[X] My Assistant

[Larme]

Maybe you're right. But what about compensation for the many broken hearts caused by this thread, which was only started because of the prank? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

Heh, I think you're just kidding, but I'll take this opportunity to educate the masses (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) Many people think that you can get legal damages any time something causes you pain and suffering. You can get damages for pain and suffering, but for the most part this is only if it's accompanied by physical damage to either your person or your property. So if CGL publishes something that causes you financial harm, and this financial harm causes you a great deal of mental anxiety, you could get money for that.

The only time when you can get money just for psychological harm, however, is for intentional infliction of emotional distress. But it's almost impossible to recover under this tort, it requires extreme and outrageous behavior, which is a very narrow class of behaviors. Like maybe if you told someone a loved one had committed suicide and blamed them for it in a note, or something.

Now, I'm pretty sure false advertising isn't a civil tort. You have to complain to the FTC, and they'll investigate. If they decide that advertising is false, they'll impose effectively criminal sanctions. But if anyone tried to tell them at the runner's companion preview was false advertising, they'd be saints if they didn't lol in your face. It's probably not even within the definition of advertising...

[Kyoto Kid]

...OK, OK so, Firefox & Word don't have context & syntax checkers...or even Chinese checkers. (blast, can't even blame this one on my Queen's English either) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif)

Actually... an ordinance could be considered to have a proximity effect as many tend to be rather broad & general.

...rollerblades away really really fast

*Pins her down with well placed ordinance fire. A priest and a cop are immediately dispatched to hunt her down.*

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/ic.gif) ...great sufferin hornytoads, not that sassinfrassin' Skates & Skateboards Prohibited Ordinance again!!! That one really chafes the hide.

[Sponge]

Ok, the original joke might not have been all that funny, but this thread is pure comedy (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif)

[Kremlin KOA]

False statements, including false advertising, generally cannot give rise to legal liability unless they induce reasonable reliance. I think false advertising might be illegal if it could lead to reliance, regardless of if it actually does. But it would be impossible for anyone to rely on the "preview" in any way, especially to their financial detriment. The idea that an April Fool's joke (albiet a failed one) can be illegal is very lolworthy to me as a lawstudent.

Sillier torts have worked

Liebeck v McDonalds comes to mind

Oh and previews put out by the production company do count as advertising

Over here it would end up as a petty sessions case and Catalyst would probably be forced to print an apology on their site for the poor joke.

Time wasted does not count as a detriment in the US? Overn here it can be worked out as a financial detriment

[Larme]

You can claim it's a false advertising case if you want, that doesn't make it so. An advertisement doesn't just have to be deceptive, it has to somehow give the company an unfair competitive advantage. Falsehood alone is never actionable, it has to actually hurt (or in false advertising and intellectual property potentially hurt) someone. You are not being hurt in any legally cognizable way by reading an untrue joke advertisement.

I'm tired of people pointing to the McDonald's case as an instance of a silly tort. The lady got deep tissue burns, the most serve kinds of burns you can get, from something that was supposed to be a beverage. It wasn't like "no doi coffee is hot," it was like "this coffee can permanently injure you." And it did. It was certainly partially her fault, but in tort law that simply reduces your recovery. If it was 25% your fault for instance, you lose 25% off your recovery. In Liebeck's case, she was found to be 20% at fault. It was really in no way a silly tort, it's just been blown up as a poster child by people who dislike trial lawyers -- people who either do not understand or willfully distort the reality of American tort law.

As for the Austrailian system... It sounds pretty crazy that you can get a judgment against someone for them posting something on the internet that you voluntarily read which later turned out to not be genuine. That seems completely insane. There is no US tort to encompass anything even close to this. We don't have a "petty session", we have a small claims court, but you don't get to file special cases there. It's just the place you go for regular claims that are below a certain monetary amount. Time wasted can be considered an economic damage, like if someone causes a traffic jam and your delivery company loses money because it can't deliver. However, it is well settled in the US that consequential economic damages, without damage to person or property, can't be the basis of a tort. If they could, then everyone who caused a car crash would be liable for millions or billions of dollars, because everyone delayed by the crash would sue them. If they crash into me, and part of my consequential damages is that I can't work for a week, I can recover for that. But if they just waste my time by crashing into someone I don't even know and causing traffic, I have no claim against them.

Anyway, either your tort law is insane, or you buy into the half-truths of the same anti-tort law people who lie about the law to stir up public sentiment that we have over here (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif) Honestly, because our laws have the same basis in the British common law system, I have a hard time believing that Australian law is that wildly different from ours.

[Cthulhudreams]

In that particular case the franchise in question had repeatedly and willfully breached the safety regulations around the serving of hot beverages, been told to stop it on multiple occasions and persisted in doing it, and a woman suffered very serious injuries as a result.

it's not a particular silly case and drawing parallels seems insane.

