Is &quot;not committing a crime&quot; sufficient consideration? Alice sees John attempting to steal her car. For some reason, instead of calling the police, she says &quot;I'll give you $1,000 tomorrow if you don't steal my car.&quot; John agrees. Scenario 1 Alice gives John $1,000 and he doesn't steal the car. Has either of them committed a crime (e.g. extortion)? Scenario 2 One of them breaches the contract and the other sues. Is there consideration for a valid contract? Scenario 2A Alice does not give John the money the next day. Can he sue her for breach of contract? Can he legally take her car? Scenario 2B Later that day, before the money is due, John steals the car. Can Alice sue for breach of contract, in addition to the typical theft-related claims? Scenario 2C The next day, after Alice gives him the money, John steals her car. Can she sue to get the $1,000 back?
Forbearance from action can be consideration, but it must be forbearance from something that is one's legal right. It is sufficient that a person has restricted their lawful freedom of action. See Hamer v. Sidway, (1891) 124 NY 538. A promise to not do something that one has no right to do in the first place is not consideration. Throughout your entire spectrum of examples: there is no contract to breach; the intitial attempted theft was an offence; absent consent, it will never be lawful for John to take the car; any money accepted by John is likely an unjust enrichment.
The clause refers to what might be a lawsuit, which can be adjudicated in appropriate government courts (cf. the choice of law clause), but instead would be submitted to an arbitrator. The contract will spell out the details. An offence is a punishable criminal act, which is outside the scope of civil suits. In US law, the government prosecutes the wrong-doer, not e.g. one of the parties to the contract (if for example the vendor ships an illegal substance to a customer). The same goes for a &quot;breach of law&quot;, depending of course what you mean by breach of law. A breach of contract could not be pursued in court, given a mandatory arbitration clause. The fact that the two parties are in different countries does not nullify a mandatory arbitration clause, at least between the US and the UK.
Presumably, they at least took a report which could make it possible to file an insurance claim for the stolen phone. But, a good faith belief of law enforcement that is unable to figure out who committed the crime with the resources available to them is a legitimate reason not to investigate and prosecute a crime, even in countries with legal systems based upon the German one where prosecutors have an enforceable legal obligation to prosecute criminal offenses known to them. A prosecutor can't bring a case unless he knows who did it. And, the police may be wise not to try to investigate a crime that previous experience has proven to them is a dead end most of the time for a crime of modest economic value. Most cases of simple larceny are never solved. And, institutionally, the police have to balance the cost of investigating the crime against the seriousness of the crime. Murders and kidnappings are almost always going to take priority for police resources over stolen phones, particularly if investigating the phone theft may require international cooperation that makes the investigation more costly. A key point is that the mere fact that a phone is pawned doesn't mean that the person pawning it is necessarily committing a crime, so even if you find out where the phone is in some pawn shop (possibly in Albania or Turkey, by now), that doesn't mean that the job is over. That person could have bought it innocently and at fair market value from a flea market, from someone who could have gotten it from someone who received it innocently as a gift, from a friend of a criminal fence, who may have bought it not innocently from a true thief. In fact, because criminals respond to incentives like anyone else, it is far more likely that the phone was swiftly "laundered" along the lines I suggest in this example, than it is that it is still in the possession of someone close to the thief. But, only the fence and the thief would have criminal liability. It is a lot harder to solve the crime of a stolen cell phone than you would think, and the agency may simply not be able to justify the resources it would take to investigate that case properly to a situation where someone had a phone stole that was worth maybe 400 Euros in used condition. The more you can do to solve the crime, the more likely it is that they will find that it is worth further investigating until a thief can be identified and apprehended. For example, the company with the network that serves the phone might be willing to cooperate with its owner. Also, the more that you can do to show that this case might crack an entire ring of people involved in a black market in stolen cell phones might make it more attractive to law enforcement.
