r/legaladviceofftopic

Say I am a highly successful artist. My work is regularly trading hands for 10s of millions of dollars. But I personally went bankrupt and now I have nothing. I stop making art.

My friend's birthday is coming up. For old time's sake, I paint a portrait of him. Word gets out, and art collectors begin making genuine offers of 50 million dollars for this painting. It's framed as my last painting, a rare one-off post-retirement painting.

But I don't want to sell it to them. It's for my friend's birthday.

So I give it to him as a gift.

At this point 1) Is the fair market value of the gift established to be 50 million by the incoming offers, 2) Do I or my friend now owe tax on it, and 3) In sum total, would this functionally prevent me from painting my friend a picture without someone owing millions of dollars to the IRS?

Etobicoke, Ontario, Canada

I had the strangest encounter of my life today. While riding a bus in Etobicoke, my gf and I witnessed a women casually lower her pants, lift herself out of her seat slightly, and urinate onto the floor of the bus.

Yep.

We quickly retreated to the rear of the bus, but the woman sitting in front of the pisser wasn't so lucky. She didn't notice what happened, and we saw that her bag on the floor was soaked with the urine.

When we got off the bus, I informed the driver, but she just shrugged as if having weewee all over her bus's floor was an everyday occurrence.

Anyway, I'm sure what this pisser did was illegal; I certainly hope it was. What I'm curious about though is what those laws might be. Is this just general public indecency? Is there some piss-specific law out there?

Once again this is Ontario Canada.

Tons of people support life in prison over the death penalty because no one wants to kill an innocent person. But how common is someone falsely accused of a murder? Does it happen often? Being in prison for life while being innocent?

Somehow ended up with a lot of car chase videos in my feed.

So my question is on collateral damage. If a LEO crashes/gets injured during the chase, but not from the fleeing vehicle, will the fleeing driver get a charge? What if a LEO hits another car (innocent 3rd party)?

I am assuming the chase is legal/authorized.

Apologies for what is probably quite an odd question. I thought about this earlier when I saw a post where a guy was selling harmful spells on Etsy. Many of you are American and it would be great to hear about US law, but also other countries as well. For example, it might be the case that in some Carribbean countries such magic is banned?

The reason I ask this is because it seems that intention, and belief that your actions do harm, are important in law. For example, if a person purchased something they believed to be poison, but which was actually a harmless substance, and then attempted to use this substance to try to kill someone would they get in legal trouble if caught? Would it count as attempted murder? What if the substance was an actual poison but was expired and useless, would that change things?

Another example, if a person tried to shoot someone with what they thought was a real gun but was actually a prop, I can see how this would likely lead them to potentially being charged with attempted murder.

But let's say we have two individuals who believe in curses and hexes, A and B. If A cast a hex on B, fully believing it would kill them, is that illegal? If B brought a case against A, proving that they fully believed in this hex, would they be charged with attempted murder? I understand this example is somewhat different to the two above, but there are similarities in that the individual believed their actions would cause harm but didn't.

For example, someone grossly humiliates me and slaps me in public (among other things considered battery). I suffered no noticeable medical injury to recover any compensatory damages. Can I still sue (and recover) in small claims court for $1 compensatory damage and $5000 in punitive damages?

This is one of my biggest pet peeves at medical facilities. You go and the person at check in just says, I need you to sign for consent to treat, and you’re expected to sign on a little screen that has zero reference to what you’re signing. I’m always a pain in the butt and ask for the form to be printed, they then ask me to sign on screen and I tell them I will only sign the paper document. One time I canceled the appointment at the time as the consent to treat said that I would pay even if the claim was denied due to practice error.

How is this legal / why haven’t there been a bunch of class action suits against MyChart and other groups that use this technology?

When I (28F) was barely 15 years old I was groomed, manipulated, kept away & isolated from from family, and pregnant by a 20 year old man. He was physically and mentally abusive, just a horrible person over all.

He ended up going to prison for unrelated charges when our son was 8 months old. He was released Nov 2024. I am now 28. I had no contact with him his entire sentencing. 2025 December he took me to court for 50/50 custody.

We do not know this man. Our life went on when this abusive man was removed from our lives by the grace of god. These past few months really showed me how unhealed I was from the trauma he inflicted on me.

