“No way this “fine” can stand up in court.”
I’m not an attorney, but I sometimes play on one Free Republic. I suspect this would be a matter of contract law. If you sign on for it, then they can do it. They probably wouldn’t have done this if their attorneys didn’t sign off on it.
I have been involved in a number of lawsuits, through no choice of my own. Here’s how it works, assuming you aren’t a protected class where the government pays your bills. At the time you’d meet with an attorney, and he’d tell you if you had a case and he’d estimate your chances. Then he’d give you all the warnings, like it doesn’t matter if you have the law on your side as courts often don’t go with precedent or the law. A lawsuit is a crap shoot. He’ll ask for ten thousand down and he’ll call you when he wants more. They charge, depending on the firm, between five hundred and fifteen hundred per hour. At $2500 dollars here’s what I’d expect. It isn’t worth the fight and the annoyed customer will cancel his PayPal and that will be that. This is a win for PayPal even if they lose you.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled thread.
Well said!
Everything you say is true but l bet if someone got “fined” for speech someone like Landmark Legal would take the case pro bono.