this post was submitted on 15 Sep 2024
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That's not going to work for long. Best you're going to get is a stay until you pay. Might as well make it right with the landlord while you actually do take OFAC to small claims court. Because they'll find it then.
But also, this is what your Congress critter is for. All kinds of things get magically resolved when the congressional office of the honorable so and so makes an inquiry.
Hold on. Who are you saying OFAC took the money from, the tenant or the landlord? You can’t have it both ways. The tenant complied with the terms of the contract to send the money as directed. OFAC targeted the landlord. A court would not have impose a higher expectation than following contractual obligations.
I could see if a check got lost in the mail, where the result is that the defentant retains possession and constructive use of the money, then a court would have enough descretion to rule fairly. But the OFAC case is not that case.
That's not how contracts work. Unless the contact specified using that avenue, the only thing that matters is payment received.
But really I think this all smells because OFAC doesn't actually seize money right away. They freeze it, so it gets deposited but you can't do anything with it. Which would mean it got the land lord's bank account but that account was frozen.
For the money to get pulled into a different account, to actually be seized would mean they had definitely blocked this guy from dealing with Americans. In which case everything, money, buildings, company, is now frozen.
You apparently believe OFAC took the money from the sender, not the recipient despite targeting the recipient. A court is not going to say that a payer owes money they already paid and must pay again in duplicate despite a government action to take money from the recipient. I have my money on the tenant prevailing in this case. Since OFAC targeted the recipient, the money likely would have left the sender’s bank and landed in the bank of the recipient. At that moment, the money is on the other side of the wall and outside of the sender’s control. The sender did not hire the recipient’s bank. The money grab would have happened after the money landed in the recipient’s bank. A sender cannot be responsible for a recipient’s bank paying their client.
If OFAC were some ransomware/cyber criminal gang running out of Nigeria, I would agree (as it’s not a government confiscating money from a recipient).
If I say in my contract: pay me by stashing cash under a rock at location X, and the payer complies, and then a bypasser takes the money, that’s a problem for the (foolish) person who drafted the contract that way. The drafter of a contract has a higher responsibility to flaws in the text of the agreement than the party who merely agrees to the contract.
For example, the US specifically has a law that states the benefit of ambiguity in contracts goes to the party who did /not/ draft the contract. This rightfully encourages contract writers to be diligent.
Otherwise you are left with penalizing people for faulty contract terms that they did not draft.