960
Tesla will sue you for $50,000 if you try to resell your Cybertruck in the first year
(www.businessinsider.com)
this post was submitted on 12 Nov 2023
960 points (96.0% liked)
Technology
59708 readers
5428 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
How is that legal?
I saw an episode of LegalEagle (I think it was about NFTs) and it's a terms of sale thing and he spoke about John Cena doing something similar with Ford:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2017/12/02/ford-sues-actor-wwe-superstar-john-cena-over-his-car/915846001/#:~:text=Ford%20Motor%20is%20trying%20to,violation%20of%20his%20purchase%20agreement.
I found the LegalEagle episode:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=C6aeL83z_9Y&si=vONBqJ14_KZ65lF8
It's around 6:49
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/watch?v=C6aeL83z_9Y&si=vONBqJ14_KZ65lF8
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
lobut's explainer video explains the contract law provision, but to be honest, it's a deeply cynical use of contract law. The reason is that typically (and for nearly every piece of retail-sold property), you have property rights exactly like what everyone in this thread is intuiting. Those property rights absolutely would give you the right to resell.
Contract law trumps those rights, and Cena signed a contract. That is where the discussion keeps ending. But a court, if it's circumspect enough, may continue the case long enough to examine how property and contract rights are in conflict. And it's entirely possible property rights may win in the end.
Why? Because the contract may be invalid if it is "illusory." An illusory contract is as it sounds based on a false presumption of exchanged value ("consideration") or a false promise of performance from Tesla. Here, Tesla may be technically complying with contract consideration requirements by lumping the actual Cybertruck into the value exchange, which sounds right from a contract law perspective. However, if Tesla is not offering substantial value beyond what a typical retail sale would be, and if they are only offering the same ongoing services as typical retail customers, there is a small chance a court may decide that the contract is a pretext to in fact simply (and illegally) limiting property rights.
That said, I'd give it maybe a 5% chance of success. Contract law is one thing most judges will almost never interfere with. Which is why Tesla and others are doing it. They typically only do it with cars like high-end sports cars.
But importantly, it could become commonplace for anything you buy even at retail when combined with "clickwrap" agreements - i.e., agreements like in software that activate when you use or open the product. So it's very very important that we continue to push back on this.