Patreon Faces New Legal Peril Under California Law - Local Weather Man see Wonderful Change

[Terrifik]

Question is will local weather demand jack conte for his money before artist or sargon get their money first.

This is another example law starting to catch up law . The law saying that well the corporpation is incorrect but, it will take a lot of money to win this lawsuit.
........................................................................
Patreon Faces New Legal Peril Under California Law

Patreon Faces New Legal Peril Under California Law
By Mike Cernovich

Patreon has lost several high profile creators including Sam Harris, Dave Rubin, and Jordan Peterson due to Patreon’s decision to begin censoring creators for ideological reasons.

The belief is that Patreon can ban anyone they want to. Is this true under California law?
“Private companies can do whatever they want,” is an old canard repeated by people who aren’t lawyers or aren’t very good lawyers. But a new legal remedy is available under California’s arbitration law, especially with the adoption of SB-707.
There’s an economic relationship between Creators and their Backers.
Patreon, by banning a Creator, disrupts the economic relationship between Creator and Backer. In legal terms this is called tortious interference with a business relationship.
Backers can demand to have the disruption of this relationship sent to arbitration.
Patreon, under California law, must pay the arbitration fees in advance. These fees can be upward of $10,000 per case.
If 500 backers demanded arbitration, Patreon would need to put up five million dollars in advance in filing fees alone. Legal fees will ramp those fees up by a factor of ten.
And judges are enforcing the law strictly:

DoorDash Ordered to Pay $9.5M to Arbitrate 5,000 Labor Disputes:
SAN FRANCISCO (CN) – Rejecting claims that the legal process it forced on workers is unfair, a federal judge Monday ordered food-delivery service DoorDash to pay $9.5 million in arbitration fees for 5,010 delivery drivers’ labor demands against the company.
“You’re going to pay that money,” U.S. District Judge William Alsup said in court. “You don’t want to pay millions of dollars, but that’s what you bargained to do and you’re going to do it.”

Patreon has tried writing itself out of this legal requirement with amended Terms of Service, which took effect on January 3, 2020:

You may not bring a claim against us for suspending or terminating another person’s account, and you agree you will not bring such a claim. If you try to bring such a claim, you are responsible for the damages caused, including attorneys fees and costs.

This provision is unlawful and unenforceable, because Patreon demands all users abide by JAMS Streamlined Arbitration Rules and Procedures:

If a dispute does arise out of these terms or related to your use of Patreon, and it cannot be resolved after you talk with us, then it must be resolved by arbitration. This arbitration must be administered by JAMS under the JAMS Streamlined Arbitration Rules and Procedures, except as expressly provided below. Judgment on the arbitration entered in any court with jurisdiction. Arbitrations may only take place on an individual basis. No class arbitrations or other other grouping of parties is allowed. By agreeing to these terms you are waiving your right to trial by jury or to participate in a class action or representative proceeding; we are also waiving these rights.

Under California law, a consumer cannot be forced to pay costs and fees under a mandatory arbitration clause. California law is clear:

For matters involving consumers, the consumer is only required to pay $250. See JAMS Policy on Consumer Arbitrations Pursuant to Pre-Dispute Clauses. For matters based on a clause or agreement that is required as a condition of employment, the employee is only required to pay $400. See JAMS Policy on Employment Arbitrations, Minimum Standards of Fairness.

In other words, if Patreon bans a Creator, and the Backers want to file arbitration claims, Patreon will have to be millions of dollars of fees.
As one law firm specialization in arbitration law notes:

SB 707 applies to employment or consumer arbitration agreements and requires that the drafting party pay any fees and costs that might be due before the arbitration can proceed within 30 days after the due date. The failure by the drafting party to pay will mean that the drafting party is in material breach of the arbitration agreement, is in default of the arbitration and will waive its right to compel arbitration

There is no exception to this law, and Patreon cannot draft its way out of California law with a Terms of Service update. Again, California law provides:

With respect to the cost of the arbitration, when a consumer initiates arbitration against the company, the only fee required to be paid by the consumer is $250, which is approximately equivalent to current Court filing fees. All other costs must be borne by the company, including any remaining JAMS Case Management Fee and all professional fees for the arbitrator’s services. When the company is the claiming party initiating an arbitration against the consumer, the company will be required to pay all costs associated with the arbitration.

