your little 'joke' could have caused someone a financial loss
I was just goofing there John, no offense meant. Your hypothetical example, albeit bizarre, (and I question your motive, but that's another post) is worthy of an answer.
You chose to use an example involving the stock market. This hypothetical financial loss could be occasioned by anything at all. Anybody could use any kind of loss as an excuse to claim responsibility for the loss did not fall on his or her own shoulders.
But in the stock market, this sort of thing has been going on for a very long time. The stock market, as you are I am sure aware, is one of the most regulated industries on the planet. Personally, I believe this is so due to the high potential for shady dealings coupled with the vast potential for monetary gain.
If your intention was to draw out one of the defendants and make them state publicly that there could possibly be some sort of cause and effect on the financial loss/webnode gag, I'm sorry to tell you that whoever suggested it is making you look like a fool, but that's another post too.
Your hypothetical case ignores several key factors, as many hypothetical cases do.
Let's take it one step at a time.
1. You decide to sell your AZNT, for whatever reason; aliens have landed in your front yard and demanded cash, your girlfriend needs to go to the doctor, your dog just bit the old lady across the street and you need some hush money, you need a fresh box of Cap'n Crunch... whatever.
This is hypothetical.
2. You contact your brokerage firm. You tell the broker you want to sell your AZNT (hypothetically). Your broker, having the opinion that you should never have purchased a stupid PoS BB stock in the first place, had marked your buy ticket unsolicited when you bought the stock. He now marks your sell ticket in a similar way;
unsolicited.
This means, simply, that the firm has released themselves from responsibility for the trade. The onus is on you. (Not anus, onus.)
This is the way that brokerage firms handle this sort of thing. Now, let's say you took that money, whatever was left of your original investment, let's say five bucks.
You take the five bucks and you buy a box of Cap'n Crunch, and you take it home, and you open it, and there is no toy inside. You are screwed. And what's worse, AZNT is up one penny the next day.
So what you are proposing in your hypothetical example is to go after the makers of Cap'n Crunch because they screwed you on your toy after you sold your stock and it went up a penny. In other words, Cap'n Crunch is responsible for the fact that AZNT went up the day after you sold it.
It's a weak argument, dude. Really weak. But, just to make sure that the brokerage firm doesn't get a complaint from you, because they have a lot of morons, criminals and other riff-raff that have accounts, (hypothetically) they make sure they have that "unsolicited" ticket. It's what they call in the business an "unsuitable trade". In other words, you should have bought some WalMart or whatever the broker was telling you to buy.
You'll have to check on your hypothetical account at your hypothetical brokerage firm to see what their policy is on unsuitable trades. But if you actually managed to get in front of a Judge somewhere, and told that Judge that you wanted some compensation from Cap'n Crunch for your loss, I think we can both surmise what the Judge would conclude.
Hypothetically.
Now, let's say, hypothetically, this sale of AZNT to purchase Cap'n Crunch was suggested to you by your broker. Stranger things have happened. In fact, let's give you the benefit of the doubt here. Let's say you own a share of Berkshire Hathaway. (I know it sounds crazy, work with me for a sec) and the broker calls you and says, "John, I want to blow out of that BRK.A and get into a box of Cap'n Crunch. I'll send you a check."
You say, because you are a complete idiot (hypothetically) "OK, do it!"
Now, this broker may have done nothing wrong up to this point.
But let's say the broker is thinking that Cap'n Crunch is a stock. There is no ticker symbol, but he is brain-dead or something, hypothetically. He sells your Berkshire, but then he can't make a trade on the Cap'n Crunch. He calls you back and sheepishly admits his mistake. Worse, BRK.A is up a grand.
You have a cause for a complaint against the broker and the firm, in my opinion.
Not to say you would win, just saying you have a case.
Against the BROKER. Not Cap'n Crunch.
You with me?
So, if you want to try and bait somebody into a legal definition of responsibility in a particular case, you can do that, and they might answer, and you might rub your hands and think you are a real smart cookie.
But you are conveniently leaving out a few things:
First, you have to show some bad intention. You have to show that Cap'n Crunch intended to defraud you by leaving the toy out of your box of cereal.
Next, you have to show some connection in the sequence of events that led up to your hypothetical loss; Cap'n Crunch has to be at the end of the trail.
More importantly, you have to show that some professional in the securities industry made a mistake. Because if there was no broker involved, in other words, if your sell was unsolicited, you are really going to have a hard time proving that you took full responsibility for the stupid bonehead trade, but it really was somebody else's fault that you made a stupid bonehead trade.
That's the way the game is set up. These brokerage firms have seen this crap before you were born.
It's kind of like (hypothetically) claiming that you have no liability at all for passing along some material for somebody else. You might, hypothetically, have an agreement that totally releases you from any liability for anything in that material.
I'm just thinking out loud here. Imagine that you put your box of Cap'n Crunch up for auction on the Internet, and the auction house has you sign a release that releases them from any liability for the contents of the box. Not only that, they specifically state that nothing, not the box, not the paper, not the cereal, nothing is covered by them in the event that you are not accurate in your description of your cereal. They don't want to know what's in the box, they don't care. All they care about is that you release them from any liability in the event anybody ever questions them about anything even remotely concerned with your box of Cap'n Crunch.
Then, before you sell it, the auction house finds out there is no toy, there is no box of Cap'n Crunch, you had no way to sell it anyway, you were just kidding, April Fool's, and they sue you for fraud.
Twilight Zone! Am I getting through here, John? The auction house is in the Twilight Zone.
I mean, you have your contract that you signed and everything.
So, take your stupid hypothetical woo-woo 'what if bats flew out of my ass and I lost money' bullshit back to the penny stock boards, because the only people that actually believe that crap are gamblers, ignorant fools, and criminals.
Hypothetically.
And I don't mean that in a bad way.
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