Partial payment of registration fee required? I am a 17-year-old student. In summer 2016, I registered for a MUN (Model United Nations) in Friedrichshafen, Germany. After two months, I lost interest in attending the conference set for October 23rd. The conference costs 40$, a fee to be payed until some day in September. I never payed the fee and continued to ignore their e-mails about the fee deadlines, until I got a message, asking me to either transfer the full amount of money and join the conference, or cancel my registration and transfer half of the amount, as "the conference could only be cancelled without additional fees until Semptember 2nd." In the following, you can see a picture of the form used to register, stating Please be aware that you can cancel your registration with full payback only until the 2nd of September. I have not signed any paper document. Even though the prevailing legal situation in Germany might be different than in the USA, could this issue (given my continuing refusal to pay), if brought to court, have any success?
To add to Nij's answer: You write I have not signed any paper document. You seem to assume that a binding contract can only be entered into in writing. This is wrong. In most countries (certainly in Germany), a binding contract generally does not require a written document. A contract can be entered into orally, or even silently ("Schlüssiges Handeln", "Implied-in-fact contract"). All that is required for a contract is that one party made a proposal, and the other party indicated their agreement, implicitly or explicitly ("Willenserklärung"). Clicking "yes" on a website can mean entering into a contract if you could reasonably be expected to understand that you were accepting certain obligations (such as that of paying a fee). So in your case, you probably entered into a valid contract, and will have to fulfill your obligation under it, which means paying. From a practical point of view: If you choose not to pay, the organizers will probably either drop the claim (if you are lucky), or they will pursue it. In that case, they can send you a "Mahnbescheid" for their claim. At that point you either pay within 14 days, or respond that you reject the claim, then there will be a trial, which you will probably lose, and pay a lot more than 40€. If you do not respond to the Mahnbescheid, you will receive a "Vollstreckungsbescheid", and then a visit by a Gerichtsvollzieher (officer of the court). My advice would be to pay and learn to properly cancel registrations.
The victims of these unconstitutional laws would likely not be able to recover any damages or refunds of their fees. Generally speaking, the only avenue to challenge fees imposed as a result of a criminal conviction for sodomy (or any other criminal law) is through a direct appeal of your conviction or sentence. The amount of time to raise that appeal is 30 days from the entry of the final judgment in most states, though it can be as low as 10 days in Virginia or as high as 90 days in Wisconsin. So by the time the court struck those laws down in Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003), the only people who could still raise an appeal would probably be those who had been convicted in the month or so before the court's decision. Even then, many of those people would likely still be unable to appeal. If they paid their fine, they generally forfeit the right to seek to vacate it. If they pleaded guilty, they probably would have waived their right to appeal on constitutional grounds. If they failed to raise the constitutional defense, they probably waived their right to raise it on appeal as well. So now the only people who can seek to vacate their fines are those you're dealing solely with the people who raised a constitutional defense, were convicted anyway, and had not yet paid their fines. Probably a very small universe. The other possibility would be through a civil suit under Section 1983, alleging that the government infringed on their rights by bringing that lawsuit. There are several possible ways to get hung up here, as well. First, under Heck v. Humphrey, 512 U.S. 477 (1994), the courts can't allow a 1983 action based on a criminal conviction unless the conviction &quot;has been reversed on direct appeal, expunged by executive order, declared invalid by a state tribunal authorized to make such determination, or called into question by a federal court's issuance of a writ of habeas corpus.&quot; Again, it would be too late to reverse the conviction, and habeas corpus would be unavailable for someone who had merely paid a fine. Perhaps one could obtain an expungement under a statutory procedure and characterize that as an executive order, but I don't know that that would be persuasive. Even if the plaintiff were able to address his conviction in one of those ways, the ongoing litigation over compulsory union fees makes me think he would probably remain unable to collect damages. In the union cases, the Supreme Court had previously explicitly allowed public-sector unions to impose mandatory union dues, and it then reversed course, finding those dues unconstitutional. Although the unions could no longer collect the dues, a question arose as to whether they had to refund the dues they had collected in the past. As far as I know, every court to consider the question has found that a &quot;good faith&quot; defense essentially immunized those unions from liability for damages based on the previous collection of dues. Analogizing here, the Supreme Court has previously explicitly permitted state anti-sodomy statutes in Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 U.S. 186 (1986), then reversed in Lawrence. In the meantime, many states collected fines from defendants convicted of sodomy in reliance on Bowers. So I suspect the courts would find that any municipal defendants in those cases would be eligible for the good-faith defense, and any individual defendants would be eligible for qualified immunity, as the illegality of their conduct was obviously not clearly established, given Bowers. So in short, I think any attempt to recoup those fees would fail.