Patreon may win on the grounds that its Terms of Service as of January 2020 apply to all creators banned in 2020 or beyond. It’s unlikely they will, because courts look unfavorably on parties who demand arbitration while seeking to opt-out of rules they don’t like.
My best guess is that if a Creator or Backer sued Patreon to have the fee-shifting provision struck from the Terms of Service, then that party would prevail.
Any Patreon creator banned before 2020 will have favorable procedural rules, and Backers bringing claims will not be required to pay more than $250.
The same rules would also apply to PayPal and other companies with mandatory arbitration provisions.

 

[Buttigieg2020]

Imagine if California accidentally saves the Alt-Light.

 

[Shield Breaker]

Question will local weather demand jack conte for his money before artist get money or sargon .

This another example law starting catch up say that well actually the corporpation is incorrect but, it will take a lot of money to win this lawsuit.

What is this supposed to mean in English?

 

[I can't imagine]

It's a California law. Does it only apply to California creators?

Patreon's based in California, so it would apply to them.

 

[AnotherPleb]

Patreon's based in California, so it would apply to them.

Pretty easy for Patreon to relocate to Houston.

 

[Terrifik]

What is this supposed to mean in English?

Mister Metokur lost his patreon on Nov 23,2019 . Sargon lost his Patreon Decmber 5 ,2018. Buch of artist lost their between purges due to lewd images. For the money that pateron did not pay from Jan 3, 2020. Until someome brings a case for old TOS - Pateron might owe money for past payments before they closed those people patrons because of TOS Violation .

 

[I can't imagine]

Pretty easy for Patreon to relocate to Houston.

I mean, this entire idea is contingent on a bunch of backers, many of whom were only throwing in a couple bucks a month, deciding to take action against Patreon in the first place. Conceptually, the idea is interesting, but I don't know if it's actually likely.

 

[MuuMuu Bunnylips]

Is there any way Null can use this?

Seeing as how people have managed to fuck him out of any sort of income that they can, it'd be nice if he could wave his dick in their faces.

 

[WonderWino]

Ehhh i'm not so sure this can or frankly should apply to patreon. In fact I think patreon should be explicitly exempt from any such law. Why? Because it screws patreon as a company on a fundamental level and could easily be exploited to cause serious problems for it being able to operate in a reasonable manner. For example, one could make the argument that if this is to apply to patreon, that it effectively prohibits terminating services with anyone using their services for literally any reason. After all, no matter the reason you might ban someone from patreon, it would still be a third party interfering with the business between a user and another service provider and would on that level always be violating the law, even if the reason patreon bans the person is a perfectly valid one like hacking an account or whatever.

That said, its a moot point for the reasons they started out with because as patreon should be well aware, its illegal in california to deny services to someone based on their ideological views. California is one of two current states where political ideology is an explicit protected class, which makes doing so a violation of the customers civil rights. and realistically, such a protection applies to all 50 states whether explicitly codified in law or not. Allowing a company to essentially force you to adhere to a certain political viewpoint or be denied services is grossly unconstitutional anyway and amounts to trying to intimidate a person into voting a certain way, which is explicitly illegal

 

[Arctic Fox]

Clocks are right twice a day, I suppose. Good job, Cali. You did a good.

 

[BlueSpark]

Imagine thinking that judges is Commiefornia would side with right-wingers even if the law agrees with them.

 

[NOT Sword Fighter Super]

I'm ok with this.

 

[Immortal Technique]

Is there any way Null can use this?

Seeing as how people have managed to fuck him out of any sort of income that they can, it'd be nice if he could wave his dick in their faces.

