Hi /legaladvice!
Before I start, I read the rule in the wiki about not being able to help people write contacts/documents, and I'm not sure if this applies to not being able to answer questions about having received contracts/documents and asked to sign them. If I was mistaken, and this is also not allowed, or is supposed to be submitted to /legaladviceofftopic (this is not an hypothetical, these are questions about an existing contract), then I appologise.
Also a disclaimer: I have literally zero knowledge about USA law, so please excuse me if I make any assumptions that are blatantly wrong.
I'm a citizen/resident of The Netherlands, and have received the request from a company in California, USA to sign an NDA subject to information exchanged in certain conversations between us (both in the past few weeks and yet to come). To be clear: I'm not an employee or independent contractor for this company and Californian law applies to this contract/agreement, not Dutch law.
This is the first time I'm asked to sign a contract that's international as this one is, and one thing has worried me: There's a sentence in the contract that says that if any action or proceeding should arise out of this agreement, it shall be determined by binding arbitration in the State of California, County of Los Angeles following the provisions of the American Arbitration Association.
Normally this would not worry me, I'm familiar with sentences like these for Dutch contracts, that disputes will be settled in a court in X city in The Netherlands. Defending myself in those cases would mean, in the worst case, two tenners for public transport and a lawyer if it's serious. And as far as I am aware, the courts in the Netherlands could, in cases where the defendant is proven clearly in the right, require the plaintiff to pay the majority of court expenses and even expenses the defendant has made.
However, as this is a contract under Californian law, I'm in unexplored waters. My worry is that, should a conflict arise, I'd be forced to make a lot of expenses to be able to defend myself or to witness for a case that I'm not the defendant of. Obviously I wouldn't enter in an NDA if I were intending to leak information after I've signed it, but my issue is that I know multiple people will have this information and will have signed the same or simmilar NDA, some of which are employees of the company, I don't know how many, some of which are in the same group I'm in, which is not a big group.
I'm not sure what would happen if information were to leak and what the default proceedings would look like, but worst case scenario in my mind is that if anyone in this unknown size of a group of people, none of which I actually know beyond the internet, happens to leak information, they sue everybody under the NDA, or sue certain people and request everybody else to witness for the cases.
My concrete questions, starting with one that's obviously 'yes' in my mind, but just to be sure:

• Should information leak by anyone (not me), could this immediately result in a suit against me, without any third party investigation prior to that?
• Should information leak by anyone (not me), could this result in me being forced to witness for a binding arbitration court, or could I refuse that? (there's no language to this effect in the NDA)
• Would binding arbitration courts allow me to attend by any means other than traveling to LA (like video call or voice call), especially considering my situation (1000+ dollars of travel and accomodation expenses)
• What would be normal punishments for breaching NDA's? Fines, prison, damages? Is there a maximum?
• Is binding arbitration a normal way of settling things like this? Is it someting to be wary of?
• An unrelated question, but perhaps important: Are there any common pitfalls in the language in NDA's you know about or have encountered, and I should make sure to avoid?
• In the case of Dutch people reading this: Do you have any recommendations for free/cheap legal information/advice in The Netherlands, especially international law like this. I already know about 'Het Juridisch Loket' and 'Wetswinkels'

Again, this is my first 'international' contract, so I may be overly cautious/paranoid. I'm sorry if any of the situation I described is vague or rambly, if things are unclear I'll try to edit in corrections as far as I am able to.
Thanks for reading this ramble, and thanks in advance for any information you can provide!

Dear WSB brethren,
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I hate seeing the big players donkey fuck the market when their trades go tits up, and screw over the good guys. We all know that any sort of legal proceedings against Robinhood will go absolutely nowhere except maybe some heavy fines and more regulation that will handcuff retail traders more. If you were affected by Robinhood in anyway, and want to stick them with a big red dildo and go Sheriff Nottingham on them... ARBITRATION!
​
Judicial Arbitration and Mediation Services (JAMS) used to mandate Class-Action arbitration. Then in 2005, Big Tech arranged to remove that caveat so they could do super shady shit (and save on legal fees). It's pure idiocy, but it helps us out.
Read more here: https://www.dltlaw.com/alerts/jams-revises-procedures-on-class-wide-arbitration/
​
Here is Robinhoods User Agreement (Please screen grab this yourselves as companies have been known to modify it in the wake of arbitration proceedings..Patreon i'm looking at you) :

1. Arbitration.

​
A. This Agreement contains a pre-dispute arbitration clause. By signing an arbitration agreement, the parties agree as follows: (1) All parties to this Agreement are giving up the right to sue each other in court, including the right to a trial by jury, except as provided by the rules of the arbitration forum in which a claim is filed. (2) Arbitration awards are generally final and binding; a party's ability to have a court reverse or modify an arbitration award is very limited. (3) The ability of the parties to obtain documents, witness statements and other discovery is generally more limited in arbitration than in court proceedings. (4) The arbitrators do not have to explain the reason(s) for their award unless, in an eligible case, a joint request for an explained decision has been submitted by all parties to the panel at least 20 days prior to the first scheduled hearing date. (5) The panel of arbitrators will typically include a minority of arbitrators who were or are affiliated with the securities industry. (6) The rules of some arbitration forums may impose time limits for bringing a claim in arbitration. In some cases, a claim that is ineligible for arbitration may be brought in court. (7) The rules of the arbitration forum in which the claim is filed, and any amendments thereto, shall be incorporated into this Agreement. B. Any controversy or claim arising out of or relating to this Agreement, any other agreement between Me and Robinhood, any Account(s) established hereunder, any transaction therein, shall be settled by arbitration in accordance with the rules of FINRA Dispute Resolution, Inc. ("FINRA DR"). I agree to arbitrate any controversy or claim before FINRA DR in the State of California. C. This agreement to arbitrate constitutes a waiver of the right to seek a judicial forum unless such a waiver would be void under the federal securities laws. If I am a foreign national, non-resident alien, or if I do not reside in the United States, I agree to waive My right to file an action against Robinhood in any foreign venue. D. No person shall bring a putative or certified class action to arbitration, nor seek to enforce any pre-dispute arbitration agreement against any person who has initiated in court a putative class action; or who is a member of a putative class who has not opted out of the class with respect to any claims encompassed by the putative class action until: (1) the class certification is denied; or (2) the class is decertified; or (3) the customer is excluded from the class by the court. Such forbearance to enforce an agreement to arbitrate shall not constitute a waiver of any rights under this Agreement except to the extent stated herein.
​
This is where it gets good... California State Law (CCP 1284.3 if your following) states that in arbitration, consumers only pay for the initial filing fee. Robinhood pays all remaining fees.
CCP 1284.3.
"(a) No neutral arbitrator or private arbitration company shall administer a consumer arbitration under any agreement or rule requiring that a consumer who is a party to the arbitration pay the fees and costs incurred by an opposing party if the consumer does not prevail in the arbitration, including, but not limited to, the fees and costs of the arbitrator, provider organization, attorney, or witnesses."
Full Law:
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=CCP§ionNum=1284.3
​
Other takeaway there is that FINRA has no rules to declare a arbitration "frivolous". The right to file is protected by the Federal Arbitration Act, and favorable Supreme Court rulings protecting filings as well.
https://www.finra.org/arbitration-mediation/printable-code-arbitration-procedure-12000#12214.
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If the millions of Robinhood users were to file for arbitration, they could not do it as a class action per California State Law. They MUST file individually. Robinhood would have to pay for arbitration individually. This would cost them hundreds of millions of dollars, and there's nothing they can do about it. They took money out of your pocket so now take money out of theirs.
​
Respectfully signed,
A stupid retail trader
​
​
TL;DR
*Robinhood User Agreement has a gaping hole in it. If you were financially harmed by their fuckery, file for arbitration.
*State law prohibits class-action arbitration
*Robinhood pays all costs except filing fees
*Maybe you win and get tendies.
*This could cost them a metric fuckton of money
*Apes Strong Together
​
Disclaimer; I am not a lawyer. This is not legal advice. Consult with a lawyer before you any take legal action.
Positions: GME til I die/ Purple Gang
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PS I miss you u/fuzzyblankeet Please come back

