Defendant filed a counter-claim, But no order was made by the court that I had to file a defence.

October868

Ultimately my goal is to simply settle out of court though.

As even though her claim/defence is just nonsensical & baseless, she already has made it clear (indirectly) that she has already/would continue to blackmail me if I cause any problems for her.
(Since she knows my name & address, so has already been contacting various people 'exposing' intimate elements of my private life/interests, which ofcourse can have an extremely damaging impact on someone's career).

So even if I won the case, well if I tried to enforce the judgmement she would just use that information against me to damage my life.

da_rule

Why are you suing for £3,000 if she delivered half of the goods?

I think it’s gone way too far to now settle out of court.

To be honest this all just sounds like a huge mess and I can’t imagine a judge is going to be impressed with either party and it wouldn’t surprise me if he just threw the whole lot out.

October868

da_rule wrote: »

Why are you suing for £3,000 if she delivered half of the goods?

I think it’s gone way too far to now settle out of court.

To be honest this all just sounds like a huge mess and I can’t imagine a judge is going to be impressed with either party and it wouldn’t surprise me if he just threw the whole lot out.

Because the agreement stated that I would have the right to sell the videos.
So my claim was split into 2-parts, for the money which she took but never did the work for, and then for the work which she did but subsequently breached the contract of (by threatening me with legal action if I sold them, despite the basis on which they were orded & paid for being that I would have right to sell them).

She claimed in her claim that ''she didn't really mean it when she said that'',
however that ofcourse is then the act of criminal fraud by her, as she used deceit to obtain money from me.

da_rule

October868 wrote: »

Because the agreement stated that I would have the right to sell the videos.
So my claim was split into 2-parts, for the money which she took but never did the work for, and then for the work which she did but subsequently breached the contract of (by threatening me with legal action if I sold them, despite the basis on which they were orded & paid for being that I would have right to sell them).

She claimed in her claim that ''she didn't really mean it when she said that'',
however that ofcourse is then the act of criminal fraud by her, as she used deceit to obtain money from me.

Well if it’s criminal the civil court won’t be interest so you need to go to the police.

Also, you have just blown your own consumer argument out of the water. As, whether you realised it or not, you are suing for a repudiatory breach of the contract and therefore for the contract to be rescinded (she returns all the money and you return the goods and you’re left as if the contract had never existed). And the reason you are deeming there to be such a breach? Because she threatened to challenge your intended commercial use of the videos.

October868

da_rule wrote: »

Well if it’s criminal the civil court won’t be interest so you need to go to the police.

Also, you have just blown your own consumer argument out of the water. As, whether you realised it or not, you are suing for a repudiatory breach of the contract and therefore for the contract to be rescinded (she returns all the money and you return the goods and you’re left as if the contract had never existed). And the reason you are deeming there to be such a breach? Because she threatened to challenge your intended commercial use of the videos.

Ok, so if I was deemed to be a business/a trader, and if I say in a conversation ''If this 1st batch of products which I've ordered turns out well I then will be looking to order more in the future''...
Would I then be of been legally-bound (according to the b2b legislation) to of placed orders to purchase more, even if after the 1st batch was finished I decided I didn't want to place any future orders?

*I coudn't of placed more orders anyways, as the defendant by her own admission had spent 1/2 of the money (designated to production costs) on herself and thus couldn't even complete the 1st batch due to no longer having the money to pay her co-performers wages.
Plus she also blocked me, and then stated she no longer wanted to continue producing any content for me anyways.

da_rule

October868 wrote: »

Ok, so if I was deemed to be a business/a trader, and if I say in a conversation ''If this 1st batch of products which I've ordered turns out well I then will be looking to order more in the future''...
Would I then be of been legally-bound (according to the b2b legislation) to of placed orders to purchase more, even if after the 1st batch was finished I decided I didn't want to place any future orders?

*I coudn't of placed more orders anyways, as the defendant by her own admission had spent 1/2 of the money (designated to production costs) on herself and thus couldn't even complete the 1st batch due to no longer having the money to pay her co-performers wages.
Plus she also blocked me, and then stated she no longer wanted to continue producing any content for me anyways.

I’m not saying her claim has any merit either. You can’t be liable to pay for future orders if you haven’t actually placed them or haven’t committed to placing them. You also can’t be liable for consequential losses (i.e. her leaving her job) unless you breached a contract, that breach caused the loss and it was reasonably foreseeable that the breach would cause the loss.

My concern is that you should probably only be seeking £1500.

Also, you realise the judge is going to probably ask you about the content of the videos and may ask to see them? You also realise that the court is open to the public (and press) and recordings are also available? You have therefore potentially opted to put the contents of these videos in the public domain yourself, therefore even if she does release them now/release details of them/you, you have already put the info in the public domain and therefore would have very limited recourse against her.

unholyangel

October868 wrote: »

Hello, the reason why I have stated that I was a Consumer is because that is what I deemed myself to be/what the defendant deemed me to be/and is a match to how the Consumer Rights Act describes a consumer; And so I don't want to lie to the judge by claiming that 'at the time of making this arrangement I was a business'.

