Verdict
IN THE FEDERAL COURT OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF REDMONT
VERDICT
Dimitre977 v. kesballo [2025] FCR 6
I. PLAINTIFF'S POSITION
1. Existence of a Contract – On December 14, 2024, at 3:07 PM EST, the Defendant agreed to rent a golden drill for $200 per hour, as evidenced by written communications and the rental contract (P-01, P-05).
2. The Defendant took possession of the golden drill via an employee-only chestshop (P-03) but has not returned it despite repeated warnings (P-01, P-04). Additionally, the Defendant has not paid any of the required rental fees, which continue to accrue.
3. The Plaintiff has suffered significant financial loss, as the ongoing non-payment and withholding of the drill prevent him from renting it to other clients. The outstanding rental fees currently amount to at least $138,000 and continue to grow.
II. DEFENDANT'S POSITION
1. A public defender was called. The public defender could not get in contact with the defendant and attempted to settle the case on his behalf.
III. THE COURT OPINION
This court will be entering a long-form verdict in this matter.
A contract is necessary to recover remedies in a breach of contract issue. (see Act of Congress - Contracts Act, Lawsuit: Dismissed - Dimitre997 v. zeos_exe [2022] FCR 66). If a contract is void, recovery cannot be collected. (see Lawsuit: Adjourned - Aezal v. Morgan Sheraton & Co. [2023] FCR 43). Existence of a purported contract has been entered into evidence (see P-001 in Plaintiff’s complaint). The terms of a contract are express when expressly stated or implied. (see 5(1) Act of Congress - Contracts Act). Yet, if the terms of a contract are not express, they can be implied through conduct. (see 5(2) Act of Congress - Contracts Act).
Under the current situation, the court cannot verify the existence of an expressed agreement. A contract that is void is one that is not legally binding. By logic, a contract that does not exist is not binding. The plaintiff argues that the damages allegedly come from the existence of a contract in P-001. We are unable to verify. Thus, the contract’s express terms can be ignored.
That said, it is clear that the defendant’s conduct implies some sort of contract. The plaintiff asserts as a matter of fact that the defendant entered into a rental agreement with the defendant that they will pay $200 dollars per hour for access to a Golden Drill. According to P-003, the defendant purchased a Golden Drill from Bluesteel Industries for $0 dollars from a chestshop. This purchase would indicate that the defendant was working in some sort of arrangement with the plaintiff to obtain the Golden Drill. Thus, we must review the situation as a contract under implied terms as plead in the complaint.
To begin with, a contract must have the following:
(a) Offer. An offer is a clear and unequivocal communication expressing a party's willingness to enter into a contract, either explicitly stated or reasonably inferred from the circumstances.
(b) Acceptance. Acceptance is the positive and unambiguous response to an offer communicated to the offeror, mirroring the terms of the offer and conveyed through various means.
(c) Consideration. Consideration, an essential element, involves the exchange of something of value between parties, with sufficiency though not necessarily adequacy. Consideration can be tangible or intanglbie.
(d) Intent. Parties must demonstrate a clear intention to create legal obligations for the contract to be valid.
(e) Capacity. Parties entering into a contract must possess the legal capacity to do so. Players with low playtime may lack the capacity to fairly enter a contract.
(see 4(2) Act of Congress - Contracts Act).
The offer as alleged is an employee agreement. The defendant is to act as an employee and pay $200 dollars an hour in exchange for a drill. The offer is employment, consideration for plaintiff is monies and defendant’s consideration is employment + use of a golden drill. Acceptance was tendered. Defendant seems intent on creating legal obligations through their conduct of accepting the drill.
The outlier is capacity in this situation. The court has done an investigation sua sponte to review the defendant’s playtime and found that the defendant has a total of 4 hours and 32 minutes of playtime. This is far below the requirement necessary to vote in elections and referendums. (see 16(2) Act of Congress - Electoral Act). This is also below what would be considered legally active. (see Act of Congress - Activity Act).
While there is no definition for what is considered to be low playtime for the purposes of contracts, this court is going to set out a definition. A fair characterization would be a lack of playtime. Yet a lack of playtime may not necessarily mean that a player is not sufficiently able to conduct business. If a player has not accumulated enough playtime to be legally active on the server and were unable to have capacity, then businesses would be harmed. Such a decision must be narrowly tailored to focus on the issue at hand, which is whether a player with low playtime could have capacity to contract.
The law only states that the capacity may not be found if a player has low playtime. Thus, every decision on capacity must be made on a case-by-case basis. To prevent the harm of the stream of business, this should not affect sales by chestshop that are not influenced by a greater contract, whether express or implied, as it is in this case.
However, there is an element of new player protection that must be involved, that creating contracts that adversely impacts a newer player causes undue benefit to the contractor against the interests of the contractee. It must be noted that the creation of the Contracts Acts does remove Unfair Terms as a defense since it rescinds the Foundation of Contracts Act. (see 3(2) Act of Congress - Contracts Act). It is presently not against the Contracts Act to contract into a bad deal that adversely harms one party for the benefit of the other. Therefore, barring issues of constitutionality, the prior usage of unfair terms in and of themselves cannot be accounted for in the judicial decision making process at this present time.
With that said, the court must protect the interests of newer players. We note that this implied contract between the plaintiff and the defendant would cost the defendant $200 dollars per hour, regardless of whether they were online. Under the terms of the implied contract, a new player would lose their starting balance, or “new player’s wealth” in 6 hours. The starting balance is currently $1,200 dollars (See Discord - Group Chat That’s All Fun & Games, DemocracyCraft Wiki). The rule of New Player Fraud states that it is illegal to “To take advantage of a new player's wealth and or resources for another's profit or advantage.” (see New Player Fraud under 6 - Fraud Act of Congress - Commercial Standards Act). The defendant, as a player with only four and a half hours of playtime, is more likely than not to have money that is close to their starting balance. An investigation of the defendant sua sponte does reveal that they have $1,589.02 dollars, which is close to a new player’s starting balance. It is unlikely that the defendant would have accepted this deal had they known the contract was likely to take their starting balance within a matter of hours, and they lacked the playtime necessary to recognize that such a deal was bad. Therefore, this court concludes that the defendant lacked the capacity to enter into this contract and thus the contract is void.
To sum up the rules to give meaning to this definition of legal capacity. This court holds that any new player who has not yet accumulated legally active playtime and enters into a contract that would harm their starting balance; lacks the capacity to do so.
IV. DECISION
In the matter of [2025] FCR 6, this court rules in favor of the Defendant and order that:
- The contract be considered null and void.
- That the plaintiff’s drill be returned to them.
- That $1,000 dollars be taken from the defendant to pay for the plaintiff’s legal fees (this court is reducing the award based on the lawyer's performance for not presenting the contract in evidence).
The Federal Court thanks all involved.