The UEFA Club Licensing and Financial Fair Play Regulations (CLFFPR) places huge importance on the financial stability of clubs. In order to play in UEFA-sponsored competitions, clubs have to break-even on aggregate over the monitoring period. But what exactly does this mean?
Let's understand this by way of an example: Juventus FC have qualified for the UEFA Champions League (UCL) for the 2020/21 season having won the Serie A. For Juventus to apply for the UCL License under the CLFFPR, the club has to break even on aggregate over the duration of three seasons: the 2019/20 season, the 2018/19 season, and the 2017-18 season.
These individual time periods are known as reporting periods, which UEFA conveniently categorizes as T, T-1, and T-2.
The algebraic sum of relevant income and relevant expenses is the break-even result. If you want to calculate over the entire monitoring period, you merely add the break-even results of each reporting period, at which point a positive number will result in a surplus aggregate break-even result and a negative number will result in a deficit aggregate break-even result.
The acceptable deficit under the UEFA regime is €5 million. It can be extended up to €30 million if the excess spending is entirely covered by contributions from equity participants or Related Parties.
Related Parties - The PSG Story
The UEFA does not recognize all contributions as permissible. A gift deed from an equity participant or Related Party is a permissible transaction- provided that such a gift deed does not require the recipient club to repay the gift amount. Another such permissible transaction is a debt waiver where an equity participant can simply waive off the debt owed by the club.
Both these transactions have one thing in common:- there is an influx of excess money not earned as revenue. If such money is then spent towards the expenses of clubs, then an additional €30 million is waived off by UEFA towards the break-even calculation.
But who exactly is a Related Party?
When determining a Related Party transaction, emphasis is to be placed on two things: (a) the legal relationship between the parties, and (b) the substance of the relationship between the parties.
The substance of the relationship signifies the qualitative relationship between the parties. The International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) shares this sentiment too.
For example, a Related Party in the football industry will be someone who holds "control or joint control over the club", or holds "significant influence" in the club. Maybe he is part of the key managerial personnel in the club's parent company- in both these cases, the individual or body corporate will be considered a related party. (Note: This list is not exhaustive).
UEFA also regulates the assessment of Related Party Transactions (RPT)'s, requiring the transaction to be made at fair value. The UEFA Financial Fair Play (FFP) Regulations have followed the traditional definition of the International Accounting Standard to define fair value. The definition goes something like this: “Fair value is the amount for which an asset could be exchanged, or a liability settled, between knowledgeable willing parties in an arms-length transaction".
Since FFP has made breaking even for clubs compulsory, clubs have been forced to inflate their revenue streams. One such method is inflating revenue through related party sponsorship agreements.
In 2014, Paris Saint Germain (PSG) did just that. PSG is owned by Oryx Qatar Sports Investment (QSI),- a fund led by Nasser Al-Khelaifi and supported by the Qatari Government. In 2013, Nasser Al-Khelaifi was appointed as Minister in the Qatar government by the Emir of Qatar Sheikh Tamim. Now, Mr. Nasser happens to be childhood friends with the Crown Prince of Qatar- Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani.
QSI is a subsidiary of the Qatar Investment Authority and is the sports business wing of the Qatari Government. In 2012, the QSI-owned PSG entered into a sponsorship agreement with Qatar backed Qatar Tourism Authority. The sponsorship agreement would see PSG receive €200 million over the following four seasons.
If we break down the definition of “Related Party”, we can see a few themes emerge: - (a) control or joint control over the club; (b) significant influence by the same government; or (c) significant influence by a body corporate or individual.
In the PSG case, QSI and the Qatar Tourism Authority were both managed by the Qatari Government and had entered into a sponsorship agreement, making it a related party transaction. The UEFA Club Financial Control Body (CFCB) shared the same sentiment categorizing the transaction as "financial doping".
The CFCB found the value of €200 million annually for the sponsorship was not the “fair value”. While re-evaluating the value of the sponsorship, the CFCB found PSG’s revenue did not meet or exceed their expenses and therefore was in violation of the break-even analysis.
What Next?
Concealing sponsorship revenues as disguised equity contributions are becoming the norm. Manchester City (MCFC) too did something like this - but that's a story for another day. For now, let's just say it's hard for UEFA to separate the equity amount from the actual revenue amount.
So what is the obligation on the licensee club?
The CLFPRR is pretty clear on this: "The club (licensee) “must disclose the nature of the related party relationship, as well as information about those transactions and outstanding balances, including commitments, necessary for an understanding of the potential effect of the relationship on the financial statements,” and also details about transactions and commitments with each related party.
Annex X of the CLFFPR states that licensees must determine the fair value of any RPT,- If the estimated fair value is different from the recorded value then the relevant income must be adjusted accordingly. It is worth noting that Annex X, much like the IASB, places emphasis on the substance of the related party relationship.
One of the main issues regarding the CLFPRR and RPT regime is the punishment meted out to offenders. For example, in the PSG case discussed above, the punishment imposed on the club was completely monetary in nature. From a legal standpoint, this does little to deter clubs of such stature.
In such cases, wealthy clubs like PSG and MCFC will simply factor in the monetary fine into the cost of doing business, rendering FFP completely ineffective. That is not the objective of the FFP or the UEFA. At least that's what it says on paper.
The reality though is a whole other story…
If you've read it this far, please consider subscribing to Weekend Beer- A weekly newsletter on the business and money of football.

How to join our class action Please e-mail us at [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]) or go to our website at classactionlawsuitrobinhood.com
I e-mailed you and joined, what are my next steps We will get back to your e-mail ASAP. Rest assured, if you e-mailed us and asked to join, then you will be a class member. We are responding to every e-mail as quickly as possible. Please prepare a short description of what platform you used, what stock you tried to buy/sell, what losses you experienced/what amount of loss, and a short explanation of what happened to you specifically. Please also hold onto to any documentation/evidence that you have, ie screenshots. We will reach out to you when we need this information.
Who is eligible to join? Anyone who lost money on trades or was deprived of realizing gain or calling on an option is eligible to join. Anyone that held one or more of the thirteen affected stocks ($AAL, $AMC, $BB, $BBBY, $CTRM, $EXPR, $GME, $KOSS, $NAKD, $NOK, $SNDL, $TR, $TRVG) from January 12 and onward is eligible. It is not limited to buying and selling, it includes those who held it and purchased options. You are eligible to join if you live in a different state. You are also eligible if you live in a different country, as this is an international class action.
Can I join more than one class action? You can only join one class action relating to the same incident.
Do I have to actively join the class action or will I automatically be included? It is better if every individual joins, because there are at least 30 other class actions against RH. Usually it's just one class action so no joining is necessary. This is a different situation than usual, with 30 class actions, so we need people to join.
Why join a class action instead of suing individually / doing private arbitration A class action is far superior to an individual action because the fees in a class action are far lower. In an individual action, the fees would either be on an hourly rate of around $600 to $1,000 per hour (which could end up amounting to several or tens of thousands of dollars per month because there may well be several attorneys in one firm working on the case, so each hour may amount to three or four times the main attorneys' hourly fee) or on a contingent fee basis of somewhere in the 45% range to as much as 50% depending on the attorney, or quite possibly a combination of an hourly rate and a contingency fee component. There may very well also be an upfront non-refundable fee of perhaps $15,000 to $25,000 to $50,000 for costs.
Why join a class action instead of going through small claims Small claims is not the best option, because if you lose the case then it is over . You cannot do an appeal.
Will I only get $4, $32, $100, etc These are not small cases where the prize for each individual is small. These are shareholder cases or call option cases where the stakes are high - in the thousands of dollars each case or even millions of dollars for some cases. So don’t compare this class action to a Subway tuna sandwich case or a defective product case where the settlement check is $100. Each of these cases are at a minimum are worth thousands of dollars. We will do everything we can to recoup everyone's financial losses.
If a lawyer really wanted to help, they would do the class action lawsuit for 5% - 10% fees, or no commission at all Attorneys have businesses to run with overhead and associates and staff. We have 14 employees and families to support. This case will likely take hundreds of hours to litigate. The fees are determined by the court at a maximum of 25% in federal court and scrupulous scrutiny or costs.
What are Gary Carlin's qualifications Gary Carlin has been practicing law for 50+ years. He is AV Preeminent rated which is the highest possible rating, is a Lawyer of Distinction, has testified as an expert witness, and he has served as a Judge Pro Tem. His law firm has recovered hundreds of millions of dollars for his clients, including millions in class actions. He has sued stock brokers, banks, and many financial service companies and owns his own portfolio of stocks etc. He was a State Bar Referee for over six years, and there were many cases involving attorneys having issues with financial service companies and complex litigation. He was also a Compensated Referee on complex and lengthy cases and on the Review Dept as well on a nine attorney panel that made recommendations to the CA Supreme Court.
What about RH's TOS where they prohibit class action lawsuits We strongly believe that the so-called mandatory arbitration clause and class action waiver clause violate public policy, given that the defendants were engaged in market manipulation and acted against the interest of the shareholders / everyday investors. The TOS will not stand. They cannot rely on their contracts since they breached them multiple times and lost the right to enforce their agreements.
Will there eventually be one big class action / merger Right now there are 30 class actions all over the country. Several are in California, New York, Illinois, Texas. etc. Some will merge in separate states or regions, and some will not merge depending on their size. That will be decided later usually based on economics or familiarity with each other through the lawyers. That is not a concern in the infancy of the case.
source

In theory an eTransfer is irreversible. In practice, however, banks can reverse the transfer if an account is considered breached. This can be exploited in a few ways:

• Someone purchases bitcoin and then claims to their bank that their account was breached. This of course would be fraud, and would likely be caught if they tried to pull it off multiple times. The bank knows who they are, etc... However, there's a good chance someone could do this once, maybe even once per bank, especially if less money is taken.
• Someone hacks into the bank account of another person. Many of these legacy banking systems have reasonably low security, some even use "usernames" or "email address" so if someone reused a password or used a weak password there might not even be validation on the transfer. There are also remote key logging, malware, etc... which could be used.
• Someone is extorted to make the eTransfer via physical threat, or somehow a sophisticated spear phish is carried out to trick them to make a payment, etc...

