Legal status of an ongoing situation pending an appeal Apologies for the title. I could not think of a concise and accurate way to phrase it. I will phrase this question in terms of charitable trusts, but my question is really about the general principle. I am assuming that the particular statutes which apply to the given situation are silent on this issue. Let's say we have a charitable trust. It is determined (by a regulator or a court of first instance) that the trust is invalid. Let's call this point A in time. At point A, it is as if the trust has never existed (which means we have a resulting trust back to the settlor). The trustees appeal. If they lose, then nothing changes - the trust never existed. If they win, then the trust has always existed. Let's call this point B in time. My question is, how do the trustees figure out what their legal duties are between point A and B? What happens if they do something during this time which would be considered a breach of trust if the charitable trust is reinstated? What if they are legally compelled to do so e.g. the beneficiary of the resulting trust asks for his money back. If there is no charitable trust, then the trustees cannot refuse the request. On the other hand, if the charitable trust is reinstated then they have spent charitable funds on a non-charitable purpose. What is the general principle? How should you behave when you are in situation X, but the outcome of an appeal could mean that you are retrospectively in situation Y, and you are faced with a conflicting set of rules for a given action during the interim? Ideally I would like a UK specific answer, but would also welcome more general answers based on common law systems.
Ohwilleke's answer (i.e. 'there isn't a simple answer') covers the general principles clearly. But for your specific situation (England and Wales, appeal to the High Court Chancery Division or Court of Appeal), the answer is "Do nothing irrevocable if possible; if necessary, apply for interim directions to the Court". The Chancery Masters are used to this sort of application, and though somebody will presumably be diappointed by the decision, the trustees have no liability.
The explanation in the decision (fn 1) is that That announcement does not moot this case. We have said that such voluntary cessation of a challenged practice does not moot a case unless “subsequent events ma[ke] it absolutely clear that the allegedly wrongful behavior could not reasonably be expected to recur.” [citations] The Department has not carried the “heavy burden” of making “absolutely clear” that it could not revert to its policy of excluding religious organizations... “there is no clearly effective barrier that would prevent the [Department] from reinstating [its] policy in the future”
Transfer of title must eventually occur, otherwise the property was never willed to another because the willing of the property is perpetually incomplete. One can place conditions on the transfer of title, but those conditions cannot last forever. They can last quite long, but there is a rule against perpetuities, especially created due to clauses constraining the transfer of of title in wills. This rule applies to a person who is transferring title, with a conditional clause that bars the full use of the property. If such a clause is limited, then it does not exist in perpetuity. The rule specifically addressed the will's call to reassign title if the transfer's clauses were violated. The maximum limitation historically was the lifetime of some person alive when the will was executed, plus 21 years, to permit an unborn grandchild to inherit. The reason this rule came about was due to the will of Henry Frederick Howard, the Earl of Arundel and Surrey. It effectively left the dead Earl managing his estates after his death, shifting properties that were bequeathed, based on the possibility of a &quot;more suitable&quot; heir being born after the Earl's death. This will eventually created the most complicated bit of common law that exists to date. In my totally amatuer attempt to summarize it; it is a combination of at least two ideas: a &quot;dead hand&quot; (deceased person) cannot guide the activities of the living forever transfer of property (title) must eventually be fully transferred Exceptions to the rule exist for conditional transfer of title back to the person who originally owned the property, but these exceptions cannot apply when the transfer is to a third party. This clause in Evan's will, &quot;If the state violates this clause, the property is to return to the heirs of the estate of Evan Carroll.&quot; would only be enforceable for a limited amount of time. First, the Estate of a dead Evan Carroll is not a lasting entity, eventually his estate would be closed. Finally, the transfer to the &quot;heirs&quot; of Evan Carroll would be a transfer to a third party, subject to the rule. Some states interpret their protections against the rule in different ways; but, nearly all states that have revoked the rule have done so by making a new rule (often with easier to manage time limits). A handful claim to have revoked the rule; but, they use other legal approaches to prevent this problem from occurring. Texas has extended the rule to 300 years while New South Wales, puts the limit at 80 years. Texas's extension seemed to be primarily to permit trust funds to operate legally long after the person establishing it had died. Consider what happens if such a rule doesn't exist. The title of the property could never be fully transferred, because the clause could never be proven to not have been violated. This would dramatically devalue the property, and clog the courts with suits claiming property held by one family for 100 years isn't theirs because of some evidence just uncovered about what happened 60 years ago. It also would massively complicate the selling of the property, because a clean title could never be proven. Note that this rule would have no bearing on a covenants not tied to the property's transfer of title. This rule even made it into a recent Disney case, which is explained far better than I can by the Legal Eagle, Devin James Stone
