Quote from: molecular on July 25, 2013, 01:35:09 PM

Quote from: darkmule on July 24, 2013, 09:25:41 PM

They assign a dollar value to whatever you contracted to receive, and that is what you get in the judgment.

quite frankly: A court could put quite a huge dollar value on the on time delivery of such a product. It'd probably be in the 10,000 $ range or more for a jalapeno (delivered October 2012) if you calculate it favorably?

Yes, a court could find that, but they are unlikely simply to take your word for it that you would have made that amount of money. That kind of what is called consequential damages would have to be established by expert testimony, because a judge is not going to be familiar with Bitcoin or Bitcoin mining and won't be able to make a ruling on it without expert testimony.

Then BFL would be likely to come up with their own expert to say something self-serving.

That would take a lot of billable hours. You might be looking at well over $10,000 just to get that done. So it probably wouldn't be worth it for one individual to try to do, but it might be worthwhile for a group of people, each with their own claims, to pursue.

Courts are also often reluctant to award consequential damages. Specifically, the plaintiff has a higher burden of proof when attempting to characterize lost profits as compensable harm in a breach of contract case. The plaintiff has to prove not only that the damages were reasonably certain to occur (this part is probably easy) but also was within the understanding of both parties, as well as proving the damages themselves to a reasonable degree of certainty. Now, I think all these elements are present, but it can be tricky to prove them.

For instance, if BFL had just delivered YOUR unit, you would have made out like a bandit. However, if they had delivered EVERYONE'S unit on time, the difficulty would have started to increase pretty rapidly, and the profit from each unit would begin to decrease more rapidly. It could be tough to establish "reasonable degree of certainty" as to the amount of the damages considering the nature of the Bitcoin network.

There's also a detrimental reliance case. I.e., you purchased a BFL because of their false representations, which they knew to be false, and you reasonably relied on their representations and were harmed. In this case, you argue that had you not been snookered by BFL's lies, you would instead have purchased an alternate unit like an Avalon, and had you done that, you would have made $X in the interim.

There's also unjust enrichment. With their false representations, they got to acquire tons of BTC which has since vastly appreciated in value. It is unfair for them to be allowed to keep that ill-gained profit would be the argument. If they converted to USD since then, presumably they've been collecting the interest on that money. Basically, they got an interest-free loan and should have to pay prejudgment interest on it.

(Law school grad but not actively licensed in any jurisdiction, this is not legal advice, for real legal advice, seek licensed legal counsel in the appropriate jurisdiction, rinse, repeat. This post is mostly off-the-cuff speculation about what a plaintiff might do, not a claim that any legal argument presented in it is necessarily likely to succeed.)