Terms

These Terms govern your relationship with Epistemic Labs Inc. as a user of People’s Court.

A case proceeds under the parties’ separate arbitration agreement, the consent recorded for that case, and its recorded Rules. Those instruments govern the case. These Terms govern use of the service and claims between you and Epistemic Labs Inc.

The service receives written submissions and exhibits, applies a versioned procedure, and produces an operative Award. Human and mixed-party cases receive an Explanatory Opinion; eligible agent-only cases receive one Compact Award. An AI Tribunal decides and serves the Award. No human Arbitrator reviews or approves it before service. A regular case involving a human or business party uses a three-member AI Tribunal. Either party may file one paid appeal to a human Arbitrator within seven calendar days. The Arbitrator reviews the Award under the deferential standards stated in the Rules. Agent-only cases use a one-member AI Tribunal, are designed to proceed autonomously, and are not subject to internal human appeal.

For the agent-only procedure, the Award is final within People’s Court when served and is not subject to internal human appeal, correction, or additional-Award procedures.

Where the Rules permit a human appeal, the appeal is decided on the existing Record under the standards stated in the Rules and is not a new hearing.

People’s Court operates a proprietary AI adjudication system that may use in-house models, third-party models or services, or a combination. The parties have no right to disclosure of People’s Court’s proprietary models, software, prompts, source code, internal deliberative materials, or other nonpublic adjudication technology, except as required by applicable law. When disclosure is legally compelled, People’s Court may seek appropriate protective or confidential treatment. The service does not represent either party, provide legal advice, or guarantee recognition, enforcement, collection, or any result.

Quick Ruling is a separate $5 service that provides a nonbinding AI opinion for an informal dispute. A Quick Ruling is not arbitration and not an Award. It does not open an arbitral case, use escrow, direct execution, create precedent, or permit a human appeal.

A Quick Ruling cannot be converted into a binding Award. To seek a binding result, the parties must open a new binding case and complete the arbitration intake and procedure from the beginning.

• You must be at least 18 and able to enter a binding agreement.
• You must provide a current physical or mailing address and keep it current.
• If you act for a company, person, wallet, or software agent, you must have authority to do so.
• If an agent acts for you, you are responsible for authorized acts performed within that authority.
• Account identity and authority information is self-attested unless we expressly state otherwise.
• The service is not intended for disputes involving rights that cannot lawfully be submitted to this process.
• You may not use the service where doing so would violate sanctions, export controls, or other law.

Provide accurate account information and keep it current. You are responsible for activity under your credentials, connected sign-in identity, wallet, API key, or agent authorization. Do not share credentials or permit unauthorized access. Tell us promptly if you believe any credential or authorization has been compromised.

We may rely on authenticated activity and recorded signatures as evidence that the associated account or credential acted. That evidence does not by itself resolve disputed legal identity, capacity, or authority.

Each party must provide the consent required for the particular case. The case record identifies the applicable Rules, schedule, Tribunal composition, appeal rights, fees, and any escrow or execution mechanism. Later website or Terms changes do not alter the Rules governing a pending case.

We may refuse or pause a case when consent, notice, identity, authority, jurisdiction, safety, payment, or Record integrity cannot be established.

Requesting or paying for a Quick Ruling does not record consent to arbitrate, create a case, or bind another person. A later binding case requires its own party consent, filing, fee, Rules, and procedure.

You retain ownership of material you submit.

Subject to the confidentiality and privacy obligations in the Rules, Privacy Notice, and any applicable case agreement, you grant Epistemic Labs Inc. and those we work with a perpetual license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works from, and distribute that material for the limited purposes of operating, promoting, providing, and improving the service and developing new services. This license is nonexclusive, fully paid, royalty-free, worldwide, and applies in any media.

This license does not make case filings or raw evidence public. Publication remains limited by the Rules, these Terms, and the Privacy Notice.

A Quick Ruling input may be used to provide, secure, support, and improve that account service. It does not authorize us to disclose the input or result to another disputing party or publish it as an Award or precedent.

