Hacker News Reader

Comment by ralph84 | Hacker News Reader

Tortious interference, also known as intentional interference with contractual relations, in the common law of torts, occurs when one person intentionally damages someone else's contractual or business relationships with a third party causing economic harm.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tortious_interference

View on HN

Yes, but you need to serve notice to the offending party, which might be hard if they are not a US person...

likewise collecting damages, etc

There might be something subtly illegal here - but I assume Apple would just refuse to honor the refund if they thought it was fraudulent - so it wouldn't be up to Apple to collect damages - it'd be up to the other party to collect their refund (assuming they can legally compel Apple to pay up)

How does that apply? In hypothetical this thread has been discussing nobody is damaging the contractual relationship itself nor is anybody preventing either company from fulfilling their contractual obligations. In fact, it's the strength and continued operation of the contractual relationship that would cause the economic harm. I don't think tortious interference applies here.

I would guess that buying an app with the intention of harming the app creator by doing a refund is against the ToS, and I think that's fair (since the purpose of the refund mechanism is to allow the buyer to change their mind for some "good faith" reason - even something like a change of mood is fine, but "to harm the creator" is obviously not)

Good luck proving that intention in court!

I've heard of this but am curious, does this also apply to people calling for boycotting companies?

> Tortious interference, also known as intentional interference with contractual relations

I think it would depend on the local jurisdiction's definition of the tort. A purchase/refund scheme would not induce Apple or the vendor to breach their app store contract, but it would deprive the vendor of its expected economic benefit.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com