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If someone is selling bitcoin for an eTransfer payment, they run that risk. In this event, in addition to losing the received funds, I've read stories of people having bank account frozen or flagged, etc... simply for being the recipient of the eTransfer funds. The bitcoin, of course, is fully irreversible.
​
BISQ has some unique security/fraud reduction mechanisms as I understand them:

• Both parties have to put in a deposit which is close to the transaction value.
• Accounts are limited in their trading volume until they're 30 days old.
• Mediation/arbitration that I believe only can rule to send all deposits to a donation address now. It's hard to wrap my head around the whole process.

​
I'm trying to assess the realistic/practical level of risk on the BISQ platform in particular. I understand people have been scammed on other platforms, and I did find one case on BISQ from 2019:
https://bisq.community/t/interac-etransfer-chargeback-in-canada/7480/34
however I have not found a case involving BISQ since that point. And the article linked references eTransfers being disabled at that time and multiple suggested improvements to the protocol.
I did find some others asking on these posts:
https://www.reddit.com/BitcoinCA/comments/8yb0zt/is_selling_bitcoin_via_etransfer_on_bisq_secure/
https://www.reddit.com/bisq/comments/a3ezha/how_come_interac_etransfer_is_accepted_for_canada/
However, none mention an actual case of it occurring on BISQ.
​
I'm curious if anyone here has used BISQ to sell bitcoin and been scammed or defrauded by an Interac ETransfer payment. Thanks a lot!

Please sign this petition to let the government know it's not acceptable to appoint someone with a history of sexual assault to the courts
http://chng.it/dx8DgpSXS2
Magistrate Habte Worku is a Magistrate of the courts in Toronto Ontario
Shortly before his appointment he was fired from his job with the Ontario Government's Insurance commission as a government mediator after an investigation revealed he sexually assaulted an insurance agent and made sexually inappropriate remarks to a coworker. This was taken to arbitration where he was found to have committed the sex assault, the case documents can be found at this link from the Canadian Legal Information Institute:
https://www.canlii.org/en/on/ongsb/doc/2000/2000canlii20561/2000canlii20561.html?searchUrlHash=AAAAAQALaGFidGUgd29ya3UAAAAAAQ&resultIndex=1
The government was aware of this when they appointed him to the court, and they even reference his time as a government mediator as his qualification for the job.
news of his appointment here
https://news.ontario.ca/archive/en/2007/03/11/attorney-general-announces-seven-justice-of-the-peace-appointments.html
Please support this petition to let the government know with a history of sex assault should not be appointed to the bench.
petition is here
http://chng.it/dx8DgpSXS2

Hi -- I have a call in with a lawyer tomorrow, but thought I'd ask here as well for any advice.
I live in CA. My mom is selling a commercial building and the sale ended up not working out. We were in a stalemate with the buyer for about 2 years, and then finally the buyer agreed to sign the cancellation documents in exchange for $25,000. We thought this was the best case scenario so we agreed.
My mom let the real estate agent know and then received a slew of angry emails asking why she settled rather than going through arbitration. There is a clause in our contract that states that if we receive any kind of damages, the real estate agent gets a cut. I'm sure this is why he was angry.
My mom asked the escrow company to prepare the cancellation documents, and the real estate agent immediately responded saying that their lawyer is preparing to sue the escrow company if they cancel the contract without their approval. My mom spoke with the real estate agent directly, and the real estate agent is saying they need to compensated or they will continue blocking the cancellation and threatening to sue. What compensation could there possibly be when the sale fell through? They are asking for $10,000 or they will not allow the cancellation to move forward. How can that be possible?
I have all of this in writing and strongly suspect that even if it is not illegal, it is unethical and worth writing to the department of real estate.
Any advice is appreciated.
Thanks!

Please support this petition to let the government know with a history of sex assault should not be appointed to the courts
http://chng.it/QjHfgwtyrK
Magistrate Habte Worku is a Magistrate of the courts in Toronto Ontario.
Shortly before his appointment he was fired from his job with the Ontario Government's Insurance commission as a government mediator after an investigation revealed he sexually assaulted an insurance agent and made sexually inappropriate remarks to a coworker. This was taken to arbitration where he was found to have committed the sex assault, the case documents can be found at this link from the Canadian Legal Information Institute:
https://www.canlii.org/en/on/ongsb/doc/2000/2000canlii20561/2000canlii20561.html?searchUrlHash=AAAAAQALaGFidGUgd29ya3UAAAAAAQ&resultIndex=1
The government was aware of this when they appointed him to the court, and they even reference his time as a government mediator as his qualification for the job. You can find the link here
https://news.ontario.ca/archive/en/2007/03/11/attorney-general-announces-seven-justice-of-the-peace-appointments.html
Please support this petition to let the government know with a history of sex assault should not be appointed to the bench. Once again the online petition can be found here
http://chng.it/QjHfgwtyrK

Please support this petition to let the government know with a history of sex assault should not be appointed to the courts
http://chng.it/QjHfgwtyrK
Magistrate Habte Worku is a Magistrate of the courts in Ontario.
Shortly before his appointment he was fired from his job with the Government's Insurance commission as a government mediator after an investigation revealed he sexually assaulted an insurance agent and made sexually inappropriate remarks to a coworker. This was taken to arbitration where he was found to have committed the sex assault, the case documents can be found at this link from the Canadian Legal Information Institute:
https://www.canlii.org/en/on/ongsb/doc/2000/2000canlii20561/2000canlii20561.html?searchUrlHash=AAAAAQALaGFidGUgd29ya3UAAAAAAQ&resultIndex=1
The government was aware of this when they appointed him to the court, and they even reference his time as a government mediator as his qualification for the job. You can find the link here
https://news.ontario.ca/archive/en/2007/03/11/attorney-general-announces-seven-justice-of-the-peace-appointments.html
Please support this petition to let the government know with a history of sex assault should not be appointed to the bench. Once again the online petition can be found here
http://chng.it/QjHfgwtyrK

Pretty much at wits end here. Here's what happened:
1) Sold a Garmin Fenix watch on Ebay for $690 to a buyer with an account opened end of September 2020 with no feedback. I'm a top rated seller with perfect 900+ feedback, 10+ year old account.
2) Buyer claims the box was empty on receipt
3) I contact buyer twice for more information, he does not respond.
4) eBay rules in buyers favor, takes $690 from my account. Found out later that he is also using an address that has been reported multiple times for mail fraud and eBay scams. I appeal but eBay say's buyer filed a "police report" so they have to rule in their favor.
5) Managed to get a copy of the police report from eBay. It is obviously fake. The police department doesn't exist, the address is of an empty residential building on zillow, and the phone leads to a voicemail that says "You have dialed police department" in an Eastern European accent. https://imgur.com/xCk9uuj
6) Tried to file an appeal and get denied again, they claim that they determined the "police report" was legitimate.
I tried to contact them via twitter, tried multiple times through the phone, and via email. Anyone have any idea what I can do? Does anyone have an experience with small claims or arbitration against ebay?
TL:DR : Buyer submits obviously fake police report to eBay, eBay claims it is legitimate and uses it to steal $690 from me.
Update 10/23. Apparently my local PD (Irvine, CA, not exactly short on resources) doesn't take police reports for online cases. They also cannot certify that police reports are fake. They referred me to the ic3.gov and I entered my statement there and got receipt. Maybe that will work as proof but I doubt it. Also contacted @askebay via twitter and I'm waiting for a response.
Update 10/27: Contacting them via askebay on Twitter worked (details in post below)

As many others, I've had my account disabled with little option to dispute it other than a never ending loop of submitting forms, photos and copy of IDs. The new terms of service has a section on resolving disputes and I'm wondering if that might be an option for getting someone to at least look at my case. (Sidenote: there's also a section on opting out of terms that make it so you can't bring a class action lawsuit. It has to be mailed in writing within 30 days.)
"Before you commence arbitration of a claim, you must provide us with a written Notice of Dispute that includes your name, residence address, username, email address or phone number you use for your Instagram account, a detailed description of the dispute, and the relief you seek. Any Notice of Dispute you send to us should be mailed to Facebook, Inc., ATTN: Instagram Arbitration Filing, 1601 Willow Rd. Menlo Park, CA 94025. ... If we are unable to resolve a dispute within thirty (30) days after the Notice of Dispute is received, you or we may commence arbitration. We will pay all arbitration filing fees, administration and hearing costs, and arbitrator fees for any arbitration we bring or if your claims seek less than $75,000 and you timely provided us with a Notice of Dispute. For all other claims, the costs and fees of arbitration shall be allocated in accordance with the arbitration provider's rules, including rules regarding frivolous or improper claims."