It seems that your friend is taking part in a multi-level marketing scheme. However, this does not necessarily exclude a pyramid or snow ball scheme. Both can be illegal in Germany and Switzerland under the respective unfair business practices codes, because the systems do not rely on the sales of goods and services, but on the continuous recruitment of further sales persons. To clarify whether your friend's system is illegal, you could report the scheme to the competent watchdogs. In Germany the "Zentrale zur Bekämpfung unlauteren Wettbewerbs" in Bad Homburg is recommendable. As the company is operating from Switzerland, German law not be applicable without more. Therefore also contacting the Swiss authorities may be advisable. This seems to be the "Staatssekretariat für Wirtschaft SECO" in Bern.
I have heard that you have to spend at least six months in a year in US to remain eligible for naturalization. Is that really true? No, that is not true. There is no requirement regarding amount of time you have to spend in the US in a year. The only requirements are the continuous residence requirement and the physical presence requirement. You are presumed to break continuous residence if you have an absence of more than 6 months (though it is possible to overcome the presumption with strong evidence for absences of between 6 months and 1 year). Since your trips are less than 6 months, they should be okay. It is possible that if you returned for just a day, and then leave again, the officer might consider the absences are really just one big absence, which would then potentially jeopardize continuous residence. I don't think that should be an issue in your case. The physical presence requirement is just physical presence for half of the required period (30 months if you are applying under the 5-year rule). So you would not meet it if you were gone for more than half the year every year. But being gone more than half the year for just one or two years, with the other years being here the whole time, should not be a problem for the physical presence requirement.
No, in germany there is no universal requirement as to form (Formfreiheit). This includes associating a signature with a name in block letters. In principle you can enforce a contract in court even if the written contract does not identify the contracting parties by spelled out name, but by signature only. It stands to reason there is no benefit in omitting the full names. The legislature implemented elevated form requirements for certain legal transactions by mandating the use of a notary. Here, again, there is no requirement as to put a plain text name next to your signature. The link between signature and person is established via the notary’s documentation. You could put an alias “Donald Duck” next to your signature, the notarial deed will indicate that in fact Kalle Richter signed the document. As far as I am aware all european-union legal transactions will need to go through their official channels. It is simply not possible, for example, to establish a European Economic Interest Grouping on a scrap of paper. Thus there is no issue and in turn no regulation. One thing is for sure, the european-union does not impose a “minimum framework” on its member states. I recollect there are some directives regarding electronic signatures, but that is a different story now.
If they actually mean $0, then that is not "taking advantage". If they do not mean $0, it is most likely that they will tell you "Sorry, we made a mistake, we're not gonna send you that Rolex for $0 plus shipping". If this came with free shipping, then you would not actually have a contract, because there s no consideration on your part (no payola). Fortunately, there is shipping, so there is a contract. You could then attempt to force them to send you the goods, which they might do rather than irritate you, but not if it is a Rolex. One of the defenses against enforcing a contract is "mistake", and a $0 Rolex would be a great example of that. Things get a bit more tricky if you relied on their free Rolex. You would look up the doctrine of promissory estoppel, to see if the seller could be estopped from making the mistake argument. Let's say that you also bought a Rolex Display Case from someone else at a cost of $100 plus shipping. By relying on their promise to sent you a Rolex, you have suffered a loss. The most likely outcome is that they'd have to reimburse your Display Case expense. (Finding) mistake airfares is an industry: a common response for the airline is to say "Oops, sorry", though sometimes they honor the mistake fare. Rumor has it that rather than get trashed on Twitter, the airlines honor mistake fares. You may find disclaimer language pertaining to verification of prices and availability, which also gets them off the hook. At any rate, you certainly won't be sued or prosecuted for assuming that they mean it and buying the thing; you might be disappointed.