The clause you highlighted has an &quot;or&quot; in front of it: &quot;..., or in such pretended character...&quot;. It's only one alternative. Demanding or obtaining money, etc, is sufficient to violate the statute but not necessary. Looking at the previous clause, it is still a violation if the pretender merely &quot;acts as such&quot;, which I suppose is what people allege this person is doing. She can be guilty without having demanded or obtained anything, so the question about whether it's a &quot;thing of value&quot; is moot. As to the &quot;nonexistent agency&quot; issue: a useful source for information about how federal criminal laws are interpreted and enforced is the Justice Department's Criminal Resource Manual. (The link may be a past version; they seem to have reorganized their documents and I can't find a version not marked as &quot;archived&quot;, but I think the information is still valuable.) 18 USC 912 is discussed in sections 1469-1477 of that version. Section 1474 examines the meaning of the &quot;acts as such&quot; element, and includes this note: It is not necessary that the act be one which the pretended officer would have authority to perform if he were in fact the officer he represents himself to be. Lamar v. United States, 240 U.S. 60 (1916); United States v. Hamilton, 276 F.2d at 98. Nor is it necessary that there be in fact such an officer as the defendant pretends to be. Caruso v. United States, 414 F.2d 225, 227 (5th Cir. 1969). Caruso in particular was a case in which the defendant, as part of a scam, claimed to be the Administrator of a Veterans Hospital. He was convicted, and appealed on the basis that the government had not proved that the office of administrator existed. (Just as in this case, the government certainly could not prove that the Freedom to Breathe Agency existed, since it does not.) The Fifth Circuit found that his point had &quot;no merit&quot; and, citing Brafford v. United States (6 Cir. 1919, 259 F. 511, 513), that it was &quot;immaterial whether or not there was any government officer or employee with the precise title [the defendant] assumed&quot;. I realize that claiming to be a nonexistent officer is not exactly the same thing as claiming to represent a nonexistent agency, but I would expect that courts would treat it the same.
You will still have to pay A ticket can be ammended if the state so chooses (they can look up what color and model your car is). The car is probably on video. The officer can testify if they wrote your car info down somewhere else. And if they identified you inside the car as the violator, the car's color hardly matters. The idea that minor mistakes or omissions on tickets can get you off is a myth. From an actual lawyer
It is the use of a "menace" which creates the crime, not the nature or validity of the demand. That's not correct. You've inadvertently missed the other element of the offence: that it's an "unwarranted demand". A person is guilty of blackmail if, with a view to gain for himself or another or with intent to cause loss to another, he makes any unwarranted demand with menaces; and for this purpose a demand with menaces is unwarranted unless the person making it does so in the belief— (a) that he has reasonable grounds for making the demand; and (b) that the use of the menaces is a proper means of reinforcing the demand. https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1968/60/section/21 For example, I may have reasonable grounds under the Consumer Rights Act to demand a refund for a faulty good. It might be sensible to moderate one's language, e.g. "If I do not receive a satisfactory response from you within 30 days of the date of this letter, I intend to issue proceedings against you in the county court without further notice. This may increase your liability for costs." vs. "If I do not receive the money from you within 30 days of the date of this letter I'll take you to the f***ing cleaners, sunshine." But the language doesn't make the demand unwarranted.
Barring manufacturer negligence (and even this is a dubious theory, given that recovery would be for pure economic loss), there is probably no legal theory that would allow recovery of any loss of resale value. I am assuming that the promise to replace/repair the engine if it fails is part of the contract of sale. This is typical for a warranty that the manufacturer will repair certain failures. Assuming the manufacturer fulfils what it agreed to in the warranty, then the buyer is getting exactly what they contracted for and there is no contractual theory that would support any further recovery: there is no breach. The buyer bought a car that included a warranty to repair. I cannot imagine that they bought a car that included a promise that it would not fail.
No. Your evidence of registration of the car would suffice to show that you are not receiving stolen property, although you are correct that not informing the police that it has been recovered could get you pulled over if the car has been reported as stolen. Given the circumstances of the question, I don't address the means by which the car is repossessed. Not every use of force would be justified to secure the return of the stolen car. Reporting the theft and recover to the police would also make it easier for you to make an insurance claim. Repossession of a car stolen by fraud (tricking you into signing over the car title to them in exchange for Monopoly money in an envelope that you don't check until after they are gone, or for a forged check), which is then sold to a bona fide third party individual for value, however, might constitute car theft.