Please support this petition to let the government know with a history of sex assault should not be appointed to the courts
http://chng.it/QjHfgwtyrK
Magistrate Habte Worku is a Magistrate of the courts.
Shortly before his appointment he was fired from his job with the Government's Insurance commission as a government mediator after an investigation revealed he sexually assaulted an insurance agent and made sexually inappropriate remarks to a coworker. This was taken to arbitration where he was found to have committed the sex assault, the case documents can be found at this link from the Canadian Legal Information Institute:
https://www.canlii.org/en/on/ongsb/doc/2000/2000canlii20561/2000canlii20561.html?searchUrlHash=AAAAAQALaGFidGUgd29ya3UAAAAAAQ&resultIndex=1
The government was aware of this when they appointed him to the court, and they even reference his time as a government mediator as his qualification for the job. You can find the link here
https://news.ontario.ca/archive/en/2007/03/11/attorney-general-announces-seven-justice-of-the-peace-appointments.html
Please support this petition to let the government know with a history of sex assault should not be appointed to the bench. Once again the online petition can be found here
http://chng.it/QjHfgwtyrK

So yesterday in my post about the Yuna Kim-Brian Orser split back in 2010, I mentioned the 2014 judging outcry in the ladies' singles event at the Sochi Olympics, and some people asked me to write about it. Since I am also excited to spill the tea and have time today, here it is!
Disclaimer that while sources on this are much easier to find than the previous drama I wrote about, I also wasn't in the fandom while this went down in 2014, having only joined much more recently. Any facts I got wrong, please do correct me!
Let's get into the 2014 Sochi Olympics Judging Scandal at the ladies' singles event, where 17-year-old Adelina Sotnikova of Russia won the title of Olympic Champion over Yuna Kim of South Korea, undisputed star of skating, causing outcry from everyone except seemingly the Russians.

Who is Yuna Kim?

As I mentioned in my previous post, Queen Yuna really needs no introduction, but anyway: Yuna Kim, called "Queen Yuna" by both fans and media, is the 2010 Olympic Champion, 2009 and 2013 World Champion, and the 2014 Olympic Silver Medalist which is what this scandal revolves around. She focuses more on her ice show, exhibitions and media career, having retired after this whole drama I'm writing about went down. In her time, she was an amazing trailblazer for Figure Skating in South Korea, which is traditionally stronger in speed skating. Iirc, she had already said that she plans on retiring after the 2014 Olympics before it happened.
Arriving in Sochi in 2014, Yuna was definitely the most famous skater competing at the time, her fame only grown since she won the 2010 Olympics four years prior. She was the icon of figure skating, the skater to watch. She was like the Michelle Kwan of her time with David Beckham kind of fame; even people who didn't watch the sport knew her. Her fans were worldwide and extensive. Coming into Sochi like that, she was definitely front-runner for the Gold, despite her career in the past four years being filled with several breaks from competition.

Who is Adelina Sotnikova?

Adelina Sotnikova is the 2014 Olympic Champion aged 17 and two-time Europeans Silver Medalist (2013, 2014). Adelina, being 17, had not been competing on the senior level for long and had never won a major senior competition before the 2014 Olympics, and it should be noted that the European Championship where she won her two silvers is considered not as prestigious as other competitions such as the World Championships or Grand Prix Final. She was, however, hailed as one of Russia's two newest lady skating stars with Yulia Lipnitskaya, both of them young (17 and 15 years old) and with time to grow.
Going into Sochi in 2014, the first thing you'd probably notice is that Adelina has home-ground advantage, which will come into play later. After her silver medal at the 2014 European Championship around a month before the Olympics, she was mostly considered a possible contender for Bronze, if that, but the majority of people instead saw her teammate Yulia as the greater potential medalist, as she had a silver medal from the Grand Prix Final that season and had won the European Championships that year over Adelina.

Build-Up: The Sochi Olympics and politicking in Figure Skating

So now that I've introduced you to our main players, I need to give context on several other things in order to understand what happened going into Sochi:
**The Figure Skating Scoring System (IJS)**
In 2002, a scandal in the Olympic pairs event (which needs a whole other post to describe) resulted in a complete overhaul of the judging system that while, in my opinion, is more objective compared to the old ranking system that was the 6.0 system, is also harder for the casual fan to understand. In order to understand many of the arguments later made, however, you need a basic understanding of the scoring system (now know as the IJS).
This is a link to an excellent in-depth guide, but I'll summarise it here: In all international competitions, there are two segments: the short program, and the free program. They differ only in limitations on jumps done, and time limit (the free is longer and is more, well, free of restrictions), but the way they are scored is the same. Skaters get individual scores for their short and free programs, which add up to make their total score. So say, if a skater is 9th in the short program, they can still finish 3rd overall by doing amazingly in the free while everyone else falters; which is how Denis Ten of Kazakhstan won a historic Olympic Bronze in the men's event that year as well (RIP, Denis; We'll always miss you).
Each segment's score has two components: technical score (TES) and performance score (PCS). So a skater's total score can further be broken down into short program TES + short program PCS + free program TES + free program PCS.
Technical Score (TES) judges the difficulty of a skater's program, split into Base Value (BV), which is sort of the difficulty of the program planned, and Grade of Execution (GOE), aka how well did the skater do her program. GOE scores range from -3 to +3. It's therefore possible to have a harder program score lower than a easier one if the harder program has worse GOEs. The thing to note is that while BV is fixed to the type of jumps etc done, GOE is decided by a panel of nine judges giving scores and taking the average, and therefore is one of the more subjective parts of scoring. This will be noteworthy during the event.
Performance score (PCS) judges the artistic side of the skater's program, split into five categories such as performance and interpretation of the music. Each of the nine judges will give a score out of ten, with increments of 0.25, which is also averaged. This means PCS is also one of the more subjective parts of scoring.
Judges at international competition, especially the Olympics, come from all over the globe but mostly from the big skating federations like Russia, Japan, the USA etc. In 2014, judging was completely anonymous, so we didn't know which judge gave what score. We were, however, given the names of the judges, so it's easy enough to figure out everyone's nationality and make guesses based on GOEs and PCS (I mean judges always tend to be more lenient to their own skaters. Normally though, a small range of GOEs is expected because what judges consider good execution may differ slightly, that's what the average is for).
Politicking in Figure Skating
Figure Skating is, unfortunately known for politicking, especially when two major components of scores (GOE and PCS) are so subjective. The "big three" of Skating Federations is traditionally Russia (FFKK), Canada (Skate Canada), and the USA (USFSA). In recent years, however, more federations have grown and become more powerful, such as Japan (JFS) and China (CSA) as more and more prominent skaters come from there. Coming from a bigger federation tends to give you a boost in both PCS and GOE, because, well, politicking. I've never gotten a straight answer from anyone on why, but that is the trend often seen: skaters from big feds tend to have an advantage, not just in funding.
Adelina, being from Russia, has two huge advantages in this scoring system: One, she's Russian, so she gets generous PCS and GOE; two, she's skating on home-ground, where seemingly more judges are from the hosting country. You can imagine how that's an advantage.
Yuna, as famous as she is, also tends to get high PCS and GOE, although imo she actually does deserve those high scores. Coming from a smaller fed that is South Korea (I did mention she was their trailblazer right), skating in Russia means many Russian judges will want to have a Russian champion.
It's important to note, however, that such politicking is almost never on the skater's end; it's not like there's cases of skaters bribing the judges all the time. It's the sort of subtle politics that goes on between the judges and the skaters' federations.
Home-ground advantage
2014's Sochi Olympics had, imo, one of the worst audiences ever seen at the Olympics. In this video of Yuzuru Hanyu's world record-breaking short program over in the men's event, you can hear the audience shouting "ROSSIYA" before his skate, and although I don't have video receipts, I'm told this happened to Yuna as well. Skating on home-ground means Adelina has her fair share of fans in the audience all rooting for a Russian champion. While this can mean the pressure is on to win, causing some skaters to buckle, it can also mean huge support for a skater.
While Yulia was the favourite of the Russians, it doesn't mean Adelina didn't also receive support. Russia had never won Olympic Gold in the ladies event before this, and so despite supporting Yulia more, both Adelina and Yulia received much support from the Russians. This also does influence PCS scores slightly; judges are only human and getting the audience on your side should give you a boost in performance marks.

