Timeline for Can a company lie to a person in the course of a business relationship?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
17 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dec 26, 2023 at 23:52 | answer | added | ohwilleke | timeline score: 2 | |
| Dec 26, 2023 at 23:33 | comment | added | ohwilleke | As you elementary school English teacher would tell you, they absolutely can. Whether they should, and whether it is legal or not to do so, are different questions. | |
| Dec 26, 2023 at 22:35 | answer | added | Dennis Francis Blewett | timeline score: -3 | |
| Dec 25, 2023 at 18:16 | comment | added | Stef | @TylerDurden For instance France has refus de vente (literally "refusal of sale"). There is kind of a shortlist of circumstances that allow you to refuse selling, and if you can't justify your refusal by a bulletpoint in that shortlist then you're pretty much obligated to sell. Note that "refus de vente" is the most basic offense; if in addition there is evidence of discrimination or something else, then it becomes a more serious offense. | |
| Dec 25, 2023 at 17:28 | comment | added | TylerDurden | @WeatherVane arguably, in your given circumstances, such lies are very reasonable and based on a reasonably founded fear to avoid disorder and conflict and thus do not fall foul of my above suggested common law duty of care to act reasonably/decently. | |
| Dec 25, 2023 at 17:25 | comment | added | TylerDurden | @stef which jurisdictions are these? I would be quite interested to know. | |
| Dec 25, 2023 at 17:23 | comment | added | TylerDurden | Be held to encompass not deceiving or lying to someone. 2/2. | |
| Dec 25, 2023 at 17:22 | comment | added | TylerDurden | The right to refuse to serve someone is not absolute, it is qualified by “as long as not unlawfully discriminating,” which means that one may be challenged to justify one’s grounds for refusal both in and prior to the institution of legal proceedings for suspected or alleged unlawful discrimination. Lying to a customer is arguably very suspicious and may lead to inferences being drawn against them. Apart from this there is arguably a common law duty of care to act decently and reasonably to others having held one’s services out to the public with invitations to treat which could very well 1/ | |
| Dec 24, 2023 at 20:15 | comment | added | Cadence | In my experience with these types of fraud signaling systems, the employees neither know nor care the actual cause; the system is rarely set up to supply it and theoretically, telling the customer could help them evade the system in the future if they really are fraudulent. What you tend to get instead is a canned reply about what might have been the cause, which neither is, nor purports to be, necessarily accurate in that specific case. | |
| Dec 24, 2023 at 13:06 | comment | added | phoog | @WeatherVane the question more or less presupposes that the company is within its rights to refuse doing business with the customer. The question is whether lying about their reason for refusing to do business with the customer is illegal. Fraud is under discussion because dishonesty is an element of fraud. If other elements are absent, it could still be illegal for some other reason. | |
| Dec 24, 2023 at 12:41 | comment | added | Weather Vane | ... or refusing to serve a customer who enters your cafe shouting and swearing. | |
| Dec 24, 2023 at 12:17 | comment | added | Weather Vane | @Stef is it that certain, or ". . . without reasonable cause"? Suppose a customer who is drunk wants to buy alcohol. Must the proprietor say "No, you are drunk" and risk a confrontation, or is it legal to say "the computer has a fault and thinks it is out of hours"? | |
| Dec 24, 2023 at 12:09 | comment | added | Stef | @WeatherVane "Nobody is obliged to trade with you" is strongly dependent on the jurisdiction. Several countries have laws that explicitly say "if you're publicly selling an item or service, then you cannot refuse to serve a customer". | |
| Dec 24, 2023 at 5:49 | answer | added | Dale M♦ | timeline score: 1 | |
| Dec 24, 2023 at 1:18 | review | Close votes | |||
| Jan 4 at 3:01 | |||||
| Dec 23, 2023 at 23:37 | comment | added | Weather Vane | Nobody is obliged to trade with you, and lying as to why isn't illegal. As long as they aren't discriminating unlawfully against you by religion, race, etc. How could it be fraud? They are not obtaining anything from you at all, let alone fraudulently. | |
| Dec 23, 2023 at 22:59 | history | asked | interfect | CC BY-SA 4.0 |