court. If Acme removed from its settlement offer the condition of Joe's non-disclosure, Acme would have more merit in arguing that Joe's lawsuit was frivolous. Lastly, to clarify concepts, the veracity of Joe's claim implies that he is not defaming Acme. And even if Joe's claim were knowingly false, his judicial proceedings in and of themselves cannot lead to a viable defamation lawsuit because judicial proceedings are (unfortunately) protected by absolute privilege.
A clause states &quot;If the contract is breached you accept that you must pay for damages. We shall determine the amount.&quot; Will this hold up in court? A court is going to want to look for context and an interpretation that would make this provision make sense before invalidating it (which it might). For example, if there was a schedule of the amount of damages for various violations attached to the contract, a court might interpret this language to mean that the drafting, non-breaching party will invoice you for damages in amount that it determines in good faith to be the correct amount with reference to the schedule or some formula set forth in the contract (e.g. an interest rate on an open account loan), in much the same way that a landlord might dock your security deposit and send you a letter telling you what was deducted in what amounts and why, or that a credit card company might charge you interest and late fees on a monthly basis. A court would, of course, be unlikely to interpret the clause as affording final and binding legal authority to decide what is owed. In the face of a clause like this one, the other party could bring a lawsuit to dispute the amount determined to be owed by the drafting, non-breaching party (unless the contract is a third-party arbitration clause and simply doesn't read like one because it is out of context).
As a lawsuit, it doesn't make sense in U.S. law unless you have suffered significant injuries. Your damages are likely to be, at most, nominal ($1) if you discovered it before you were hurt, so you'd only lose the money spent replacing the jar of peanut butter with a non-defective one and the nominal $1 damages. You would not generally have a right to any of your attorneys' fees and personal time spent on a lawsuit like that which would likely cost tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars on an hourly basis (no attorney would take a case like that on a contingency basis), and would take hundreds of hours of your own personal time.
No If the price advertised is not honoured by the business and you are asked to pay a higher price, you do not have an automatic right to buy the item at the special offer or sale price. As long as the shop or business tells you before you pay that the higher price applies, you have the option to either buy it at the higher price or decide not to. However, the shop or business may be in breach of consumer law in relation to misleading advertising. The prosecution (or not) of the misleading advertising is the government’s task, not yours. This is a common formulation across Common Law jurisdictions as it a codification of the historic common law position. An advertised price is not an offer capable of acceptance, it is an invitation to treat. That is, it is an invitation for you to make them an offer and the price that is likely to be accepted. It is overlaid with later developments in consumer protection surrounding false advertising and misleading and deceptive conduct.
The mortgage company cannot grant you title. The basic logic of your relationship to the mortgage company is that you borrowed a bunch of money, using the hose as collateral, and you owe them that money so you have to pay. If you don't pay, they can take you to court, and normally they would get the court to make them the owners of the house, which they can then sell to recover their losses. Not paying the debt is not a good idea. You can always ask them to put the payments in escrow, but I doubt they would agree since ultimately you owe them that money. What is supposed to happen is that the title insurance company pays for their mistake, whatever it was. It is possible though that the error was the county's, in which case the news is all bad (ask your attorney about a case I believe in Columbus, around 2010, where the county screwed up the paperwork and the buyer ended up with no recourse – as I recall, the buyer had no title insurance). Ohio law does not require recording title transfers, therefore it is quite possible that the transaction was not properly vetted through attorneys. I'd give the standard admonition &quot;ask your attorney&quot;, but all I can suggest is to try a better attorney.
Under Section 1 of the Sherman Act, there has to be an agreement for there to be price fixing. If the parties do not agree to engage in price-fixing or other anti-competitive behavior, there is no violation. There does not needed to be a written, explicit contract memorializing the agreement, but there does need to be more than just encouragement to change prices. Telling one person to charge more isn't price-fixing, because the person making the suggestion could then just leave his own prices in place and enjoy the competitive advantage. But if that person were to say, "We should raise our prices," and then they both did, you'd probably have a pretty good Sherman Act case.
Usually I would think one answer to a question is enough. But since your edits have transformed a reasonable procedural question into what appears to be a rant about unfairness of the sort which any bankruptcy court has heard hundreds of times before, I will give another piece of advice: Focus on one thing at a time. The judge at the hearing of the application will be deciding (if your question is accurate) the single point whether a house should be sold. The submission "There is an application to annul the bankruptcy to be heard on XXX; if it succeeds this application is a waste of money and if it fails there will still be time for this application before the time limit, so you should adjourn till YYY" is a reasonable one that he will take into account. Saying "The bankruptcy order should never have been made; it was a mistake by my accountants and HMRC, and a High Court Judge joined in the conspiracy" will get you precisely nowhere. Even if the judge believed you rather than the written evidence, it has no bearing on the point he is being asked to decide. More generally; besides casting your arguments into proper shape, there is another good reason to consult a professional, namely that he can tell you when to give up. The courts are bound by laws and regulations; however unfair you may think the result, at some point it is necessary to accept the reality rather than wasting time and money making points that the law cares nothing about. (And no, I see no point discussing this further in comments. This answer can be upvoted if you think it helpful or downvoted if you think it "not useful"; it isn't something to argue against.)
There is no general law making it illegal to lie about debts, or anything else. It is illegal to lie to a law enforcement officer in the course of an investigation. (And of course it is illegal to lie in court testimony or when otherwise under oath.) But it is in no way unlawful to decline to answer, unless a proper court order has been obtained, or other lawful means of compelling an answer. I would expect any law office to respond to such a question with something like "Am I/we being investigated? If so, send the appropriate notice and our lawyer will consider what we should tell you. If not, tell us what information you want, and we will consider and provide a written response in due course." If a taxpayer has been found to be delinquent in paying taxes, in some cases a court order may be obtained seizing assets, including unpaid debts. But no IRS agent can make such a claim on the spot, and indeed for a client to make such a payment without such a court order, or the order of an IRS tribunal (or the creditor's written consent) would itself be unlawful and would subject the lawyer to a suit by the PI (Private Investigator). When the lawyer pays a service provider, a 1099 must be filed with the IRS. If the PI is a corporation, a different form is used, but a record of payment is still required. As failure to timely file such a form is a violation of the tax code, an accusation of paying without filing would permit the lawyer to decline to answer under the Fifth amendment. If the lawyer did pay and did file a 1099 or other documentation, the IRS would know what had been payed, and would not need to confront the PI. Also, as the comment by Hilmar points out, a PI would be likely to use the cash accounting method, and so would own no tax on work performed but unpaid (as yet). So unless the IRS agent thinks the PI was paid "off-the books" and is intentionally failing to report the payment, there would be no point to such a question. And if that were he case, the lawyer would be very likely to decline to answer. I find the story quite implausible.