The Controversy: Scoring

God I don't even know how to explain this, so lemme just throw out both scores from the 2014 ladies' singles event and the world-records at the time to compare, then break it down slowly.

Skater	Short Score	World Record at the time	Free Score	World Record at the time	Total Score
Yuna	74.92	78.50	144.19	150.06	219.11
Adelina	74.64		149.95		224.59

As we can see, Adelina scored a good five points ahead of Yuna in a sport where medals can be decided based on 0.01 of a point, and won the Olympic Gold. It's also noteworthy that she her free skate is within 0.09 points of Yuna's own standing world record from the 2010 Olympics, and that her short program is only a hair away of Yuna's score.
Immediate. Fan. Outcry.
Debates rages on how this could have happened; how could the Queen have lost to a skater who has never previously won a senior level competition before, who isn't even the favourite in her home country? How did Adelina even score a score within 0.09 of the world record when her last competition's score (at the European Championships) was around 130?
Responses range between fans; fans of Adelina (largely Russians) are, of course, overjoyed; fans of Yuna are outraged. At least 1.5million fans sign a petition calling for an inquiry, blog posts and youtube videos are made analysing every single GOE and PCS point given to each skater, and generally the skating world goes apeshit. I highly recommend this video of the Italian Commentators being absolutely pissed when Yuna's results are announced, to the point that they nearly forgot their own Carolina Kostner's historic Bronze Medal. (Thank you to u/bubbled_pop for the link in my previous posts' comments, I've never seen the full thing before and it's amazing and hilarious)
In the aftermath of all this, it's hard to narrow down exactly the arguments made for and against the judging, but I'll split it up and try to work my way down. This is where you should revise the scoring system summary I wrote above, because here's where it comes into play.
For Yuna
Honestly, after reading this section, it's pretty convincing that Adelina's scores were pretty inflated (through most likely no fault of her own, mind), but try and keep an open mind:
One, a whole bunch of shade was cast on the judging panel, not without good cause. This video breaks it down quite well, but I'll summarise:
Two of the judges in the free skate had some shady pasts, one Russian and one Ukrainian. Yuri Balkov of Ukraine and Alla Shekhovtseva of Russia had some major red flags to their names. Shekhovtseva is the wife of the longtime president and general director of the Russian Skating Federation, and Balkov had previosuly been suspended for a year for being caught on tape fixing results of the ice dancing events in the 1998 Nagano Olympics and reportedly has ties to Moscow. Also, the technical panel head that day was Russian Alexander Lakernik, who is essentially in charge of spotting major execution mistakes such as edge calls that incur additional deduction from a skater's score. In short, three judges have ties to Russia and a reason to fight for a Russian champion. Many speculate that after Russian favourite Yulia fell in her free skate and thus took herself out of the running, the judges were desperate and inflated Adelina's scores to allow her the win. This is supported by how there are some judges on her score card who gave Adelina +3s for nearly everything, even things other judges felt were average +1s at best.
Additionally, the nine judges are picked from a pool of 13. After the short program, judges from South Korea (Yuna's home country), U.S., Great Britain, and Sweden were swapped out for the free skate because they had already worked the short program. "The two other new long program judges were from Estonia and France, which was the country that conspired with Russia to try to fix the pairs and ice dancing competition at the 2002 Olympic Games in Salt Lake City," USA Today reports, according to the article I linked above. Suspicious? So were the fans at the time.
This is not at all helped by pictures of Adelina hugging Shekhovtseva that later emerged, prompting even more conspiracy theories about judging being fixed. It can be argued that it was taken after the competition, initiated by Adelina, and Russian judges would have plenty of reason to hug their first champion in Ladies's singles. This convinced exactly no one.
Two, It's been argued that Adelina's GOEs and PCS were inflated to the max. This is the one thing I actually have substantial receipts on, so let's go! (Also, if I sound tired here, reddit deleted this entire bit twice the first two times I wrote it and I'm rewriting again it half asleep, sorry) There are several articles detailing this section well, but I'll summarise:
Firstly, it must be established that yes, Adelina's performance was more technically difficult, having a higher BV (aka harder program) than Yuna's and was also higher from her performance at the European Championships the month before, mostly due to her increasing the difficulty of the jumps. You can see the scores at the ISU page for the 2014 Olympics, but if you don't understand the jargon, basically Adelina's BV was nearly four points above Yuna's, meaning it's a technically harder program. This is backed up by the fact that Adelina did 7 triple jumps to Yuna's 6 in the free, meaning more points.
The problem, however, comes from her GOEs and PCS, aka the most easily inflated parts of a score, especially if you have judges on your side; and also when you compare Adelina's scores to her competitors that day.
Just at the Olympics alone, Adelina scored 12 points from her GOEs; at her last major competition, the European Championships, she only scored 8 points in GOE. This Video compares Adelina's scores at the TEB, a competition about four months before the Olympics, to her Olympic scores, finding an almost 25-30 inflation of scores split into 4.70 in Short program PCS, 9 points in free program GOE, and 10 points in free program PCS. Although her scores at the European Championships were improvements over TEB after a three month training period between the competitions, a 4-5 increase in GOE in a month is almost unheard of. Additionally, Adelina had several mistakes in her Olympic skate that were not called by the judges, including an edge call on a Lutz jump that would have given her a deduction and negative GOE instead of the +1 GOE she got, and an under-rotated Loop jump that, if called, would also have resulted in deduction. Basically, even with her mistakes, Adelina scored a score way higher than anything she'd ever achieved before.
In PCS, Adelina scored about 74 points at the Olympics, only slightly (like less than 0.50 points) lower than Yuna, and higher than both Carolina Kostner and Mao Asada's scores of about 73 and 69 respectively, aka Adelina's performance quality was better than or on par with all of them, despite all three being known for great performances. Split into categories, Adelina scored higher on skating skills than Yuna and Mao (who is known for great steps and skating skills) and on choreography than Carolina and Yuna, despite many feeling the other two's performances were better, not even mentioning the other three categories. At the European Championships, her PCS was 69, hence in a month, Adelina's performance quality had supposedly improved enough to beat out every other skater known for good performances.
Overall, from the European Championships to the Olympics, Adelina's free program score increased from 131 (a then-season's best) to 149, and her total score from 202 to 224, which just. Doesn't happen unless a skater really screwed up their first competition, and Adelina obviously didn't considering it was a season's best. It's like saying in a month, Adelina's improved on every single thing she did.
Basically, Adelina's score was not only incredibly high with an almost impossible improvement, it also had no reason to beat out not just Yuna, but Bronze Medalist Carolina and 4th place Mao.
For Adelina
That's not to say Adelina doesn't have her own supporters. There are two main arguments that people like to give for Adelina's win:
One, technical ability: Some argue that the technical difficulty, aka the Base Value (BV) of Adelina's planned content was higher due to her executing more triple jumps. According to the score sheets, Adelina's planned jumps and spins content in her free program had seven triple jumps to Yuna's six, and would have already given her an advantage of four points over Yuna, explaining why her final score is four points above Yuna's, assuming they received similar GOE and PCS. The problem with this is actually, as mentioned above, many feel Adelina's PCS and GOE, aka the easily inflated parts of the score, were too high. Additionally, Mao Asada of Japan had eight triple jumps and still scored less than Adelina despite having much better PCS on average.
Two, Yuna's heart wasn't in it. After her 2010 win, Yuna had made some hints of doing all she had wanted to do and was willing to retire, but had been forced by the Korean Federation to continue competing until Sochi. Some people argued that her programs, while still good, were flat and uninspired, thus allowing Adelina to push ahead. Personally, I call bullshit, but that's how figure skating works, I guess; you'll always have people who disagree.
Personally, a lot of those reasons sound like bullshit to me. You can probably guess which side I'm on.
Responses
Whatever the reasons or side you took, the debate raged on. There's a comment I read somewhere by a Yuna fan who was at Sochi for the Olympics about how after Yuna lost gold, there were two Russian girls nearby who saw her crying and made snide remarks while giggling, which generally seems to sum up the Russian fans' response to this, saying Adelina deserved it and rejoicing over their first Olympic gold medal in Ladies' Singles. Tatiana Tarasova (TAT) and Alexei Mishin, two very prominant Russian Coaches take Adelina's side, along with Tara Lipniski, Johnny Weir and Scott Hamilton of the USA, although the last three later change sides after the Olympics. A New York Times article is published detailing how Adelina won.
Meanwhile, Yuna's much bigger fanbase fights back.ESPN's poll shows that 75% of participants think Yuna should have won, and a change.org petition to give Yuna gold breaks several records at the site. #yunawasrobbed starts trending especially in South Korea, where Yuna is a national icon, and unfortunately, many people direct their ire towards Adelina, who is actually probably fairly innocent in this and is not to blame for the judges' bias. Many former-Olympic and competitive skaters throw in their own two cents mostly on Yuna's side, including pratically all commentators in the building that day, Kurt Browning (four-time world champion) and Paul Wylie (1992 Olympic Silver) who couldn't explain how in the hell Adelina's score was so high, Dick Button, an absolute legend in skating as the 1948 and 1952 Olympic Champion, Katerina Witt and so on. See the Wikipedia page for the full list, because it crashed my page for some reason the last time I copied the text in and I'm not doing that again.
To this day this is still a pretty hot topic in the skating community. I've seen some people saying Adelina seemed way too happy at the press conference, handled pointed questions badly and didn't acknowledge how inflated her scores were, but she's 17 and just won the Olympics, I don't think it's fair to degrade her media skills at 17 years old. Yuna, on the other hand, took this all graciously (unlike Evgeni Plushenko in 2010, a whole other drama where he constantly insulted the Gold medalist), accepted her silver medal and retired gracefully, though not without sadness from her fans.
Responses to this drama by official sources are short, but here's a timeline below (Taken mostly from Wikipedia):

