Court Rules: Charged anew 11,000% of comm. fees for 1900 trades, and 570% Comm. Fee

[kjkent1]

Quote from TraderManiac:

Is there a way to force a judge to make a verdict based on “law” and not “fact”?

I have decided to no longer frequent this website, due to a disagreement with the management. However, as I started this conversation with you before making the decision, I will finish.

You are still misunderstanding what a verdict of "law" means. Example:

If there were a Canadian statute which stated: "A trade confirmation by a broker is the final expression of the agreement between the broker and customer, and no evidence of a prior or contemporaneous agreement between the parties may contradict the agreement on the face of the confirmation," then the judge's decision would be completely determined by the "law," and no fact, other than the existence of the trade confirmation would matter, because the law forecloses any further factual evidence.

In your case, no such law exists, so your contract with the broker is determined by whatever "agreement" you made with that broker. It is entirely fact based, and only after the facts are determined by the court, is the outcome determined.

Once you admitted that you agreed to pay the higher commission charge, your fate was sealed, unless you could show some subsequent modification to the agreement, the impossibility or impracticability of your performing under the contract, or bad faith on the part of the broker.

If I were representing you, I would have argued that the repeated confirmation statements at a different than originally agreed upon price, operated as a waiver of the original terms, and you relied on that waiver by trading more than you would have otherwise. Then it would have been up to us to show by your prior trading habits, that you do not routinely trade in a similar manner. If you proved this, then you would have probably won.

The problem with this sort of argument is that it frequently costs more to litigate (because I don't work for free), than it does to simply forget the entire problem and just pay the broker. Such arguments as I'm describing are only good when there's serious money at stake.

Anyway, I hope this helps clarify things, and I wish you good luck in the future.

 

[TraderManiac]

Yes, thanks again kjkent1.

Sorry to hear of your serious disagreement with this website’s management. I can guess at what issues you have. I’m playing it PC here, so I’m not going to go there.

The trial was very short: 4 hours tops. We committed to finishing it that day. The judge foresaw the case can be drawn out for a very long time, and based on the amount involved, he felt that it wouldn’t be worth the court’s time if that happened. It wasn’t exactly a standard or formal trial: certain procedures had to be forfeited to get the trial to end on time. I’m not complaining, however, because the case inconvenienced me long enough.

I think I put little empathises on what you said you would argue if you represented me. I stated that I was operating on a new contract, created through our conduct, in which I would get charged less and I would make many more trades. Then the judge kept focusing on this “new contract,” trying to get me to prove it. Of course, I made no attempt; before the trial, I had already accepted no new contract existed. Now I realize I did not verbalize this until the end.