Hiring online influencers to post "pleading for justice"—are both sides breaking the law?
【提示】After being ordered by a Shanghai court to pay over 700,000 yuan in a housing lease dispute, Wang Yumei, a Shanghai native, hired a Nanjing-based online promoter to publish articles online to stir up publicity, intending to "cry for justice." Due to unsatisfactory results and a falling-out with the other party, she sued to demand the return of the promotion fees already paid. The Nanjing Gulou District Court found that the actions of both the plaintiff and defendant were illegal and lacked legitimate purpose, dismissed the plaintiff's claims, and confiscated the 80,000 yuan promotion fee received by the defendant.
【案例】Wang Yumei is the daughter of the legal representative of a Shanghai catering company. In 2010, the company and Wang Yumei became involved in a dispute with a Shanghai commercial company over a housing lease contract. Subsequently, the parties went through first-instance, second-instance, and retrial proceedings at the Shanghai Yangpu District Court, the Shanghai Second Intermediate People's Court, and the Shanghai High People's Court. All rulings determined that the catering company should pay the commercial company 73 yuan in various fees, and the commercial company should compensate the catering company 23 yuan in losses. Believing the court's judgment to be unjust, Wang Yumei planned to expose the incident in the media to create a sensational effect, attract the attention of relevant authorities, and correct the "wrongful case."
In January 2013, Wang Yumei was introduced to Gong Jianguo, who worked at a Nanjing-based internet company, and reached an agreement with him. Wang Yumei commissioned the Nanjing internet company to promote articles about the housing lease contract case on domestic websites, and she would pay a certain fee. Subsequently, Gong Jianguo used the company's network to publish an article titled "Fire Escape Turned into Commercial Shops: Controversy over the Legality of Lease Contracts" on 26 domestic websites.
After the article was published, Wang Yumei refused to pay the remaining balance, citing the reason that the articles released by the internet company had little impact and failed to create a sensational effect. In May 2014, she sued Gong Jianguo and his company in the Nanjing Gulou District Court, requesting the revocation of the commission contract and the return of the 80,000 yuan fee.
The Gulou Court found that Wang Yumei's actions were improper in purpose and not made in good faith. The defendant internet company's act of publishing news in exchange for payment constituted paid news, which is explicitly prohibited by the national news publishing authorities. Therefore, the actions of both the plaintiff and the defendant were illegal, disrupting the social and economic order and harming the public interest. At the end of September, the Nanjing Gulou Court dismissed Wang Yumei's lawsuit and confiscated the 80,000 yuan payment that the internet company had received from Wang Yumei. (Names in the text are pseudonyms.)
(Yangtze Evening Post)
【学法】Contracts must not harm the public interest. In civil law, civil activities should respect social ethics and must not harm the public interest. This principle has universal applicability in the field of civil law and can be applied to all branches of civil law.
For example, in property law, the reasonableness of state expropriation and requisition is limited to the need for public interest; in the field of intellectual property, whether it is copyright law, patent law, or trademark law, all contain provisions for rights restrictions, the legitimacy of which stems from considerations of public interest; in the field of tort law, under German law, there is a general type of tort known as "intentionally causing harm in a manner contrary to good morals." At the level of contract law, contracts that violate the public interest will be declared invalid. Among these, Article 7 of the Contract Law stipulates that parties entering into and performing contracts shall comply with laws and administrative regulations, respect social ethics, and must not disrupt the social and economic order or harm the public interest. Thus, it can be seen that China's Contract Law's provisions on public interest largely follow the approach of the General Principles of Civil Law.
It is worth noting that China's General Principles of Civil Law also stipulate: "If a civil act is partially invalid and does not affect the validity of the other parts, the other parts shall remain valid." Therefore, if a contract contains content that harms the public interest, and that content does not affect other content, the other content remains valid. For example, when a factory introduces sewage treatment equipment, it may include a disclaimer for environmental pollution caused by failure to follow the instructions. This disclaimer will be invalid because it harms the public interest, but other content, such as the equipment introduction and price, remains valid and binding on the parties.