1. 21 Feb: the ISU, the international governing body for skating, says that "The ISU has not received any official protest with regard to the Ladies’ Free Skating event or any other event held during the Sochi 2014 Olympic Games and is confident in the high quality and integrity of the ISU judging system." aka all proper rules were carried out and enforced. They also pointed out that judges were from a variety of countries, not just Russia. Additionally, they say that South Korea, at the Olympics, had thirty minutes to contest the scores but did not do so, hence they cannot be appealed that way anymore.
2. 10 Apr: the Korean Olympic Committee (KOC) and the Korean Skating Union (KSU) filed an official complaint with the ISU Disciplinary Commission (DC) concerning judging. The complaint was regarding "the wrongful constitution of the panel of judges and the unjust outcome of the competition". It requested that the DC conduct a thorough investigation, "take appropriate disciplinary actions against the concerned individuals", and institute corrective actions.
3. 14 Apr: the DC ruled the complaint inadmissible because a general request for investigation is not within DC's jurisdiction and the complaint was not addressed at an individual or federation as required.
4. 30 Apr: KOC and KSU filed a second official complaint with the DC. This time the complaint was against Alla Shekhovtsova and Figure Skating Federation of Russia (FSFR), specifically citing the hug Shekhovtsova shared with Sotnikova and Shekhovtsova's marriage to the current Director General of the FSFR.
5. 30 May: the DC dismissed the complaint. It ruled Shekhovtsova "is not responsible for the judging panel's composition", her marriage did not create a conflict of interest, and since Sotnikova initiated the hug, Shekhovtsova did not break any rules by responding.
6. And that's about it. "As of June 2014, the KOC and KSU are considering appealing to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS)" says Wikipedia, but nothing seems to have come out of it.

So yeah, not much help there. The debate rages on, and we'll probably never have any substantial outcome to this.

Aftermath

In the end, no inquiry went through and the medals were not changed. No matter what protests and complaints filed, Yuna kept her silver medal, Adelina kept her gold, and people just had to move on. Nothing short of Adelina somehow being involved in the Russian Doping Scheme will take that medal away from her.
Yuna, as I said in my previous post, moves on. She retires as planned after the 2014 Olympics, taking her silver, her 2010 Olympic gold, all the titles she's amassed over her career (She's never, ever finished off the podium ever, not even while a junior) and the love of all her fans. She now focuses more on her media career, still being one of the most well-known skaters ever, and occasionally shows up randomly at competitions in Korea as a guest of honour to give out hugs and plushies. She also lit the Olympic cauldron at the 2018 Pyeongchang Olympic games. In her career, she did incredible miracles for promoting figure skating as a sport in South Korea, and South Korea's ladies field is now incredibly deep and full of talent, many of them citing Yuna as their inspiration. IMO, She will be known forever as Queen Yuna to her fans, and she seems happy and content enough now.
Adelina, however, was basically ruined by this whole shebang. Adelina imo was a talented skater with great spins who could have had a few years more of competition had this not happened; even winning bronze wouldn't have resulted in such controversy. The YouTube video on the Olympic Channel on her free skate has an absolutely abysmal likes-to-dislikes ratio and people in the comments calling her the thief who stole Yuna's crown; despite the fact it was most likely not her fault her scores were inflated as such, she was the one who (undeservedly imo) earned all the ire and hate of the fans aged 17. After her Olympic win, her career went downhill; after sitting out the 2014 to 2015 skating season due to ligament injury, she was superseded by the next batch of Russian ladies when she returned in the 2015 to 2016 season, which really shows the sad truth of the depth of talent in the current Russian Ladies. After not competing since that season, she finally announced her retirement in 2020, but since 2016 had only been appearing in ice shows anyway. To this day, I only ever see mentions of her when talking about Yuna's loss of the Gold in 2014.
Fans continue to debate long and hard about this result; a not insignificant of the English-speaking fandom seems to favour Yuna and likes putting down Adelina, although many others, while supporting Yuna, are much more sympathetic to Adelina which is where I fall on this scale. While I do agree and will scream to the high heavens that Yuna deserved the Gold, it's extremely sad to me that it also caused Adelina's downhill career when she herself probably played barely any part in her inflated scores (It's not like she asked them to make it higher). In this scandal, there were truly no winners.

To prevent players from merely walking out on clubs, FIFA issued guidelines stating that, in its view, the expiry date of June 30 was intended by all parties to mean “the end of the season”. Covid-19 Football Regulatory issues guideline suggest in Article 18 Paragraph 2:

Where an agreement is due to expire at the original end date of a season, such expiry be extended until the new end date of the season.

That is to say, June 30 is interchangeable with "end of the season".
In a well written article by Sports Law expert John Mehrzad QC, he states:

The June 30 cut-off has come up in numerous player-related contracts I have looked at over recent months, including one that provided that, “If a bid for the player comes in before the end of the season, which is at this sum or above, the club is obliged to accept it.”
The club thought that clause automatically expired on June 30 because that was when the season had been scheduled to end when the contract was agreed by the parties. Of course, that was not what happened in reality. When a bid was submitted to the club in July at the threshold sum, the club said, “No, this clause isn’t triggered”. However, because the clause was drafted on the occurrence of a particular event – “before the end of the season” – the player was able to argue successfully that the clause was still in effect and had been triggered. That then allowed the player to leave for a relatively modest transfer fee well below their market value.

He concludes that if Messi's contract states June 30, Messi has a weak case. If it stipulates "end of the season", then Messi's case is strong.
​
La Liga officially stated that Messi still has a contract in force until 2021 and that the only way for Messi to leave is through his 700m buy-out clause. They referred to Article 16 of Royal Decree 1006/1985, which regulates the special employment relationship of professional athletes, stating:

“The termination of the contract by the will of the professional sportsman without cause attributable to the club, shall confer entitlement to the Club to a compensation that in absence of agreement, will be fixed by the Labor Jurisdiction according to the specific sporting circumstances, the damaged inflicted to the entity, the reasons of the rupture and further elements that the Judge deems appropriate. In case that within one year from the termination, the sportsman enters into a contract with other club or sporting entity, they will be subsidiarily liable of the payment of the aforesaid recompense”

This provision enables an ante tempus termination of Messi's relationship with Barcelona, thereby ending his contract with Barcelona prior to its natural date of expiry. This termination requires a payment by the player, either determined in the contract or by the Labor court. So it's either the contractually stipulated 700m, or if said clause no longer exists in 20/21 as Sique Rodriguez reported, it is for the Labor court to determine the fee (assuming the RC is void but the 20/21 contractual year still exists). Or at least, that is one viable interpretation for the court if it does not accept that Messi is allowed to break his contract unilaterally and leave for free. The fee can be determined by the court instead, which will then be payable by the club that assumes his services within a year, thereby assuming subsidiary liability.
This is contrary to the popular opinion that Spain requires a buy-out clause in all contracts, which has led many to believe that it is "impossible" for a buy-out clause to have ceased in 20/21. An athlete's employment contract is regulated by Article 3 RD 1006/85 which sets out only 4 requirements for a valid contract: : a) identification of the parties; b) object of the contract; c) remuneration; and d) length of the contract. As stated above, when a buy-out clause no longer exists in the contract – the Labor court will determine the compensation due. This is naturally something Barcelona will want to steer clear from as the judiciary process would take a long time and come with a lot of ambiguity. Consequently, Messi could unilaterally break his contract and sign for City while the fee is still unpaid. And that is not even considering the chance that Barca will receive a fee significantly under market value, as the labor court looks at different, more tangible criteria when determining how valuable a player is.
Furthermore, while RD 1006/85 does not set a limit to how expensive a buy-out clause can be, if a case where to reach the Labor court, a disproportional and abusive sum can be challenged by the footballer and reduced to a more reasonable amount as a result. This would almost definitely happen here in the case of a 700m buy-out clause on a 33 year old player with one year left on his contract. Moreover, Messi does not need a reason to terminate his contract as some journalists have reported in the past few days. Article 13 RD 1006/85 states:

“The employment relationship shall terminate in the following circumstances: (…)
as a result of the professional sportsman’s will. (…)”.