Being in the same room as this man made me feel something in my chest that quite literally froze my train of thought, removed the ability for me to standup for my self, to speak my peace, to speak in general.

The power dynamic this man had on me was still very present in that court room & due to triggers releasing the raw emotion I haven’t faced or acknowledged since I was a kid, the judge immediately gave the impression that he didn’t have time for whatever it was I had to bring to the table on my behalf.

I was rushed, I was cut short. I was humiliated the second my voice cracked while trying to build that courage to speak in general, the judge rolled his eyes while tossing himself back into his chair to make it clear he was bored and annoyed.

I was denied a Victims advocate because they only deal with abused women cases that involve relationship and DV. They do not help with custody battles apparently ? 🫩 I never been to court in my life. I have no family no support to guide me in any direction.. Google Gemini has been my only helping hand through out this & honestly I’m feeling so defeated and discouraged.

I had proof printed out and a very straight forward but also reasonable statement typed out and everyone I told said there’s no way he can get anything out of this.

But he did. My son is forced to be alone with an abusive pedofile that only wanted him so he didn’t get charged by child support since he just started working (I am on foodstamps)

Sorry for such a long read. Thankyou to anyone who pulled thru the whole thing I’m so stressed overwhelmed and hurt this is even something we’re having to go thru at this time in our life. Any advice will be greatly appreciated!!

It’s hypothetical, been binging bodycam videos.

In a lot of real court videos, police interrogation videos, and true crime shows, we see the suspect waive their right to legal representation even though it's well known that waiving that right has no benefits and only downsides. Why would so many people (a majority I feel like, if we go by just my limited sample size of videos) intentionally shoot themselves in the foot? What exactly are they trying to do?

It seems that court cases take years and years, partially because there just aren’t enough judges, and each judge has so many cases.

The politics and budgetary reality of it aside, if we could snap our fingers and 2x, 3x, 5x’d the number of sitting judges and supporting staff in our court system, would civil and criminal cases that take many years see resolutions faster?

Or are there other bottlenecks that would likely keep it the same length?

We all know of this principle in criminal court; in the US, a defendant can't be charged for the same crime twice. Some see it is a core civil liberty to prevent the use of repeated trials as a tool for unchecked government harassment, some see the protection as extreme and enabling the guilty (OJ etc.) to get away with it.

Well, is there an analogous concept in civil court? Let's say I sue XYZ (person, company, group etc.) for some tort. Due to limited available evidence at the time, we lose, or decide to accept a settlement. Some time later, new and legally admissible evidence (such as a verifiable confession) comes out that strongly helps my case; if it were available at the time, I'd be virtually guaranteed to win or be able to force a much higher settlement.

Am I allowed to sue XYZ again?

Friend asked me if this was bad. Im 50/50 as long as theres no sexual stuff. Ive seen many older people say its fine but many young people accusing one of being a pedo. They met in high school.

As an example, I'd use Ontario, Canada, where Doug Ford is closing a bunch of supervised injection sites - I don't think I need to explain the value of them in harm reduction. At least I hope I don't. Anyway, since that will inevitably result in adversity and death, it makes me wonder if people could hypothetically sue the government for negligence in situations like that. Do they have a duty of care that they breached by closing such institutions?

I couldn't qualify for legal aid so I'm trying to handle this on my own.

I have a PPO against an ex. During the relationship there were control issues like pushing for constant location sharing and trying to keep contact going after I tried to end things (including offering things or sending things to get me to respond).

There was also behavior where he sent me explicit images of someone else and claimed it was me, along with saying I was "all over the internet," which wasn't true. That contributed to me getting the PPO.

He now has a lawyer and is contesting it. In his motion he's making claims about me being involved in drugs and sexual content online and arguing that I'm the one acting unreasonably. Those claims aren't true.

There have also been some procedural issues with how things have been handled. One of his filings was served to me through my university and was not in an envelope at all. I also previously filed a PPO violation, but it was dismissed on a procedural/technical issue

Now I have a hearing coming up and the notice says no new evidence can be presented. I do have additional evidence that supports my side and contradicts what he's saying, so I'm confused about how that works.

Please advise. Any advice would be appreciated