Websites are not ships that can choose a flag of convenience to govern which country's laws govern them. Generally speaking an analysis of which jurisdiction's law applies (which is strictly speaking a "choice of law" question as much as it is a jurisdiction question) isn't undertaken on a website by website, or business by business basis. Instead, jurisdiction and choice of law are evaluated on a claim by claim basis. The owners of a website may be subject to some claims in India, to some in Bhutan, and to others in the United States, depending upon the claim. Without knowing who is trying to sue for what, you can't know. Generally speaking, a business that operates in multiple jurisdictions, like a website, will be subject to the laws of all of the jurisdictions in which it does business in regard to claims with a connection to those jurisdictions. Of course, as a practical matter, only claims that can be enforced against the owners of the website are relevant, which usually means that only claims brought where the owners reside or own assets are relevant. If the website owners own property or have amounts payable to them in India, there is a very good chance that India can, as a practical matter, assert jurisdiction over them. And, it is likely, as a practical matter, that Saudi Arabia or China would not be able to assert jurisdiction over them in a meaningful way. The fact that businesses can be conducted through legal entities further complicates the analysis. But, at any rate, the place to begin is to realize that the question "Under which country's jurisdiction does a website fall?" is basically a category error. You need to ask "Under which country's jurisdiction does a website fall when it is sued or prosecuted for X kind of matter by someone who lives in Y?" So, really, this one question is actually dozens or hundreds of questions that each have to be analyzed individually.
Actions in common law tort exist for both scenarios. Potential torts are negligence, trespass to chattel, and/or conversion. Putting the largely apparent tort of negligence aside, since that is nearly always available when something and/or someone is damaged by another (requiring only the [negligent] act, causation and damages) I'll focus on the other tort potentially applicable to scenario 1. The minority rule concerning trespass to chattel can be established even when the interference is negligent, whereas the majority rule requires intent to deprive. Interestingly, when the Restatement 2d of Torts talks about minority rule vs. majority rule, it really means "least often applied" vs. "most often applied", rather than merely "in some (fewer or greater) defined jurisdiction(s)". With these type of uncommonly pled torts, you could find a huge jurisdiction like California having lower courts (especially small claims or district courts) applying both the minority rule in some courts and the majority rule in others. This, all within one judicial jurisdiction if that state's law court has not weighed in on their interpretation of preference. The Restatement 2d (Second) of Torts § 217 and §218 define liability in trespass to chattel as "intentionally (negligently - minority rule ): (a) dispossess(ing) the other of the chattel, or; (b) the chattel is impaired as to its condition, quality, or value, or; (c) the possessor is deprived of the use of the chattel for a substantial time, or; (d) bodily harm is caused to the possessor, or harm is caused to some person or thing in which the possessor has a legally protected interest. Trespass to chattel can consist of mere "intermeddling with or the limited use of the possession" and no damage need occur to the property, as damage is per se; however in your scenario, actual liability would occur in the destruction of the possession. The 2nd scenario would lie in the more serious tort of conversion. The tort of conversion will always requires intent to deprive the owner of his property, and the majority view is that the deprivation is intended to be total or forever (whether by continued deprivation or by destruction). There are 3 elements required to establish conversion: plaintiff's ownership or right to possession of the property at the time of the alleged conversion; defendant's conversion by a wrongful act or disposition of plaintiff's property rights; damage(s). While anticipating the follow-up question to either scenario, being "what about the fact that you didn't take the ball, but rather it ended up on your land, and shouldn't that count for something"...the answer (to the unasked question :~) is no. The act of taking possession over property to satisfy the necessary prong in both torts may take any number of forms, but need not be wrongful to begin with. All that is required to establish possessory control over the chattel in a tortious manner is merely interfering with the plaintiff's right of possession, which is a wrongful deprivation of something the owner was entitled to possess (so in other words, even if you didn't go and take it, once you know it's there, it's not yours, and you seek to keep it, either temporarily, permanently &ndash; the act of wrongful possession has occurred. The way the property was acquired is not at issue. Conversion and Trespass in Chattel are often spoken of interchangeably despite the fact that they are different. The difference between a cause of action for conversion and one for trespass against chattel is measured only by the degree of interference with the plaintiff's rights in their chattel. While the distinction seems subtle in a vacuum, in the old English cases where these torts were typically decided, conversion was one small step from criminal activity, whereas today conversion may be the civil adjunct to a criminal suit. *for those not familiar: chattel is any possession that is not real estate.
