The hashtag “can someone sue you for money without a contract?” is the tip of the iceberg of a legal answer to an inquiry that any web or social media professional will inevitably find themselves confronted with. The question arises from a recent publication (published also on LinkedIn), and we can find an explanation of what it means, in practical terms, here. In a nutshell: yes, in certain circumstances, a statute, known as The California Civil Code 1624, San Francisco may enforce an unwritten contract for an obligation of more than five hundred dollars. In other words, the California Civil Code imposes a legal obligation that may force you to pay someone even if you never signed anything. Let us consider what this means within the world of web expertise and digital communication.
What do these circumstances consist of? It has to do with implied contracts, which may appear out of thin air, even where no contractual arrangement is intended to have existed. For example, in the case of an online service, a person might use your service without having been informed of the terms of service. However, where a reasonable person would have been put on notice that an agreement existed, or was about to be formed, the online service provider may be forced to convince a court that it was not the case. This is especially crucial since without a contract, there are no fundamentals like right of privacy or intellectual property that would defend your web or digital communication project. In other words: there may not be a contract on file here, just like you never signed anything to use iCloud. But if you take something from someone’s drop-box, and then a someone uses that drop box as a point of sale service to give you a QR code for watching movies, then the proverbial hits the fan. There was never supposed to be a contract, but that’s because when you accessed the drop box, you were not warned there are terms of service you had to follow.
Imagine this during an online video conference when you simply wanted to talk to someone about how well the new Bitcoin mining system you are leasing from them works. Or do you use photos from their site to show your virtual assistants the intricacies of Bitcoin programming? Or do you use one of their pictures to illustrate your own efforts? Maybe you had great intentions, but of course, things snowball when you don’t mean to violate the terms of service. The only exception to this situation is if you were purposely trying to violate someone’s terms of service. Then this California Civil Code punishes you, to the full extent of the law!
It all starts with contractual obligations. For that, you would need to have unseen legal considerations for things like: So make sure that in your contractual agreements, you do have some of these points covered. Also make sure that you are protected. A good legal article will help you see some of these points in digital communication.
For more information on contract law, you can visit Wikipedia’s page on Contract Law.