[WearzManySkins]

IIRC the English Tort system is loser pays all costs.

Tends to keep the filly lawsuits to a low number.

Yes it has some disadvantages but then no microwaved pets suits either. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif)

WMS

[Cthulhudreams]

No, they don't always, but they may if they feel the suit was retarded, the court may elect to award costs to either party. However, in a tightly contested issue costs may not be awarded for example. The legal test depends on the court in question, and is often something like "In the intrests of justice to do so" or something similar.

i'm pretty sure they can award costs in the US too.

[Larme]

My favorite "crazy tort law" lie is the burglar who broke into a family's garage while they were on vacation, then some stuff fell on him and he got stuck and had to survive on dogfood for a week, then he sued them for an unsafe garage and won. I like it because it's funny, and it shows that the liars don't even care about legal accuracy. It's well settled in every American jurisdiction that a landowner has no duty to trespassers except for a few exceptions. For instance, you are liable if you set up a trap to purposefully hurt trespassers. Or if you see them walking across your property and don't warn them of a danger that exists. Or if you have something that attracts children, like a swimming hole, and you don't do anything to eliminate dangers that will kill the children that will inevitably be attracted to your swimming hole. Clearly however, there's no duty to have a safe garage for a burglar who breaks in...

[Fortune]

I don't know where Kremlin KOA gets his information, but I've certainly never heard of any such laws regarding false advertising over here.

[Adam]

Yeah, when you actually do it.

You must like me a lot then, because aside from my five day vacation in January, I've been working 60+ hours a week for Catalyst ever since we started up. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

I call Bullshit

You posted on the dragon threads
it would have taken less time to go "It is a joke guys"

sorry, you were not too busy

No, wait, I am not sorry for pointing this out

Time to do one thing does not necessarily mean that the time could be spent doing something else.

I'm genuinely sorry that some people were really upset by this situation.

[DocTaotsu]

*rolls his eyes and starts handing out straws to anyone who's entire week was evidently ruined by this*
Oh these? These are so you can suck it up. You can have two if that'll speed things up.

[Glyph]

The dragon joke didn't bother me, but the "joke" version of Arsenal kind of annoyed me. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/mad.gif)

Still, it was a relief to find out it was a joke, and take it back for the "real" version that didn't have emotitoys (6 dice bonus for social skills - that should have told me it was a joke right there).

[Larme]

No, they don't always, but they may if they feel the suit was retarded, the court may elect to award costs to either party. However, in a tightly contested issue costs may not be awarded for example. The legal test depends on the court in question, and is often something like "In the intrests of justice to do so" or something similar.

i'm pretty sure they can award costs in the US too.

Generally, attorney's fees are only awarded when the cause of action is created by a fee shifting statute. One common instance of this is the civil rights violation suit law, which says that if the government violates your constitutional rights, and you win in a suit against them, you automatically get an award of attorney's fees. In regular torts, however, attorney's fees are rarely shifted.

I don't see that it makes much difference one way or the other, though. I'm not really sure, but I imagine that most suits settle in Britain, too. If you take a suit to trial, even if you have the potential to get your legal fees reduced to 0 by winning, you can't guarantee that you'll win. There's still the same incentive to settle, which is that you don't take any risk, and you generally pay some amount that you can afford to make it go away. Though it's nice that totally frivolous suits can't really go forward -- for a suit that has a 0% chance to win, American corporations will often settle for trivial amounts of money instead of going to trial. But if the loser automatically pays attorney's fees, and has a 0% chance to win, then the defendant has $0 liability and will not settle. So no money for frivolous suits virtually ever (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) Not that frivolous suits are as big a deal as people claim they are in America, but I think the English system is a pretty good idea in general...

[apollo124]

Ya know, an actually funny joke would have been a preview of SoLA. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

IMO, letting it ride for 2 weeks was a bit much, and honestly, I stop looking for April Fool's Day jokes after April 1 has gone. I mean, trick-or-treating on November 1 gets you nothing.

But, except for the couple of lawyers here, would anyone actually sue over something as lame as this? Yeah, I know, some would, but come on!

And as far as Obsidimen being one of the clues to it being a joke, they were hinted at in one of the last SR3 books, Shadows of Asia, I think. So since it is long established that Earthdawn is the 4th world to SR's 6th, and that the mana cycle is continuing to grow, it is reasonable to think they might have been in the upcoming book.

And the bit about large parts of the dragon description being copy/pasted from DotSW, well, you kind of expect that. I mean, it's like comparing oranges to oranges, or dragons to dragons. Since you're talking about the same thing, it would be described the same way. Since it was a "preview", typos and odd asterisks and such were not unexpected, at least by me.

