#1
âA loophole is an unintended consequence, which happens when the law in text is then applied to our complex real world, and it simply doesnât cover all potential situations,â explain the experts at legal recruitment agency JMC. âSo, the loophole goes against the purpose of the law, but doesnât break it.â
People have been exploiting loopholes for years, and not just when it comes to taxes, parking tickets or employment contracts. Some have done it for bizarre, or even legendary reasons.
Take David Phillips for example... When the American civil engineer discovered that Healthy Choice Foods pudding cups came with airline mile stickers, he cooked up a plan to beat the system.
âThrough careful calculation, he realized he could buy over a million air miles for just $3,000 worth of pudding in 1999,â reports go2tutors.com. âThe promotion offered 500 miles per pudding cup, but Phillips found that buying in bulk from warehouse stores made the math work in his favor.â
Of course, the company had never thought that anyone would buy pudding by the pallet. So Phillips ended up with enough miles for decades worth of free flights, without technically doing anything wrong.
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In another case, a famous British poet used a loophole to teach Trinity College a lesson in being specific. Lord Byron attended the college between 1805 and 1808, and was rather miffed that he was not allowed to bring his pet dog to stay with him in the dorm rooms.
"Infuriated by this rule, he decided to protest by purchasing another animal: a living, breathing bear. Technically speaking, the college rules did not specify that the poet could not be accompanied by a bear, during his stay," reports ListVerse.
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A jury chosen by your peers may choose to "nullify" the law even though the evidence proves beyond a reasonable doubt they you are guilty of the charges. They can do this if they disagree with the law or think that rendering a guilty verdict under the circumstances would be unconscionable.
Jury nullification is a constitutional right, but lawyers or the court do not have to instruct jury's on this right. Most jury's are not aware of it.
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//oil and gas lawyer. Edit: added qualifier.
#6
So if any Canadians here get a letter from their ISP telling them to stop, just ignore it. They can't do anything in court.
According to Cambridge Seminar College's site, Lord Byron won the argument against the college. Not only did the bear stay with him in his room, but he would also walk it around the college grounds on a chain.
"Furthermore, Byron tried to get the bear enrolled as a student, he was unsuccessful with this however," adds the site. "Possibly because one thing to make a students exams more stressful would be to have a bear sat next to them!"
His act of malicious compliance went down in the history books for being just as good, if not better than some of his work.
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As a result, a married couple would work together so that one of them would be caught having an affair. "We'll be in this hotel room tomorrow night. Feel free to barge in."
You'd even see people filing affidavits admitting that they'd banged their tennis pro.
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In Australia (as in most developed countries) we have a set of laws designed to stop company management from improperly fleecing the creditors of limited-liability companies. So, for instance, if your company is going down the tubes and so you decide to simply transfer all of the company's assets to yourself, or if you keep running up debts you could not possibly pay, then you can be held liable.
In order to be held liable for the above, the company's liquidator needs to be able to prove that the company was insolvent at the time you engaged in the improper conduct, which necessarily requires analysing the company's financial records. If the company never kept financial records (which is itself a breach of the law) then insolvency is presumed, to avoid company directors being able to avoid liability in that way.
Now for the loophole: The above presumption only applies if your company did not "keep" or "retain" financial records. However, the instant your company is in liquidation (the equivalent of "bankruptcy" in the USA) a company director ceases to be an agent of the company. So if they take the company's books and destroy them, then the presumption of insolvency does not apply, since it was not the "company" that destroyed them.
You can be prosecuted for the destruction of the company's books, but it's basically a slap on the wrist fine in practice. So long as you can live with that, it means you can get away with virtually any unlawful conduct you engaged in while running the company.
The above may not be something that pops up every day, and it may not make for great party conversation, but it is a rather gaping loophole that makes a huge difference to a director's responsibility in Australia.
TL;DR - If you are a company director in Australia and you improperly looted your insolvent company, you can get away with it if you destroy the company's financial records *after* the company goes into bankruptcy.
"Raines law" is a typical example of how legal loopholes were exploited in the 19th Century. The law was implemented in New York by Senator John W Raines, in a bid to crack down on Sunday drinking.
It stated that restaurants had to sell meals along with every drink sold, and was meant to ensure that people ate something and didn't drink on an empty stomach. But things didn't quite go according to the Senator's plan...
#10
IANAL.
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The merchant agreement specifically states that a signature is all that is required to process the payment, unless the signature doesn't match the back of the card. They cannot force you to produce your ID no matter what they say about it being their store policy.
Also, they cannot impose a minimum amount for you to use your credit card. Merchants do this to avoid the charge they incur for processing the payment, but they are explicitly not allowed to.
Sneaky restaurant and bar owners decided to supply each customer with a sandwich upon the purchase of a beverage.
"Before they were given a chance to consume the product, it was taken away from them and provided to the next customer," Listverse.com reports. "Using this system, a single sandwich would often last an entire day, without any rules or laws being broken."
#13
While there is a legal DUI limit (.08 in the states), above which you are automatically considered impaired so long as the reading is considered valid and admissable, most states have laws which allow ANY amount of alcohol in your system to qualify for the charge if the state can show the amount, no matter how low, sufficiently impaired your ability to operate the vehicle.
Here we have DUI (driving under the influence) and DWI (Driving while intoxicated) as, basically, separate laws. The first requires a .08, the second requires a showing you were intoxicated to a point your ability was sufficiently lessened.
Fun fact to throw out at the local bar when someone starts talking about how they had three beers and are below the legal limit, and therefore won't get a DUI as a result.
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His response: "She's my wife, what am i going to do? Tell her no?"
Since I was technically emancipated because I was married then I was responsible for myself, despite not being 18. They just told me to go sleep it off.
#18
Being the functional drunk that I was, I took the time to look into the law and learned that to be arrested under 647(f) requires more than just being intoxicated. It also specifies that you must be either unable to care for yourself OR be blocking public access (like a sidewalk or a freeway). They dropped my case both times before going too far, but I was prepared to go to court over it.
#19
If you set off the alarm walking out of a retail store, just keep walking. The store personnel has no right to detain you unless they have an actual basis for doing so (e.g., someone saw you taking stuff off the rack and putting it into your bag).
Absent such cause, touching you could be civil battery, false imprisonment, and a host of other things. Have them call the cops; they'll say the same thing.
(Edit: This is the *general rule* and may not actually be the law wherever it is that you live and/or shop!).
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