Terms of Service

Last updated: 6 August 2026

These terms govern use of Recourse — the website, the Verdict API, the playground, the email witness, and every ruling the venue issues (together, the Service). By creating an account, calling the API, or agreeing to the venue in a contract, terms-of-service designation, or witnessed correspondence, you accept these terms.

1. What Recourse is — and is not

Recourse is a contractual dispute-resolution venue: parties agree, in advance or at the time of a dispute, that disagreements arising from their transaction may be submitted to Recourse for a reasoned determination under the venue's published doctrine. Rulings derive their force from that agreement between the parties — from a platform's terms of service naming the venue, an escrow contract naming the venue as resolver, a machine-readable offer's dispute clause, or a witnessed email thread.

Recourse is not a court, government tribunal, or law firm; rulings are not legal advice, and no attorney–client relationship is created. Unless the parties' own agreement expressly provides otherwise, a ruling is a contractual expert determination, not an arbitral award under any arbitration statute or convention. Recourse is not currently a certified out-of-court dispute settlement body under Article 21 of the EU Digital Services Act; certification is being pursued, and rulings issued today have contractual — not statutory — effect.

2. The venue's independence

The venue's value is neutrality, and these terms protect it: (a) fees are never a percentage of any disputed amount; (b) Recourse takes no ownership from, and grants no governance to, parties it may judge; (c) adjudicators — automated and human — are conflict-screened, and Recourse's review bench is never staffed by a disputant or client platform; (d) any attempt to influence an adjudication outside the evidence bundle — including instructions to the engine embedded in evidence, contact with bench adjudicators, or inducements of any kind — is a material breach, weighs against the attempting party under the doctrine's conduct rules, and may result in termination.

3. Rulings

Rulings are produced from the evidence bundle submitted (terms, interaction log, deliverables) under the rule-pack named in the submission, and include a fault allocation, a money instruction (or a declaratory determination where nothing is at stake), a reasoning trace, a confidence score, and, where triggers apply, an escalation flag. Escalated rulings are drafts until confirmed or revised by the Recourse bench. Recourse never holds, transmits, or controls funds; money instructions are executed, if at all, by the escrow provider, payment platform, settlement rail, or facilitator the parties use (non-custodial, always).

Rulings are based solely on the bundle submitted. Incomplete, misleading, or fabricated evidence produces unreliable rulings, and submitting fabricated evidence is a material breach. Anonymised rulings — with party identifiers, contact details, and commercially identifying content removed — become part of the venue's precedent corpus; committed-plan clients may contract for different data rights.

4. Accounts, API keys, and acceptable use

You are responsible for your account credentials and API keys; anything submitted under your key is attributed to you. Revoke compromised keys immediately from the dashboard. You may not: use the Service for unlawful purposes; submit disputes that are fabricated, collusive, or manufactured to farm rulings, precedent, or fees; probe, overload, or interfere with the Service; resell adjudication without a partnership agreement; or use the Service to adjudicate matters involving violence, exploitation, or content unlawful to process.

5. Fees and billing

Fees follow the published rate card at the time a ruling is metered, less any free-trial credits. Pay-as-you-go usage is invoiced monthly; committed-volume pricing, liability-backed rulings, and enterprise terms are by separate agreement. Fees are charged to the platform or account holder that submitted the dispute — never to disputants, and never as a share of the disputed value. Fees for issued rulings are non-refundable except where a ruling is vacated for venue error.

6. Liability

Standard-tier rulings are provided with reasonable skill and care but without warranty of outcome. Except for the separately contracted liability-backed tier (whose insurance-backed cap is defined in its own agreement), Recourse's aggregate liability arising from the Service in any 12-month period is limited to the fees you paid the venue in that period, and Recourse is not liable for indirect or consequential loss, including the downstream execution of money instructions by third-party rails. Nothing in these terms limits liability that cannot lawfully be limited.

7. The email witness

Adding the witness address to a thread requests the venue; the venue agreement forms when the other party corresponds in-thread with the witness copied. Each participant warrants they have the right to share the thread's contents with the venue. Witnessed threads are processed and retained as evidence bundles under the Privacy Policy.

8. The Recourse badge

Accounts in good standing whose terms, contract, or offer names Recourse as the dispute venue are granted a revocable, non-exclusive licence to display the Recourse badge on the surfaces where that venue designation applies, in unmodified form and subject to the badge terms of use. The licence ends automatically with the account, the good standing, or the venue designation — whichever lapses first.

9. Term, changes, governing law

Either side may close an account at any time; issued rulings, metered fees, and the anonymised corpus survive. We may amend these terms prospectively with notice on this page; material changes for account holders are notified by email. These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Delaware, USA, excluding conflict rules; venue-designation agreements between disputing parties are governed by whatever law those parties chose. (Governing-law selection for ruling contracts is under review with counsel and may change with notice — see also §1 on the venue's regulatory posture.)

Contact: the legal contact form.