united-states In the US, such an IOU may be grounds for suit The Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) which has been enacted (with minor variations) in every UIS staye, governs such matters. UCC § 3-104 provides that: (a) Except as provided in subsections (c) and (d), &quot;negotiable instrument&quot; means an unconditional promise or order to pay a fixed amount of money, with or without interest or other charges described in the promise or order, if it: (a)(1) is payable to bearer or to order at the time it is issued or first comes into possession of a holder; (a)(2) is payable on demand or at a definite time; and (a)(3) does not state any other undertaking or instruction by the person promising or ordering payment to do any act in addition to the payment of money UCC § 3-106 provides that: (a) Except as provided in this section, for the purposes of Section 3-104(a), a promise or order is unconditional unless it states (i) an express condition to payment, (ii) that the promise or order is subject to or governed by another record, or (iii) that rights or obligations with respect to the promise or order are stated in another record. A reference to another record does not of itself make the promise or order conditional. UCC § 3-108 provides that: (a) A promise or order is &quot;payable on demand&quot; if it (i) states that it is payable on demand or at sight, or otherwise indicates that it is payable at the will of the holder, or (ii) does not state any time of payment. Thus it appears that the IOU described in the question would be a negotiable instrument under the UCC. Since it has no specified date, it is treated as payable on demand, in the absence of any specific language to the contrary. UCC § 3-301 provides that: &quot;Person entitled to enforce&quot; an instrument means (i) the holder of the instrument, (ii) a nonholder in possession of the instrument who has the rights of a holder, or (iii) a person not in possession of the instrument who is entitled to enforce the instrument pursuant to Section 3-309 or 3-418(d). A person may be a person entitled to enforce the instrument even though the person is not the owner of the instrument or is in wrongful possession of the instrument. UCC § 3-303 provides that: (a) An instrument is issued or transferred for value if: ... (3) the instrument is issued or transferred as payment of, or as security for, an antecedent claim against any person, whether or not the claim is due; Thus the person to whom the IOU was originally given would be entitled to enforce it, assuming it had not been negotiated to some other person. The IOU w3as security for the loan, and thus was issued for value, and is binding. UCC § 3-501 provides that: a) &quot;Presentment&quot; means a demand made by or on behalf of a person entitled to enforce an instrument (i) to pay the instrument made to the drawee or a party obliged to pay the instrument or, in the case of a note or accepted draft payable at a bank, to the bank, or (ii) to accept a draft made to the drawee. UCC § 3-502 provides that: (a) Dishonor of a note is governed by the following rules: (1) If the note is payable on demand, the note is dishonored if presentment is duly made to the maker and the note is not paid on the day of presentment. A note that has been dishonored may be sued on to enforce payment. The specific procedures, and what courts such a suit may be brought in, will vary significantly by state. Not all states have smal claims courts, and those that do have significant differences in what cased they will hear.
This would not be "legal jeopardy" per-se, really the only remedy that Stack Exchange would have in a case like this would be to ban both accounts. It would be different if you caused SE some kind of monetary/reputation damages to the site itself. From SE's Acceptable Use Policy: Identity Theft and Privacy. Users that misleadingly appropriate the identity of another person are not permitted. It seems your described scheme would violate that term. But this isn't a legal problem, just an operational one. You aren't violating any law (unless there are local laws against this) by paying somebody to "be you" on SE. The most that this would earn you and your cohort would be a ban and probably removal of the contributions.