Let me bring out my lawyer hat (I am an actual lawyer haha):
Let me bring out my lawyer hat here (not an actual lawyer though haha):
- A park is within their rights to ban somebody from the park for a year, a lifetime, or any other time that they choose.
- They will usually contact the local police department of this ban and get approval.
- The local police department will deliver a letter to the person's home address informing them of this ban (often times, the park itself won't even contact the person, they'll hear about the ban from the cops and not the park).
- If the person still goes to the park while they are banned and they have been given constructive notice they are illegally trespassing.
- When the cops are called to remove them from the park, if they resist there is an entire arsenal of crimes that they've committed that can be thrown at them to prosecute.
Even without going through this process, if you commit an infraction that results in an ejection on the spot, a park can still call the cops if you and refuse you're "trespassing."
Yes, criminal trespass is a thing. No, it's not relevant to the analysis here. Reselling the object (let's not get into the intent requirement) is a breach of your contract for the AP. Breaching a contract is (almost always) not criminal. You can be sued, but you won't be prosecuted.
Another legal distinction here:
Yes, it is unlawful to be selling merchandise for a profit if you're not property [sic] licensed and regulated to be in the retail business. Generally, you must obtain a license to sell merchandise, and go through the proper, wholesaler channels. If you're deemed to be a collector, you must wait a certain amount of time, and the goods must be old enough to be considered legitimate memorabilia. This applies for goods that are sold over the counter, and not necessarily ones that are free or available to the public at no cost (baseballs from games, autographs, artifacts, etc.).
It depends on the terms of service agreements, or the implied relationship that you have based on what a reasonable person would think based on common sense. A company can jam anything into a terms of service agreement, but all that matters is what a judge would think when it goes to court. If a judge finds that the terms of service were unreasonable, ambiguous, too favorable to one side, hard to understand, or a reasonable person would not or could not read the whole thing, he or she will void it.
This is probably a case of legislation being needed to clarify the situation and finding a solution that's beneficial to all. People shouldn't be hoarding merchandise that's in short supply only to profit off of it. And they shouldn't be profiting off of their access to the park that was for one person's admission and using that to transfer merchandise rights to other people. There was no commercial substance that was added, and any profit should be invalid.
Good note on unconscionability as it relates to consumer contracts. Courts are becoming less willing to enforce boilerplate consumer agreements because: (1) we know consumers don't read them, and (2) even when consumer do read them, 99% of consumers don't have the requisite legal training to make heads or tails of what they're reading.
That said, licensure is probably (read: almost certainly) inapplicable here. We're talking about a private sale of goods between two individuals, not the sale of goods by a merchant to a buyer. There are policy reasons to make business comply with regulations and licensure (public safety, anti-discrimination, etc.), but that's not really relevant here.
Not everything is proven/disproven by a link on the internet. I'm not a lawyer, but it's my stance that this could be pursued and won by Disney. You left out the fact you're taking advantage of a discount and re-selling it...not just buying an item and re-selling it.
If I'm wrong, so be it. My point is, Disney makes a reasonable 30% operating margin on consumer products and they run a perfectly legal business.
Disney could probably rescind the AP agreement because reselling merch purchased with an AP discount is a pretty clear breach of the agreement. But that's an action in contract.
To make a broader point, courts can't just do whatever they want. The legal system has rules (and rules, and rules, and rules) about what wrongs you can recover for, and which ones you can't. And "he charged too high of a price" typically isn't good enough.
There is a legal agreement in the form of the passholder agreement, which re-selling products would violate.
That's not how this works. You're free to sell the products, you just can't sell them and use your AP discount.
Just to reiterate, breach of contract is not a criminal matter. It's not "illegal" as we commonly think of it. You're free to breach if you want; you just have to be willing to pay for the damages resulting from that breach.
I think it’s easy for the law to determine abuse. Your example is not abuse. Plus, I’m only talking about buying items with the AP discount and re-selling them with the purpose of making money.
It's really hard for the law to determine abuse - heck, most of the time, the "law" doesn't care. There's a reason states have to pass price gouging laws.
Also, none of the foregoing should be construed as legal advice. No, you shouldn't go and violate your AP agreement by reselling merch. Just buy your own stuff and let others buy theirs.