Did someone call a lawyer?

Quoted from LC Isn't Gary a lawyer? Someone here is... Or was. I don't like the idea of SS and monetary prizes. There's enough squabbles during OWCs and accusations of cheating during Tournaments without adding money to the mix. Perhaps I'm alone in this opinion.

It would only be $250 or so but I do see the points made on cash being more of an incentive to cheat... and even to make people more inclined to accuse somebody else.

PUTTING ON MY LAWYER HAT (and my lawyer glasses):

(reviews situation, takes off glasses) Don't do it.

When you start offering prizes (other than coffee mugs -- damn it, I will get one of those one day!), there are two dynamics at play here.  One is alluded to by Dustin above, and the other is that the entire contest would likely need to be vetted by an outside attorney, probably in Virginia (I think that's where Don is, or DC), and would have to comply with Virginia state laws.  The cost of having an attorney look at it, even if it's just a precursory glance, would cost significantly more than all the entry fees put together. That shouldn't be on Don to have to deal with.

As Frank mentioned, this would obviously be a contest of skill, not chance (although aren't we all leaving it up to chance with some of the crappy reviews we receive?).  But contests of skill require written rules and procedures, especially when funds are being transmitted via banks through PayPal or Zelle or credit card.  That's where issues of wire fraud and other stupid laws come into play and hence the need to get everything vetted.  It's not sitting down with your friends at a card table where you're all in the same place and no money is being transmitted electronically.

Anyway, my silly legal opinion is leave money out of it, and it will be much neater and cleaner.

I'll submit my invoice later.

Gary

No entry fees. Never intended to have them. Too much headache on all sides.

And just to clarify:

Nothing intended yet - as I said, just spit-balling this as an idea.

In my mind...

This would not be intended to be an OWC as we know it or to replace any OWCs, micro challenges, feature challenges, already scheduled, etc. It is just me ruminating about an end of the year Script challenge.

Not a formal competition - no fees. Everything would be funded by me so there would be no need to raise money.

In my mind, it was not intended to bring new people to the site. It was intended to have a short challenge for participating members (obviously, the definition of participating is fluid). For writers it was kind of like - write your best short in your best genre - something you would write to market/sell. And to readers it would be interesting since one would not have to go through scripts with the same genre, theme, location, objects, etc.

ALL THAT BEING SAID

I just realized I jumped the shark. For some reason I thought I had cleared the concept through Don. Checking my email I see that I have not - which I think is critical because I have no idea of whether the logistics on his end would be feasible. SO:

- Apologies for that.

- I'm going to ask Don to lock this thread until he gets a chance to let me know if it is even doable.

- More to come.

Folks,

Dave has a great idea, here and I'm going to lock it and put it somewhere so we can bring it up at a later time (after the "Nothing to see here" challenge.)

With regard to paid contests, at this point in time and for the forseeable future, I will be sticking to free challenges.  Considering the amount of trouble a free challenge is and while we make every effort to run the challenges with the same rigor as a paid contest,  I do not want to introduce money into the mix.

Don