I could state that I wasn't a consumer, and instead was a business, but the 1st question the judge could then ask me is-
''Ok please tell me the structure of what your business was at that time?''

But my answer to that would then have to be-
''Well I didn't actually own any sorta of website or ecommerce store at that time, nor did I own any stock to sell, nor did I have any customers linedup; I was simply an indivdual who was ordering a batch of custom-scripted videos (designed to my personal taste) and so for my personal viewing predominantly, but in my mind I also had the idea that I would like to hopefully try selling copies of these videos to other people over the future months/years (if I ever encountered anyone online who was also interested in the same specific style of these videos), which would thus help me recoup a portion of the cost of these videos''.

But so the judge would then likely ask why I had lied and tried to claim that I was running a business at that time, when the reality was that I was simply an individual who had a loose idea in my mind which had a business-element to it, but nothing else.

No, they really wouldn't. As I said in my previous post, it would be for her to raise the point that you're not a consumer. I'm just trying to get you to consider what the strongest basis is for your claim.

Also a business doesn't need to be established in order to be acting for business purposes.

October868 wrote: »

Ok, so if I was deemed to be a business/a trader, and if I say in a conversation ''If this 1st batch of products which I've ordered turns out well I then will be looking to order more in the future''...
Would I then be of been legally-bound (according to the b2b legislation) to of placed orders to purchase more, even if after the 1st batch was finished I decided I didn't want to place any future orders?

*I coudn't of placed more orders anyways, as the defendant by her own admission had spent 1/2 of the money (designated to production costs) on herself and thus couldn't even complete the 1st batch due to no longer having the money to pay her co-performers wages.
Plus she also blocked me, and then stated she no longer wanted to continue producing any content for me anyways.

No. There are a few tests that need to be satisfied in order to have a legally binding contract. Offer, acceptance, consideration, intent, capacity, certainty etc. If any of those tests aren't satisfied then there is no contract.

And the burden is on the contract claiming there is a contract to show there is a contract. I presume thats what her counter claim is?

waamo

While Twitter conversations are evidence I'm not sure how enforceable they would be as a formal contract to deliver a service. They are far to open to misinterpretation.

This is a right dogs breakfast from start to finish. In future do not conduct business worth several thousands of pounds without proper written contracts.

da_rule

In theory a Twitter conversation can form a contract, in the same way as an email chain etc can. As long as it clearly shows the key elements of a contract (offer, acceptance, consideration) then it should be fine.

However, I agree that it would have been far better to have everything in one document, or even one email clearly setting everything out.

October868

da_rule wrote: »

I’m not saying her claim has any merit either. You can’t be liable to pay for future orders if you haven’t actually placed them or haven’t committed to placing them. You also can’t be liable for consequential losses (i.e. her leaving her job) unless you breached a contract, that breach caused the loss and it was reasonably foreseeable that the breach would cause the loss.

My concern is that you should probably only be seeking £1500.

Also, you realise the judge is going to probably ask you about the content of the videos and may ask to see them? You also realise that the court is open to the public (and press) and recordings are also available? You have therefore potentially opted to put the contents of these videos in the public domain yourself, therefore even if she does release them now/release details of them/you, you have already put the info in the public domain and therefore would have very limited recourse against her.

Hello and thankyou for confirming that.

But yes I never placed any of those future orders, merely said a few times that I would ''ideally like to/be interested in/be looking to'' in future order more clips from her depending on how the 1st order went.

She herself even said (in writing) after she had done the 1st batch of videos, that ''if I wasn't happy with them for any reason she would return the rest of the money and I could just keep the ones I had already recieved''.
There was no 'pre-agreed cancellation policy' when I made the order, but so that quite clear seems to set the precedent of how the cancellation policy was.
(That I could just cancel at any time and recieve a refund of any clips not yet produced).

I also have the arguement in my defence that given that she was entitled to simply decline to produce any videos which she wouldn't of felt comfortable with performing, I ofcourse should then have the identical right to decline to place orders for future videos if I felt comfortable in doing so.

#

In regards to the specific contents of the videos, they were fully & completely legal, the scripts were provided to the defendant inadvance (before money was paid) and she confirmed after reviewing that she was happy to produce the content (thus money was paid based on her confirming that).
So she wasn't 'pressured/forced' in any way to do anything in the videos which she didn't directly confirm & agree to inadvance.

#

I initially created the claim because it's not right that someone can just steal (or rather embezzel) money from someone, make threats to them which breaks previous contracts, and then vanish taking £1,500 of their money.

At this stage though I would be delighted to get just £1,500 of my money back (which is the pre-trial settlement offer that I have made to the defendant).
Would even tbh just be happy to settle for £0 at this stage, as the defendant has spent the past 1-year stating public/and privately to multiple who know me that I'm a paed-ophile... ect, which even though is something that's totally untrue (I even previously showed the judge my enhanced DBS showing I have no record at all), simply mere false allegations/rumours about things like that do completely crush & destroy lives!
So I just want my life back now tbh, no longer even care about the money.