End. That's all that is required, with absolutely no reason required to justify it. It is also very, very important to note how cases turned out before when they reached the Labor court in the past. Raúl Baena left Barça B for Espanyol, having a clause of 4 million. The first instance court in 2006 ruled that he should pay 30,000 for early termination and 500,000 for compensation. The provincial court dismissed the appeal and ordered the 3.5 million to be paid before the Supreme Court in 2013 decided the 3.5 should not be paid.The judge determined that Baena should not pay the club a single penny because the contract was invalid. Now this case was entirely different from Messi's, but if you take anything away from it, it is how complex these proceedings are (nothing is straight-forward or bound to happen) and how long it will take before there is certainty in how much compensation Barca will receive (6 years, 2006-2013 in Baena's case). It seems absurd to me that if Barca was to receive 200m on first instance, that they would use this money in the transfer window given they could very well be forced to pay it back in a year on appeal. The money we receive is sketchy at best, unless it's coming from the Supreme Court.
tl;dr: Messi is allowed to terminate his contract without reason and pay the RC, assuming it exists. If it does, it's very possible that the courts will deem it abusive and disproportional and the courts will consequently lower the amount to something more reasonable. If it doesn't exist, the court will set its own sum on Messi, which will take into account factors like the remaining 1 year on his contract, his age, sponsorship agreements, among other factors to make the obvious conclusion that he is not worth 700m to Barcelona. Moreover, if Messi's contract says "end of the season", he has a very strong case according to legal experts. But even with a date such as "June 30" in his contract, Messi can make a case (albeit not that strong) using the FIFA guidelines to his benefit as they suggest June 30 and "end of season" are interchangeable. It is in the interests of all parties to agree a deal through negotiation rather than to leave it in the hands of the courts. That only screws us and benefits City as they get more time before being forced to pay a potentially undervalued sum. This can be seen from cases that have reached the Labor courts in the past, some of which then proceeded to last for 7 years and went back and forth in verdict. Ambiguity is the norm in such court cases, and especially so in such a high profile employment case with extenuating circumstances such as Covid-19 and a variety of other possibilities like a potentially abusive buy-out clause.
It is also entirely possible for the Webster Ruling to apply here. In this case, Hearts wanted £5m for Andy Webster after unilaterally breaking his contract. The Court of Arbitration ruled that the fine was only £150,000. This case gave precedent to players being allowed to leave a club with a valid contract after 3 years. This time-frame is shortened to 2 years for players over 28. Soon after in the case of Matuzalem, Shakhtar Donetsk held that they were due the £25m buy-out clause compensation after he broke his contract. FIFA awarded 6.8m on the basis of outstanding salary he would have received. Upon appeal, CAS upped it to 11.85m, taking into account the value of the lost services of Matuzalem, the amount of salary expenses that Shakhtar did not have to pay Matuzalem and the status and behaviour of the player. More recently, even we were linked with Neymar on the basis that his "3 year protected period" had expired at PSG and we would be able to purchase him for a fee set by CAS despite France's stance on buy-out clauses being illegal.
On the basis of this, it seems entirely reasonable that since 2 years have passed since the 2017 renewal (Messi was over 28 years old), Messi could make a very strong case under the Webster ruling. The factors that would be accounted for are his remaining salary which is only 1 year, his behaviour (in Messi's benefit) and the value of his services. I honestly struggle to see how that number ever reaches anywhere near 200m, but that's just my opinion.
Edit: Furthermore, there are some interesting things to note from Matuzalem’s case that reached CAS, which has some striking similarities with Messi's case. Namely, he terminated the contract unilaterally even though he had 2 years left, he had a 25m buy-out clause and Shakhtar was asking for the payment of 25m upon termination. Facts of the case:

In particular, [Matuzalem] indicated that the notification was served within 15 days following the last game of the season in Ukraine and at the end of the so-called protected period.

After which Shakhtar faxed him a statement saying the ability to terminate unilaterally was excluded by his buy-out clause. (This is exactly what is happening with Messi, where he gave notice 11 days after the last game - Bayern vs PSG August 14, Messi burofax August 25.)
This is what the panel said in para 71 in regard to his buy-out clause:

The Panel, after careful review of the evidence submitted, comes to the conclusion that clause 3.3 [of the player’s contract] cannot be interpreted as a penalty/liquidated damages clause in the meaning of art. 17 of the FIFA Regulations.

Which suggests that if Messi’s release clause stipulates 700m is necessary for his transfer, then it does not qualify as relevant to his breach. The clause needs to state that 700m is the figure for damages in case a breach of contract occurs. Very low chance it says that as Messi’s liability would be very high and his lawyers aren’t stupid. It probably wouldn’t even be acceptable, since such damages are so disproportionally high on an individual that it would make no sense and be ruled as an unfair term. But yea, RC is not interchangeable with damages as per CAS.
The panel proceeds to explain how they calculated the fee payable, but I won’t get into the intricacies of it as it is case-specific. However, what one can say with certainty is that Messi’s remaining ~9 months (once the season starts) will be a very significant factor in diminishing his value, the fact he had a clause that was exempted as a result of Covid will be an important factor as the court will look more kindly given the circumstances. Moreover, CAS also recommends parties to solve issues between themselves, so Messi asking to negotiate twice while Barcelona refused and pointed to the buy-out clause also goes in his favour. It seems that Messi has done everything correctly and by the book if this was to go to CAS, whereas the club has weakened its legal position in order to strengthen its negotiating position, knowing that Messi won't be keen on going to court.

Please support this petition to let the government know with a history of sex assault should not be appointed to the courts
http://chng.it/QjHfgwtyrK
Magistrate Habte Worku is a Magistrate of the courts.
Shortly before his appointment he was fired from his job with the Government's Insurance commission as a government mediator after an investigation revealed he sexually assaulted an insurance agent and made sexually inappropriate remarks to a coworker. This was taken to arbitration where he was found to have committed the sex assault, the case documents can be found at this link from the Canadian Legal Information Institute:
https://www.canlii.org/en/on/ongsb/doc/2000/2000canlii20561/2000canlii20561.html?searchUrlHash=AAAAAQALaGFidGUgd29ya3UAAAAAAQ&resultIndex=1
The government was aware of this when they appointed him to the court, and they even reference his time as a government mediator as his qualification for the job. You can find the link here
https://news.ontario.ca/archive/en/2007/03/11/attorney-general-announces-seven-justice-of-the-peace-appointments.html
Please support this petition to let the government know with a history of sex assault should not be appointed to the bench. Once again the online petition can be found here
http://chng.it/QjHfgwtyrK

The situation with my domain.

My domain igroutka.net was stolen on 07/23/2020 and transferred to the Namecheap registrar.
As I found out, on July 21, 2020, my mail was hacked, which was indicated in the contact information of the domain administrator. With the help of mail, the scammer received an auth code and transferred the domain. Also in the mail were scans of my old invalid passport, with their help the fraudster forged a scan of my passport, and presented a fake scan of my passport to my previous registrar Webnames.ru.
I immediately contacted the previous registrar Webnames.ru and the new registrar Namecheap.com. I explained to them the whole situation and provided proof of the theft of the domain. The Namecheap registrar has begun its investigation.
Also, in parallel, I filed a claim with the WIPO Arbitration Court. Later it turned out that filing this claim was a big mistake, I lost a lot of time and money. About a month and a half later, Namecheap's technical support informed me that they are terminating their investigation because I initiated the UDRP procedure, and they have no right to interfere with the arbitration court's investigation. I had the choice to either cancel the UDRP procedure or wait for the arbitral tribunal's decision. I decided not to cancel the UDRP procedure and wait for the court's decision, and as it turned out, this decision was also a mistake.
In the course of the proceedings, the arbitration court asked the fraudster to prove the legal possession of my domain. The scammer told them that he bought a domain from me during a personal meeting, and confirmed that he had a receipt from the bank that proves that he had bought the domain. After a while, he was asked to provide proof of domain purchase. In response, he sent them a fake receipt, in which I allegedly received money from him and gave him my domain.
For my part, I passed a handwriting examination, in the conclusion of which the expert made a decision that the handwritten text and the signature on this receipt were written not by me but by another person. I sent this examination to the judge, but it did not help me. As a result, the court made such a decision, I quote:

This dispute however concerns the question of who is the rightful owner of the disputed domain name and whether the Respondent has acquired it legitimately or through forgery and theft. The Policy was not designed to decide whether a domain name was taken with or without the Complainant’s knowledge or consent and to deal with allegations of forgery and theft, as there is generally no hearing available and no opportunity to examine witnesses or to conduct cross-examination. Simply put, this is not the appropriate forum to deal with these issues.