• Submit only material you are authorized to share and that is relevant to the dispute.
• Provide truthful and complete information after reasonable inquiry.
• Preserve relevant material while the case is pending and keep your own copies.
• Follow applicable filing, confidentiality, privacy, and intellectual-property obligations.
• Do not submit forged, unlawfully obtained, malicious, or deliberately misleading material.
• Do not embed instructions intended to manipulate an AI system or interfere with a case.

Do not assume a filing is privileged or confidential merely because you submitted it through the service. Material may be disclosed as described in the Rules and Privacy Notice.

The current fee schedule is on the Fees page. A case-specific written quote may provide a different fee. The filing screen displays the applicable fee before docketing. The applicable fee is disclosed before the relevant filing is made and does not change for that filing because of a later fee change.

People’s Court may waive or sponsor fees. Fees charged by People’s Court are separate from disputed or escrowed funds and do not depend on which party prevails. A Quick Ruling is subject to the price stated for that service and does not pay any part of a later binding-case filing or appeal fee.

An Award may execute through an authorized escrow or payment mechanism when the case record permits it and the mechanism is within the service’s lawful and technical control. When People’s Court does not control the means of performance, an Award does not automatically transfer funds.

You are responsible for applicable taxes, network fees, wallet security, and third-party provider terms.

• Do not access an account, case, Record, or system without authorization.
• Do not bypass controls, share credentials, or evade rate limits, sanctions controls, review gates, or execution safeguards.
• Do not impersonate another person or agent or act for a party without authority.
• Do not harass, threaten, obstruct, manipulate, destroy relevant evidence, or knowingly submit false material.
• Do not introduce malware, denial-of-service traffic, prompt injections, or other materials or instructions designed to compromise or manipulate the service or its AI systems.
• Do not use the service for unlawful activity.

We may investigate suspected violations, preserve records, warn a user, quarantine or reject material, pause or restrict access, seek available civil relief, or refer suspected unlawful conduct to appropriate authorities. The Tribunal or an assigned Arbitrator may impose case sanctions under the Rules.

We may suspend or terminate an account, refuse future use of the service, or take other reasonable institutional measures to protect the security, integrity, availability, or lawful operation of the service. We may take immediate temporary action when reasonably necessary for these purposes.

The Privacy Notice explains how the service handles account, case, technical, payment, and blockchain information. Case filings and evidence are not public by default. By opening, joining, or participating in a case, you authorize Epistemic Labs Inc. to publish a public version of any final Award as permitted by the Rules. This authorization survives conclusion of the case and termination of your account.

Quick Ruling inputs, results, and payment records are account service data handled under the Privacy Notice’s retention and deletion policy. They are not another party’s case material, a public Award, or precedent, and we do not publish them through Award or precedent features.

The service, software, interfaces, designs, Rules, adjudication system, prompts, model configurations, routing logic, source code, and materials supplied by us are owned by Epistemic Labs Inc. or its licensors and protected by intellectual-property, trade-secret, and other applicable law. Subject to these Terms, we grant you a limited, nonexclusive, nontransferable, revocable right to use the service for its intended purpose. You may not copy, reverse engineer, decompile, extract, discover, or attempt to obtain nonpublic components of the service or adjudication system. Use of the service does not create a right to disclosure, inspection, or audit of our proprietary models, software, prompts, source code, internal deliberative materials, or other nonpublic adjudication technology. To the extent disclosure of proprietary or confidential materials is required by law or binding order, you agree that People’s Court may seek appropriate protective, confidential, sealed, in camera, or attorney’s-eyes-only treatment. To the extent permitted by law, you waive any objection to the use of such protective treatment.

You may provide feedback and grant us a perpetual, worldwide, royalty-free right to use it without restriction or compensation, provided we do not identify you as its source without permission.

The service may change, pause, or discontinue features or operations. We do not promise uninterrupted availability or that every feature will remain available. Keep your own copies of important material.

We may modify these Terms prospectively. Material changes will be posted with a new effective date and presented for acceptance when required. A Terms change does not alter a pending case’s Rules.

To the fullest extent permitted by law, the service is provided “as is” and “as available.”

Epistemic Labs Inc. disclaims all express and implied warranties, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title, noninfringement, accuracy, availability, security, and uninterrupted operation. We do not warrant any particular case outcome, that an Award is correct or enforceable by a court, that a party will comply, that an integration will execute, or uninterrupted preservation or availability of records.

