One of the articles I read said they wanted to make it up to her by letting her do some of their other events. She cancelled other orders, got staff working long hours, and bought a shit ton of ingredients so she could make 4000 pies for them, and they just said "Never mind" like it's no big deal.
Is it unheard of for a bakery to establish arbitration agreements to avoid this exact situation? From my understanding, courts are reticent to insert themselves in arbitration unless the agreements made were invalid. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Tesla isn't going to call their lawyers for $4k. The phone call would cost more than just paying her. If she filed in small claims, chances are good they wouldn't even show up.
You would think tesla would, but who knows what they'll do if Musk decides he doesn't like her.
$16k is too much for small claims, but I believe she could get $10,000 from small claims and lawyers aren't allowed in small claims court in San Fran, so she should be able to just go directly after the person who placed and canceled the order.
I'm not sure she really did. This is very preliminary, but an invoice was exchanged and an agreement made. That should be plenty in this case. I'm not a lawyer, but this sounds like a pretty straightforward call for estoppel.
But she probably wasn't prepared to send a lawsuit their way. Going to the media might have seemed to her more beneficial. Or she just didn't know that she was on firm ground for a suit.
Sounds an awful lot like detrimental reliance to me…
Why is this getting downvoted?
Detrimental reliance is the legal principle that would allow the bakery to recover damages from Tesla. In summary: "You promised to pay me for this, and I acted accordingly, but you didn't follow through, so pay up."