I presume he would have to move his LLC from FL to CA to fall under it's jurisdiction. Not sure if it's worth it anyways, the money he's missing out on are ads on this site.

 

[God]

Always strange how California is based sometimes and completely braindead other times

 

[ShirleyUJest]

1. Private companies can do whatever they want.
2. Bake the cake faggot!

Pick one and ONLY one

 

[Stoneheart]

After all, no matter the reason you might ban someone from patreon, it would still be a third party interfering with the business between a user and another service provider and would on that level always be violating the law, even if the reason patreon bans the person is a perfectly valid one like hacking an account or whatever.

Is intervening to prevent a criminal act TI in CA?

 

[jellycar]

If it will end the whole "SUBSCRIBE TO MY PATREOOONNNNN" shit

 

[Un Platano]

Does this law also impact all companies facing arbitration claims from California residents, or merely companies with a presence in California?

For the companies to be facing arbitration claims from California residents, they must have some presence in California because they're doing business with a resident there, so this law would still apply to them. If they weren't in compliance with California's laws while doing business with California residents they would be forced to cease operations there. They could also be sued but that's a much more complex legal issue and I can't say for sure how that is handled.

This is much like California Prop 65 (those stickers that tell you a product can cause cancer.) It's a law that's only valid in California, but if the products were not compliant with it, then they could not be sold in that one particular state. Companies don't want to stop selling their products in California because that would be a loss of a significant market sector, and they also do not want to devote resources towards making a special version for the California market with those stickers, because it's logistically easier to put the sticker on every product they're putting out. Thus, although the law is only legally valid in California, the company is held up to California's standards nationwide because it's impractical to do otherwise.

Patreon is in a similar situation where they don't want to stop doing business with California residents because that would lose them a lot of income. They also can't make a special California-only version where no one can be banned because if they did, the entire userbase would claim they're based in California and migrate to that platform, defeating the purpose of keeping the original system in place. The applicability of this law doesn't depend on where Patreon is based; it depends where its customers are based. Their customers aren't going to relocate because of this law so it is very difficult for Patreon to get around it. The best they can hope for is that it will be determined that this law does not apply to them, because they can't escape this law by operating in a different state.

This does beg the question of whether selling services over the internet counts as doing business in the customer's state. For the Prop 65 there's no debating that the point of transaction occurred in the state and so the law applies to it, but in this case there's no physical place where they're doing business. This sounds very much like a Supreme Court case, and in fact there is a very similar issue in South Dakota v Wayfair in 2018. In that case, the question at hand was whether a state's sale tax applies to a company of a different state selling a product to a customer within that first state. The answer was that yes, the sales tax still applies, which overturned the earlier precedent that such taxes only apply to a company if they have a physical presence in the state where the customer is buying from. This is obviously a result of the internet's influence on commerce, where interstate transactions are happening more frequently now than ever before.

Because of this case, I would presume that California's laws would apply to California residents doing business over the internet with an entity that is based out of state, and so this law would apply to them in the same way that prop 65 applies.

 

[AnOminous]

Ehhh i'm not so sure this can or frankly should apply to patreon. In fact I think patreon should be explicitly exempt from any such law.

How the fuck can they be exempt from their own contract that they wrote?

Patreon is in a similar situation where they don't want to stop doing business with California residents because that would lose them a lot of income.

It's literally in their contract.

Governing law
TLDR: Any disputes with us must be resolved in San Francisco under California law.

California law, excluding its conflict of law provisions, governs these terms and all other Patreon policies. If a lawsuit does arise, both parties consent to the exclusive jurisdiction and venue of the courts located in San Francisco, California.

 

[Un Platano]

How the fuck can they be exempt from their own contract that they wrote?



It's literally in their contract.

I was discussing the possibility of Patreon and more generally any other company relocating or reincorporating in a different state and under a different state's laws to avoid a law like this, and why that would not work for them.