I am wondering if the government can still implement it and force people to pay even if the decision is challenged in court. Laws are not automatically put on hold because they are challenged. For an action or a law to be halted by the Court before a decision is made, the applicant would have to seek an interlocutory injunction, which are granted only if, as established in RJR-MacDonald Inc. v. Canada (Attorney General), [1994] 1 SCR 311, (i) is there a serious issue to be tried, (ii) will the party seeking the injunction suffer irreparable harm if it is not granted, and (iii) does the balance of convenience favour the party seeking the injunction. The first issue is rarely a problem, especially for a controversial issue like this. I am thinking the government might be able to tax people and then refund people if the court doesn't uphold the decision instead of a court challenge being able to postpone the tax indefinitely. A quantifiable financial harm is rarely irreparable (in private law cases). However there is an important exception for Charter cases where a financial harm is assumed to be irreparable because damages are often not awarded in constitutional cases. Though in this case it might be considered reparable because the quantification of damage and the method of redress are straightforward. For the third question, the Court needs to weigh both sides' interests in the case where the injunction is granted. Even if the damage is deemed irreparable, the Court may (or may not) still find the public interest in health outweighs the financial interests of the unvaccinated.
The GDPR's right to erasure is not absolute. Simplifying things a bit, you only have this right if the legal basis for processing was consent, because consent can be revoked freely; or the legal basis for processing was legitimate interest and the controller does not have an overwhelming legitimate interest in keeping the data. Legitimate interest always requires that the controller's legitimate interest and the data subject's rights and interests are balanced. A request for erasure shifts this balance but does not decide it. In practice, a request for erasure may be denied if the controller has legal obligations to keep this data, for example financial records; or the continued processing of this data is necessary for performance of a contract; or the controller has an overriding legitimate interest in continued process of the data. Note that contracts may have effects that survive termination of the contract. Note also that a contract might not involve the data subject as a party to the contract, the classic example being a postal delivery contract that necessarily requires processing of the recipient's personal data. In your specific example it seems that the legal basis was legitimate interest and that the data controller has an overwhelming legitimate interest to hold on to parts of your data for the purpose of fraud prevention. If you feel like the continued processing of the data is illegal, for example because the legitimate interest balancing was done incorrectly, or because the legal basis was consent, then you have the following remedies: You can lodge a complaint with the responsible supervisory authority. You can sue the controller before a responsible court for compliance, and for the (actual) damages that you suffered as a result from illegal processing. I'll point out that neither of these approaches is likely to work for you, because abuse/fraud prevention appears like a pretty standard case of overwhelming legitimate interest.
Not returning a payment made in error may amount to theft. s.5(4) of the Theft Act 1968 covers this scenario: Where a person gets property by another’s mistake, and is under an obligation to make restoration (in whole or in part) of the property or its proceeds or of the value thereof, then to the extent of that obligation the property or proceeds shall be regarded (as against him) as belonging to the person entitled to restoration, and an intention not to make restoration shall be regarded accordingly as an intention to deprive that person of the property or proceeds. And the leading case law is A-G Ref (No 1 of 1983) [1985] QB 182 where, in similar circumstances: The defendant, a police woman, received an overpayment in her wages by mistake. She had noticed that she had received more than she was entitled to but did not say anything to her employer. She did not withdraw any of the money from her bank account. The trial judge directed the jury to acquit. The Attorney General referred a question to the Court of Appeal. Held [on appeal]: It was possible for a theft conviction to arise where the defendant had not withdrawn the money. There was a legal obligation to return the money received by mistake.