> In a post to LinkedIn three weeks ago, Lorant Barla, CEO of Romania-based Softland, said, "Digital River is automatically 'pre-signing' contracts in your MyCommerce account without your approval. The new MSAs [Master Services Agreements] stipulate additional platform fees and payments delayed for up to 60 days (we are still waiting for the payment from July)."
And:
> One of the vendors who has been asking to be paid showed The Register a note received from Digital River's law firm, New York-based Mintz & Gold, in response to payment inquiries.
> The law firm says that Digital River presently doesn't consider merchant debt claims to be valid obligations.
Seems like a total meltdown. Hopefully merchants get to recoup at least some of their losses from this fiasco.
It also seems like these shutdown CEOs may be running the company in a deceptive way towards a shutdown. Is that really legal? Can’t they face criminal charges for that, and wouldn’t that remain even with a bankruptcy case?
I am not a lawyer but bankruptcy isn’t a get out or jail free card.
If you intentionally use bankruptcy to defraud customers, the court would be more likely to deny your request for bankruptcy. And you can’t use a company to shield from all liability. A court can “pierce the corporate veil” and rule the parent company or company stakeholders are liable.
Anyone outside wouldn’t be able to file a lawsuit in the US.
Suing a defendant based in the US for a breach of contract resulting from acts committed in the US, for a contract that doesn’t force arbitration or specify a foreign venue for litigation, would very likely allow a US lawsuit.
Naturally I haven’t looked at the specifics of the situation beyond what the linked article states, so this wouldn’t be legal advice even if I were a lawyer, which I’m not. I presume all the vendors whom the article says are contemplating a class action lawsuit are already getting proper legal advice from their lawyers.
Someone mentioned on that forum that Germany doesn't have class action suits, and majority of us were working with DigitalRiver Gmbh, because we started with German based ShareIt once upon a time.
There's a public 51 page document signed between Digital River and its subsidiaries and Cerberus Business Finance Agency, NY on 19 July, but it's too hard for layman to comprehend anything apart from that Cerberus is a creditor to Digital River and that it gets some extra rights from that point on. I'm just speculating since I'm out of my league here, but it's not impossible that they're using funds of small vendors who can't defend themselves to cover debt to a single large creditor armed with full legal team. If they drain all the funds and bankrupt the company, who can we realistically sue and expect to see some money? It's all legal, they were paying other creditor, money was not stolen for personal benefit.
https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/c...
My last laptop purchased from the the Lenovo store and my subscription to Nvidia GeforceNow were processed via Digital River.
You'd think both Lenovo and Nvidia would be big enough to manage their own ecommerce. I suspect their legal teams will see them get better treatment anyway.
Sure must be nice to get away with anything you like just because it's legally a company and not a person doing it, with all kinds of shady lawyers exploiting legalese loopholes. All of them will escape with full pockets and without punishment, and the moral of the story is: don't be poor, be a company and have lots of lawyers - the world is your oyster.