Brad Hudson wrote: What you perceive as unimaginable, I perceive as common sense. Regardless of whether I automate the transaction or perform it personally, I am relying on the credit card information you supply when I ship you the goods.
Is common sense always a good guide as to how a court will decide?
If you are a one-person business who sees my credit card details have been approved by the system, says, 'that guy has paid', wraps up the goods and mails them, I agree that it is common sense that you have relied on the information.
In the case of Amazon (and many other big online suppliers), however, the system simply generates an instruction to a robot to extract the goods from rack number A/7896/C/250 and load them onto a belt. An employee then simply sticks on the mailing label generated by the system and loads the package onto the truck for delivery.
At no stage does a human being becomes aware of your credit card details and take action in conscious reliance on them. But of course such arguments may not work in a US court. English courts viewed things differently, and hence the law was changed, as I indicated with reference to the Law Commission report of 2002.
If common sense were a good guide, us lawyers would be out of business. ;-) What if I hire an employee to run the business? If the employee takes the credit card and hands over the goods, have I been defrauded?
“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951
If common sense were a good guide, us lawyers would be out of business. ;-) What if I hire an employee to run the business? If the employee takes the credit card and hands over the goods, have I been defrauded?
If your human employee accepted a card offered fraudulently, the under the old Theft Act an offence probably had been committed, because a human being had been deceived, and hence induced to give someone goods or services to which he was not entitled. It does not matter if the human being did not own the business.
Zadok: I did not have a faith crisis. I discovered that the Church was having a truth crisis. Maksutov: That's the problem with this supernatural stuff, it doesn't really solve anything. It's a placeholder for ignorance.
If common sense were a good guide, us lawyers would be out of business. ;-) What if I hire an employee to run the business? If the employee takes the credit card and hands over the goods, have I been defrauded?
If your human employee accepted a card offered fraudulently, the under the old Theft Act an offence probably had been committed, because a human being had been deceived, and hence induced to give someone goods or services to which he was not entitled. It does not matter if the human being did not own the business.
Remember, we're talking about reliance, not deceit...
What if the human employee rang up the transaction and handed over the goods, but I ran the credit card through a reader myself?
“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951
Brad Hudson wrote: Remember, we're talking about reliance, not deceit...
What if the human employee rang up the transaction and handed over the goods, but I ran the credit card through a reader myself?
You tell me - 'reliance' was not so far as I know used in the old UK Theft Act, and it is not in the Fraud Act 2006 either If I recall correctly.
We are talking US law here, no?
Zadok: I did not have a faith crisis. I discovered that the Church was having a truth crisis. Maksutov: That's the problem with this supernatural stuff, it doesn't really solve anything. It's a placeholder for ignorance.
Just as I can't be 'deceived' if you make a false statement to my computer without my knowing (and of course a mindless computer can't reasonably be said to be 'deceived'), I don't see how I can be said to 'rely' on your statement if I never become aware of it - which is usually the case if I set up a huge system to accept online payments.
Just trying to feed your imagination. ;-)
“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951