After much back and forth, I feel that I've come to a reasonable decision: EskimoBob will not be getting a scammer tag for this issue, at least from me. There are a few key reasons for this:
1) I feel that there are too many unknown in this case, in both the agreement and in usagi's actions. I cannot support giving someone the scammer tag if I'm not 100% sure.
2) I agree with this judgement:
I side with Bob, simply because I find the literal idea of buying silence ... I don't know the words, but I do not like it.
If that part of the deal was fairly assigned value, then I think he should send that part back and be done with it.
The issue with assigning a value to the silence part, would be assuming Bob took it as payment for that in the first place.
Would I have been an observer in the live chat, I would have assumed Usagi was overpaying, and doing so to shut Bob up, but not in the literal sense of a scammer tag, more in the line of, "the customer is always right, heres your refund, get out of my store... I have better things to do" you know, like most retail places will "shut you up" should you be unhappy and loud.
With the silence part not being absolutely clear, it's hard to know whether the difference in the market price vs what was offered was just a goodwill concession or not.
It is legal (though probably not constitutional) in the USA to pay off for silence (and it's done all of the time), but the contracts to do so are much more detailed and specific than the simple condition expressed in the forum. If you really wanted to buy his silence, you should have drafted a real contract and NDA, properly negotiated the terms, signed and notarized.
If you really wanted to stick it to him, you could file in small claims court against him. The likelihood of him showing up is small and you could probably get a default judgement in your favor without ever having to argue the details of the contract. But my recommendation, even though you didn't specifically ask it of me... just write it up to a life lesson, refuse his business in the future and move on.
Again, I agree with this.
Maged, you made two important questions to EskimoBob and he was not able to answer either. Instead of EskimoBob providing a coherent answer explaining how much the shares should worth if the "absurd demands" were not included, EskimoBob decided to play the victim and write off misleading statements. EskimoBob sold back to Usagi the shares above the market price under certain conditions and now EskimoBob is afraid to return the difference. Thus, EskimoBob is trying to evade your judgement since you have already indicated that EskimoBob was overpaid by Usagi.
No, he answered the questions very well, in my opinion.
3) It is very clear that usagi has been posting misleading statements. It may not be enough for a scammer tag, but it's pretty damn close.
Neither side in this case has been particularly blamless, but I don't feel that anybody has acted in a manner befitting of a scammer tag. I'd like to give my thanks for all of the people who gave their opinions
I appologize if this post isn't up to my usual standards in it's explaination, but I was highly distracted while writing it. Rest assured, however, that I was not distracted when I made my decision.Bringing this over to the new page smoothie has so eloquently started.