All in all, lame joke fellas.

[Cthulhudreams]

I don't see that it makes much difference one way or the other, though. I'm not really sure, but I imagine that most suits settle in Britain, too. If you take a suit to trial, even if you have the potential to get your legal fees reduced to 0 by winning, you can't guarantee that you'll win. There's still the same incentive to settle, which is that you don't take any risk, and you generally pay some amount that you can afford to make it go away. Though it's nice that totally frivolous suits can't really go forward -- for a suit that has a 0% chance to win, American corporations will often settle for trivial amounts of money instead of going to trial. But if the loser automatically pays attorney's fees, and has a 0% chance to win, then the defendant has $0 liability and will not settle. So no money for frivolous suits virtually ever (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) Not that frivolous suits are as big a deal as people claim they are in America, but I think the English system is a pretty good idea in general...

I'm an australian, but the systems have a deal in common, we've had less time to diverge and are structurally very similar.

And yes, the vast majority (I used to work in the family law sector in a non legal capacity, and settlement rates there where over 90%, and other federal jurisdictions were fairly close.) cases are settled. A similar number plead guilty in criminal trials.

[Stalker-x]

Heh, I think you're just kidding

Kidding? I'm hyperventilating! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif)

You can get damages for pain and suffering, but for the most part this is only if it's accompanied by physical damage to either your person or your property. So if CGL publishes something that causes you financial harm, and this financial harm causes you a great deal of mental anxiety, you could get money for that.

Well, my strategy would be the other way round: All of this pranking confusion has given me a paranoiac schizophrenia, which requires a therapy in order to make me stop looking out for lame pranks and late "April's Fools" everywhere. This therapy, however, is not cheap (facing that I have spent all of my savings on sourseboocz), and I've lost my job due to my psychical condition. Any chance of being successful with that? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

(Disclaimer for anyone at CGL reading this: Nope, I'm not planning anything. Just curiosity about the American law system. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) )

[swirler]

Ya know, an actually funny joke would have been a preview of SoLA.

that would have just been sick and cruel
now maybe "Shadows of Middle America"
or "Shadows of the Pennsylvania Dutch"

oooh I know "Shadows of the Land of the Midnight Sun"!!!

"shadows of Sesame Street"?

[Larme]

But, except for the couple of lawyers here, would anyone actually sue over something as lame as this? Yeah, I know, some would, but come on!

No, I don't think anyone would. Courts don't accept retarded lawsuits like it's nothing. They get annoyed, they throw your ass out, and they might fine you a bunch of money. "They maded me mad an' an' I wants munnies!" is not a legal claim, and it could have a deleterious effect on the career of any lawyer dumb enough to file the suit.

[Larme]

Well, my strategy would be the other way round: All of this pranking confusion has given me a paranoiac schizophrenia, which requires a therapy in order to make me stop looking out for lame pranks and late "April's Fools" everywhere. This therapy, however, is not cheap (facing that I have spent all of my savings on sourseboocz), and I've lost my job due to my psychical condition. Any chance of being successful with that? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

(Disclaimer for anyone at CGL reading this: Nope, I'm not planning anything. Just curiosity about the American law system. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) )

That would have to be an intentional infliction of emotional distress claim. But it would fail.

There is an eggshell skull rule in tort law, which says that if the plaintiff was ultra fragile and the defendant committed a tort against them, they are liable for all the harm they cause. If I just tap you on the head, which is battery, but your skull shatters because it's unusually fragile, I have to pay for all that extra damage. Similarly, if I intentionally inflict emotional distress on you, and your mind is really fragile and falls apart even though a regular person would have been fine, I'm liable for all the damage that actually ocurred.

However, intentional infliction of emotional distress requires extreme and outrageous conduct. That's a very high treshhold. It has to be something not tolerable in a civilized society. This joke is several hundred miles below that standard, and thus no matter how much it pissed someone off, even it if drove them insane, they couldn't recover.

[Wesley Street]

The law makes me laugh.

[Ustio]

Really? Mostly it makes me cry

I've worked in UK employment Law and now I work for the General Medical Council and mostly its tears and frustration

[knasser]

The law makes me laugh.

"Everything is funny from far enough away"

-Me.

[swirler]

"Everything is funny from far enough away"

-Me.

not Will Ferrell
you cannot get far enough away for him to be even remotely funny
(IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[apollo124]

"shadows of Sesame Street"?

Oh, yes. I can see it now. The smelly dwarf who lives in the trash can, the gay couple (Bert and Ernie), the Surge'd troll with feathers (Big Bird), the vampire. It all makes sense now.
(IMG:style_emoticons/default/rotfl.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/rotfl.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/rotfl.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/rotfl.gif)