> Try and pay a court fine with bins full of loose change and see what happens.

That actually comes under the letter of the law: http://www.royalmint.com/aboutus/policies-and-guidelines/leg...

Not to detract from your overall point though, which is 100% correct.

I was going to post this!

TL;DR the link: Coins are only legal tender up to a certain amount. For example 21p in 1p's is not classed as legal tender.

(Is it only me who can only say "legal tender" in a scottish accent > "I think you'll find that's...")

I recently paid for £21 worth of groceries in 20p pieces (change jar needed emptying).

Lock me up and throw away the key.

(Fortunately it was a self-checkout so no witnesses).

Would love to see the source code for this situation, where payment is disrupted due to the change jar needing to emptied. I bet the programmers put in some amusing comments.

Is there a way this scenario can be coded in any other way than:

---

while(moneyGotSoFar < targetMoneyToget)

{

   // code to interface with hardware device which 
   // is taking in money
   // NOTE: moneyGotInThisBurst would be told by the 
   // hardware device software

   ... 

   // some time out code. And exception handling if 
   // no cash entered
   moneyGotSoFar += moneyGotInThisBurst;

}

---

So point is, the developers may not think upfront of these kind of cases. And this case can be a boundary condition test case - May potentially test any array overflows. Or some looping done the wrong way. Or out of memory if it has been coded in Java(Oops. Sorry :-))

Legal Tender only means what you have to accept in settlement of a debt. You can choose to accept small denomination coins in any volume, or anything else for that matter. But if you have agreed a transaction with someone, or otherwise have a debt to that person, a court will consider the payment made if you pay (or try to pay) with legal tender.

That's not a debt - that's a point-of-sale. They're allowed to accept or refuse any form of payment there (at least under US law - UK is probably similar).

The reason for the laws surrounding debt is to prevent creditors from purposefully holding debtors in debt by refusing to accept their payments ('Oh, sorry, you HAVE to pay me in this form, so I'll refuse your payment and instead charge you an extra day of interest, etc.)

"Legal tender" only means they're compelled by law to accept the payment to discharge a debt. Anyone can decide to accept anything as payment.

Also, paying for your groceries in that way (self-checkout) isn't discharging a debt as no debt was incurred: You could have decided not to pay and put the groceries back, after all.

>(Is it only me who can only say "legal tender" in a scottish accent > "I think you'll find that's...")

Lets thank the comical Michael McIntyre for that!

Annoying a judge is a really bad idea. The court system is normally quite free from corruption, but all that goes out off the window when it become personal and political. See the pirate bay court case, or just any of the police brutality cases.

If Apple is going all out with lawyers and legal prowness, instead of competiting with products, they need to get better at it.

Is this specifically in reference to the UK legal system or just a blanket statement about practice around the world?

If it is the former, I really must disagree with the notion that the legal system in the UK is in any way corrupt. Quite far from it, I think it is one of the things that we can be most proud of.

If it is the latter, may I suggest you either be more specific or more correct.

In many civilized and relatively non-corrupt jurisdictions, judges nonetheless tend to get... shall we say, petulant when they feel they've been wronged.

(and I say "relatively" because of things like libel tourism and superinjunctions, both of which enable corruption to various degrees)

How often does something like the recent extradition of the operator of a site the UK deemed not worth prosecuting happen?

Presume you're referencing Richard O'Dwyer (tvshack.net), who a magistrate recently found was suitable for extradition to the US. This is quite rare, there have been 99 extraditions since 2006, of which 35 were british nationals, so although extradition is reasonably rare it is not entirely uncommon. Also, you say the UK found the alleged crime was "not worth prosecuting", which is loosely technically true, it doesn't really give the full picture: His actions were found to be legal under UK law and so hence there was no case for prosecution. His operations are, however, suspected of being illegal under US law and so hence the case for extradition was submitted.

To bring this back to the parent discussion: Few would argue that Mr O'Dwyer has been unfairly treated with respect to the current law. Some do, however, argue that it is the extradition statute itself that is unfair, with Mr O'Dwyers case being an example. As a matter of interest, Theresa May has recently announced some changes to the extradition process following the results of the Baker Review. (http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/media-centre/news/gary-mckinnon...)

There are other examples, but this is a function of our executive's decision to bend over to US demands and rewrite UK law, rather than corruption of the legal system itself.

Can you give an example of the police brutality cases you had in mind? I'd be interested to ready more about the social dynamic with the judge, if you can point me in the right direction.

A blogpost at rickfalkvinge.se recently talked about a few of those cases (site down for the moment). In particular, I was referring to the Ian Tomlinson case, but there have been similar events in Sweden and elsewhere.

I have yet to hear a police brutality case where an coverup was fully prosecuted to the point where all police officer involved (and who did nothing) was sentenced. It just do not happen. By the time it gets out, it has become personal and political.

In most jurisdictions, you are expected to comply with the spirit of a court order. Lawyers have some wiggle room when it comes to wordings, but it's a fine line between seeming clever and pissing the judge off.

>In most jurisdictions, you are expected to comply with the spirit of a court order.

In what country are you referring to?

Any jurisdiction with contempt of court, basically: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contempt_of_court

I guess the judge can always ask Apple to replace their front page with a grovelling statement that they were in contempt of court.

The judge, in fact, included proposed text in the order, and said "use this subject to submissions by either side". Rather than submit anything and argue about it, they just decided to do whatever they wanted.