In General, I turned to the wrong place, and lost precious time.
​
Now let's go back, I will describe some of the actions of the fraudster.
The day after the theft, the scammer copied my site completely and adjusted it from his server. I must say right away that the scammer did not have access to my server, he copied the site with some kind of parser.
A few days later, the scammer placed a 301 redirect to his new domain igrymore.net. I wrote to the registrar internet.bs and they blocked this domain for a while.
Then the scammer placed a 301 redirect to another new domain igry.me. This redirect took about a month and a half.
Further, on September 24, 2020, the scammer removed the redirect, I think it was removed because the arbitration court's investigation was about to begin soon, and without a 301 redirect, he had a better chance of winning this case.
Also, I filed a statement with the police, now they are conducting their investigation, but since the domain is with a foreign registrar, this complicates the situation.
Immediately after the theft, I launched my website on my backup domain igroutka.ru. The original of my site is at this address. Looking at the original, you can easily understand that the stolen igroutka.net domain contains a low-quality copy of my site.

Domain hijacker

In the course of my investigation, I found 6 more domains (possibly more) that were stolen by this fraudster over the past half year. 3 of them are large sites with more than 100-200 thousand visitors per day.
I contacted some of the victims, we communicated with them and helped each other in the investigation. Some of them have already returned their domains.
The fact that we have the same scammer, we found out by the identifier of the Google Adsense advertisement, which the scammer puts on all stolen domains, its id is “ca-pub-7214846705425106”
Stolen domains list:

1. igroutka.net - my domain, wrote about the theft here https://www.reddit.com/NameCheap/comments/iisl3z/domain_stolen_and_transferred_to_namecheap/
2. onlajnigry.net - the owner wrote about the theft here https://vc.ru/claim/154433-kak-u-menya-ugnali-domen-s-webnames-ru-i-perenesli-k-reg-ru-i-kak-reg-ru-vernuli-mne-ego-obratno
3. The owner asked not to indicate the domain, wrote about the theft here https://www.reddit.com/Domains/comments/iirkiw/the_scammer_stole_the_domain_and_transferred_it/
4. oldmerin.net - the owner wrote about the theft here https://vc.ru/claim/154571-moy-domen-oldmerin-net-ukrali-i-perenesli-v-reg-ru?ref=vc.ru
5. orgtech.info - the owner wrote about the theft here https://searchengines.guru/ru/forum/1037853 (This domain is now also on Namecheap)

I also ask the affected owners of these domains to briefly describe their situation in the comments to this article.

Why did I write all this here?

• Firstly, my goal is to publicly report that my igroutka.net domain has been stolen, perhaps the scammer will try to sell it to someone.
• Secondly, I want the employees of Namecheap.com, from the “Risk Management” department, to turn their attention to this article, I have not received an answer from them for more than 3 weeks, I really hope that they will help me and return my domain.
• I am desperate, I found myself in a difficult situation, my site was my only job.

I would be very grateful for helpful advice

On 26th February 2015, Dutch club, Feyenoord Rotterdam were playing the home leg of their last 32 Europa League fixture against AS Roma with the score at 1-1 at the end of the first leg. Roma eventually went on to progress through to the next round winning the tie 3-2 on aggregate, but the high tension home fixture was not without its controversy.
Around the 30th minute mark, an inflatable banana, about 115 cm in length was thrown onto the pitch during the match. It landed between the stands and the perimeter boards close to AS Roma player Gervinho who was lining up for a throw-in.
The whistle blew and play was suspended by Clement Turpin, the match referee.
The incident was widely covered across several media channels resulting in the commencement of a UEFA disciplinary procedure which ended with a decision given by the UEFA Control, Ethics and Disciplinary Body.
On 21st May 2015, the Disciplinary Body held Feyenoord Rotterdam liable for the racist acts of their supporters.
Feyenoord appealed the decision before the UEFA Appeals Body, who confirmed the verdict of the Disciplinary Body and dismissed the club’s appeal. Dissatisfied, Feyenoord brought the case before the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) on appeal which would give a final verdict on the dispute.
It’s Not What It Looks Like…
Feyenoord argued that the use of inflatable bananas was misrepresented as a racist act, which was used by fans to create a “positive and supporting atmosphere”.
According to Feyenoord, the nature of the inflatable banana was such that it could not have been directed at any particular player but was rather thrown in a general direction out of sheer frustration, for a wrongly awarded throw-in.
Feyenoord contended that Mr. Turpin’s determination of the act amounting to a racist one was based on a subjective assessment since there was nothing in the broadcasted images to imply that the inflatable banana was thrown in the direction of Gervinho.
It was Feyenoord’s plea that due to the seriousness of the alleged offense, the referee ought to have a “high degree of confidence” to impose any liability on the club. Feyenoord argued that the context in which the alleged act was said to be racist was important to ascertain whether the act indeed amounted to a racist one. The club pleaded that the inflatable banana was a “harmless toy” which had been thrown by a seventeen-year-old “colored boy” at the home ground of the club, which had previously never experienced any act of racism.
According to Feyenoord, the situation had been overreacted upon due to “over-regulation and over-instruction of the issue” caused by the political nature of the problem. A seemingly harmless act by a young boy, was, according to Feyenoord, blown out of proportion.
In any case, it was the contention of Feyenoord that even if they were found guilty, the sanctions imposed upon them by the Disciplinary Body were disproportionate in light of several mitigating factors.
It's Going Down
Andrew Mercer, the counsel representing UEFA, submitted that the facts posited a simple conclusion that an inflatable banana was thrown at a “black player” of AS Roma.
He supported his argument by citing numerous media sources who had covered the event independently and further corroborated by official UEFA reports.
Regarding the argument of Feyenoord that the subjective assessment of the referee ought to be based on a high degree of confidence, UEFA argued that the presence or absence of racial intent was immaterial and that under Article 38 of the UEFA Disciplinary Regulations(UEFA DR), the referee’s report is presumed to be accurate.
In any case, it was UEFA’s contention that the referee’s report was based on the visual assessment of Mr. Rainville, the assistant referee, who was best placed to observe the unfolding of the incident before his own eyes.
Therefore, Feyenoord had the burden to prove that the inflatable banana was thrown out of general frustration and not towards Gervinho.
UEFA argued that the inflatable banana was not thrown out of general frustration as the throwing of the banana directly followed an action on the pitch performed by Gervinho.
UEFA took recourse to the video footage to show that the crowd was behaving aggressively towards Gervinho, who almost got hit in the head by a paper roll, immediately preceding the banana incident.
The fact that the thrower himself was “colored”, according to UEFA, did not rule out the possibility that his actions could be of a racist nature.
The fact that it was concluded independently by the referees, media reports, as well as by the athlete himself was enough proof to reach at the particular determination that the throwing of the banana amounted to a racist act under the Disciplinary Regulations.
Say No To Racism
The CAS did not agree with Feyenoord’s argument that the determination of the throwing of the inflatable banana was based on an erroneous subjective assessment.
The Court held that the law is clear in the matter that the referee’s report is presumed to be valid unless otherwise disproved. The party questioning the veracity of the report (in this case Feyenoord) has the burden to prove that the report should not be taken into consideration.
According to the Court, this was not the case here. Despite the lack of clear audible communication available between Mr.Turpin and Mr. Rainville, the latter was still best placed to see the exact incident and report it to Mr. Turpin.
This was also further corroborated by the UEFA Europa League Delegate’s report which stated that “an inflatable banana was thrown” onto the pitch, which he believed to be a “racist act”.
The Court did not take into consideration media reports as independent sources but instead based its judgment on the referee’s report. Additionally, the Panel held that the determination of whether the act was racist would ultimately be based on a conclusion reached by an “objective onlooker”.
This objective onlooker could be someone situated in the stands, on the pitch, behind the screen, or anywhere else. If a reasonable onlooker believes that the act was done with intent so as to insult the human dignity, as provided for under Article 14(1) of the UEFA DR, then it can be reasonably concluded that the act must surely be a racist one.
The Court concluded that to do otherwise would mean that some acts which are considered to be reprehensible are somehow permissible just because another group of people thinks that such acts are fine.
The Court therefore partially upheld the decision of the UEFA Appeals Body and directed Feyenoord to pay a 50,000 Euro fine.
The Panel, by reversing the Appeals body decision, allowed Feyenoord to play its next UEFA competition in front of its home crowd for a probationary period of three years. If any further violation of Article 14(1) were to take place during this period, then Feyenoord would have to play behind closed doors.
PS: If you're reading this far, please consider subscribing to Your Weekend Beer - a weekend newsletter on the business of football.
PPS: You can view the full essay + other cool elements of Issue #9 here
For reference, you can read the original CAS verdict here