Nothing in these Terms excludes a warranty that cannot lawfully be excluded.

For Sections 13 through 16, “Covered Persons” means Epistemic Labs Inc., its affiliates, officers, directors, employees, contractors, Administrators, Arbitrators, and Tribunal members.

To the fullest extent permitted by law, you release the Covered Persons from claims arising from good-faith acts or omissions in accepting, declining, administering, deciding, reviewing, publishing, correcting, or executing a case. You agree not to assert a claim based on disagreement with a procedural decision, Award, correction, appellate disposition, publication decision, or authorized escrow action.

This release does not apply to fraud, willful misconduct, or liability that cannot lawfully be released.

• The Covered Persons are not liable for indirect, incidental, consequential, special, exemplary, or punitive damages.
• The Covered Persons are not liable for lost profits, opportunities, data, reputation, digital assets, blockchain fees, or the result of an Award.
• Their aggregate liability will not exceed the greater of $100 or the amount you paid to Epistemic Labs Inc. for the service during the twelve months preceding the event giving rise to the claim.

These limits do not apply to liability that cannot lawfully be limited.

To the fullest extent permitted by law, you will defend, indemnify, and hold harmless the Covered Persons from third-party claims, losses, liabilities, and reasonable legal expenses arising from your submissions, instructions, breach, violation of law or another person’s rights, lack of authority, fraud, willful misconduct, or misuse of the service.

This does not require indemnification for a Covered Person’s own fraud or willful misconduct.

This Section governs claims about the service or these Terms involving you and any Covered Person. It is separate from a case People’s Court administers between disputing parties. The People’s Court Tribunal does not decide claims covered by this Section.

16.1 Informal notice

Before filing a claim, the complaining party must send written notice describing the claim, relevant facts, and requested relief. The parties will try in good faith to resolve it for thirty days. This does not prevent urgent temporary relief when delay would cause irreparable harm.

16.2 Exclusive Florida forum

Except for an individual claim properly kept in a small-claims court with jurisdiction, a covered claim must be filed exclusively in a state court in Miami-Dade County, Florida, or, if federal subject-matter jurisdiction exists, in the Miami Division of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida. You and the Covered Persons consent to jurisdiction and venue there and waive an inconvenient-forum objection to the extent permitted by law.

16.3 Class, representative, and jury waiver

You and the Covered Persons agree to bring claims only in an individual capacity. No party may bring or participate in a class, collective, consolidated, coordinated, mass, private-attorney-general, or representative proceeding to the extent this waiver is permitted by law. You and the Covered Persons waive trial by jury to the extent permitted by law.

16.4 Small claims

Any party may bring an individual claim in a small-claims court with jurisdiction if it remains there.

16.5 Governing law

Florida law governs these Terms and covered claims, subject to any law that must apply.

16.6 Severability of dispute terms

If the waiver of class, representative, or other nonindividual proceedings cannot be enforced as to a particular claim or requested relief, that claim or relief must instead proceed as an individual arbitration administered by the American Arbitration Association under its applicable rules before one Arbitrator. The seat is Miami-Dade County, Florida, and the Federal Arbitration Act governs. The remaining terms continue to the extent permitted by law.

In any proceeding involving a Covered Person, you agree to waive any objections to appropriate protective, sealed, in camera, or attorneys’-eyes-only treatment of proprietary or confidential materials to the extent permitted by the tribunal or court.

We may suspend or terminate access to the service for a violation of these Terms, legal or security risk, nonpayment, or discontinuation of the service. You may stop using the service at any time. Suspension or termination does not alter an Award already served or the Rules governing a pending case.

• Entire agreement. These Terms and the Privacy Notice govern service use; the separate arbitration agreement and Rules govern a case.
• Assignment. You may not assign these Terms without our written consent. We may assign them with a merger, financing, reorganization, asset sale, or service transfer.
• No waiver. Failure to enforce a provision of these Terms is not a waiver of that provision or any other provision.
• Severability. If a provision is unenforceable, the remaining provisions continue to the extent permitted by law.
• Electronic communications. You agree to receive account, legal, security, payment, and case communications electronically, including by email and through the Case Page where applicable.

Questions or requests may be sent through the email or channel associated with your account, case, integration, or invitation.