I'm pretty sure the publishers are alleging that a crime has been committed. In that case, private parties can't open a suit (at least if Swedish criminal law is at all similar to Norwegian law), so this asks the police to open a criminal investigation into the matter. What happens next in the Norwegian system at least is that the police will conduct their investigation, and at some point when the police consider their investigations complete the prosecutor's office will decide what to do next. Next steps can be concluding that no crime has occured, to ask the police to investigate further, that a crime has been committed but the evidence are insufficient for a trial, or that someone should be tried.
Surely you can still sue separately through the civil process even if you choose to not pursue criminal charges?
If someone causes you damage through non-criminal negligence, surely you can sue them?
The idea that you couldn’t bring a civil suit over possibly criminal conduct seems unworkable. It’s possible that my neighbour was drunk when he crashed into my parked car late at night, but surely that can’t preclude me from seeking compensation through civilian courts.
It’s possible, but tremendously unlikely that Facebook is committing fraud here. In Sweden you have to prove intent to defraud, which is a tremendously high bar.
Which, again, makes the idea that you couldn’t bring a civil suit seem ever more bizarre. How could you possibly know if Facebook has committed fraud here? You presumably can’t read Zuckerbergs toughts.
In that particular example (drunk neighbour damaging your property with reckless driving) is really — in most of Europe, I would guess as Serbian laws are largely copied over from different EU country laws — handled by the insurance.
Basically, insurance against damage to others is obligatory for anyone to get the car registered and on the road.
If someone drives an unregistered, uninsured vehicle, a consortium of all insurance companies pay for the damage, and sue the perpetrator in a civil case.
In general, you can argue your level of damage with the insurance company, and can even take them to court.
In Serbia, drunk driving actually precludes the liability of the insurance company too, but they still need to pay out the damages first, and bring a civil case against the driver to get compensated. For that, they need a criminal conviction.
(I've had the unfortune to be hit by a drunk driver, luckily no other harm than to the property as both cars have been totalled, and his insurance argued a lower value for my almost new car)
I am guessing here the "intent" can also be "aware of it but did not invest enough to curb it while it is profiting off it".
Yeah, I know how car insurance works and just figured it’d be overly verbose to specify some scenario where the neighbour was driving some uninsured vehicle like a tractor and the incident happened outside of public roads.
I do think I still managed to make my point though, preventing civil lawsuits arising from possibly criminal behaviour is unrealistic. That would make it extremely difficult for individuals to seek compensation for almost any damage they might suffer, they’d have to first wait for months or years before the police gets back to them.
>I am guessing here the "intent" can also be "aware of it but did not invest enough to curb it while it is profiting off it".
Fraud by negligence is a fairly exotic concept and to my understanding usually specifically relies on laws regarding negligent misrepresentation. I’d be surprised if that would work in Sweden.
>For liability for fraud to come into question, the prosecutor has to be
able to prove that the crime is deliberate. This means that the criminal
act has been committed consciously or intentionally. Liability for fraud
is conditional on the objective requisites being covered by the perpetrator’s intent. It is not possible to judge a person to be liable for fraud because someone has been paid too much compensation as a result of negligence, or because the person did not know about certain obligations in
conjunction with the compensation. Carelessness is thus not sufficient.
It must be possible to prove that the perpetrator has committed the act
intentionally. This intent must cover all elements of the criminal act.
The great problem with fraud crime is to prove the intent. The actual
circumstances surrounding what really occurred are often a lesser pro-
blem. The assessment of the intent is complicated by the fact that the
rules concerning social insurance can be difficult to understand.
The difficulty in proving intent has meant that several assessors have
considered that the fraud regulations do not work quite as they should.
Proposals have therefore been made that negligence should be sufficient
for judging that a person has misled the Social Insurance Agency or
some other payment-issuer within the compensation and benefit systems
(Örnemark Hansen, 1995). This criticism against the intention require-
ment has led to the new Benefit Crime Act (2007:612).
Generally legal system has negligence, and once someone is provably informed of the negative consequences but keeps being negligent, "willful negligence", which is much closer to intent (I see it defined as "intentional disregard...").
IANAL, but common sense tells me there should be a link to willful harm.
