Earlier quoted context omitted.
He should care because if he did that I'd take his sorry ass to court for destruction of MY property.
You sound angry now. Imagine how angry you'll be when you lose your internet tough-guy lawsuit. https://cms.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/marketingweb?cmd=_render-c... 10.1 b Further, if you lose a SNAD Claim because we, in our sole discretion, reasonably believe the item you sold is counterfeit, you will be required to provide a full refund to the buyer and you will not receive the item back (it will be destroyed). PayPal S…
(b) Paypal's terms are probably irrelevant here anyway unless they owned either the money or the instrument. If they don't have a valid legal claim on them, then they have no right to tell anyone else what to do with them, regardless of any document their lawyers write.
(c) Even if the terms are relevant, this policy is so obviously unreasonable that you can't assume any court is going to automatically uphold the contractual term.
(d) This is all to protect Paypal, not the buyer. Notwithstanding any of Paypal's legalese, and obviously without knowing all the details, it seems very possible that a court would hold that a contract of sale existed here between the buyer and seller directly, and that as such the buyer who destroyed the instrument but did not pay for it is either in breach of contract (and thus owes the money anyway) or guilty of theft/criminal damage/other similar offences (in which case they are potentially in bigger trouble and might actually have police showing up on their doorstep, though even in the best case for them if the violin was as specified then they have conveniently accepted what a valid level of compensation would be).
(e) The fact that the destruction was done at Paypal's request is probably irrelevant following such a finding, other than to the extent that Paypal may have some sort of indirect liability for the damages in a civil suit, or that whichever idiot working for them sent the request might even be regarded as an accessory to a crime if someone in authority wanted to make a point. Actually, I imagine that would shake their staff down pretty quickly, since no amount of contractual anything from Paypal's legal team is going to protect the staff personally in that sort of situation.
Standard disclaimers apply: I'm not a lawyer, but I have found that if you actually get your day in court then usually the court has some amount of common sense and a much smaller amount of tolerance for lawyers obviously trying to intimidate other citizens with legalese. Internet tough-guy defences pointing at tricky legalese don't always end well, if the Internet tough-guy law suit actually reaches a court room. It's usually the cost/inconvenience/lack of understanding of bringing a small-scale lawsuit that protects the companies from wronged individuals, not the power of their obviously one-sided form contracts.