41–50 of 69 posts
I just reached agreement to rent a house in the Netherlands and the agent was at pains to impress upon us that verbal agreements are binding and if you apply for a rental you are effectively bound to take it unless the landlord says no (or you retract your offer). Frustrating system, it puts a lot of power in the landlord's hands and lets them screw around and collect offers while you're limited to offering on one pl…
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Courts judge intent, not technicality. If the farmer had replied "yes" and later said "oh I actually meant yes I will read the contract later" would you buy that excuse as well?
If people commonly sent a "yes" to acknowledge receipt of a message, then of course I would. The problem here is that a thumbs up emoji doesn't mean yes. It can also mean "got it." When people send me huge documents I often send a thumbs up long before opening and reading the document.
Like, surely, in that case you'd treat a thumb up as a dangerous message to send as an ACK? :-)
As well, do you follow your thumbs up eventually with something else? Because if I read it correctly, farmer had from March to November to follow-up on the thumbs up ... as well, there was previous precedent with that exact farmer, which makes it hard to argue "Oh, those previous times I meant thumbs up as acceptance of contract, but in this case I meant is as just an acknowledgment" :-/
We should update this rule. It's not fair to terminal users, because emojis are harder to use in the terminal. I suggest we making binding contract acceptance with another single character, maybe "1"
I don't know, I actually agree with the farmer here > “I did not have time to review the Flax Contract and merely wanted to indicate that I did receive his text message.” That is often how I use it on facebook messenger since it's so conveniently placed. It's fine that a verbal agreement is binding, but you should have to utter the sentence "I agree with the terms" or when asked a question with a yes/no answer, reply…
I read a thumbs up in the same way I read "ok" which is affirming agreement. Me: "Want to goto the movies?" You: "Ok". We're going to the movies. I don't interpret this as you are acknowledging receipt of my message and will decide later whether or not you will attend. I would apply the same rationale to a thumbs up. You are saying, ok. Others may disagree.
I don't know, I actually agree with the farmer here > “I did not have time to review the Flax Contract and merely wanted to indicate that I did receive his text message.” That is often how I use it on facebook messenger since it's so conveniently placed. It's fine that a verbal agreement is binding, but you should have to utter the sentence "I agree with the terms" or when asked a question with a yes/no answer, reply…
I disagree. The thumbs-up was in response to the very clear request "please confirm flax contract." In that context, I think 99% of people would take that as confirmation of the contract rather than an "I got your message" response. But it does underline your point, which is correct: when it comes to contracts, it's wise to be as painfully clear as possible.
If someone leaves their phone unattended I can gives a thumbs up and get them on the hook for tens of thousands of dollars.
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I think i agree with you (but what do i know, hah) , but it sounds like it's useful to know we're in the wrong here. Which is to say, this seems to suggest we should alter behavior with these types of things to ensure specificity and explicitness.
We're not in the wrong here. Judges produce absurd findings with regularity -- this case is newsworthy because the finding is surprising and controversial. If you paw around a bit in law you'll find judges sometimes going out of their way to misconstrue extremely explicit statements to reach the conclusion they want to reach. Being explicit can help, but there's no way to be 100% sure.
Well, i'm wrong enough in that i don't want something i say to be taken to court when i could have, easily, been more explicit. "Wrong" in the sense that it leaves myself open to needless outcomes.
I generally want to avoid judges at all cost, heh.
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> I don't think that would work in the US. I think it would. Verbal and "casual" contracts are binding in the US. The reason it's advised not to do business that way is the difficulty in proving the contract was agreed to in court, not that such contracts aren't valid.
I probably worded that poorly. By not working what I meant was that there are a lot of disingenuous people and we are very litigious in the US. I can't imagine verbal contracts being honored by the majority unless there are many witnesses. I mean, people dispute their actions even when caught on multiple cameras. It's just been my experience probably based on the best practices you describe that I always had to have…
I have entered into verbal contracts and haven't had any real issues with them. I strongly prefer written contracts, though, because the process of hashing out a contract clarifies assumptions and misunderstandings that may not be apparent to each party until they see things put down in black and white.
The value of a contract is that it makes the terms very clear to both parties instead of relying on the other party understanding what I "obviously" meant (and vice versa).
That said, I also noticed something over the decades: I can tell the level of trust I have with a party based on how thick the contract is. If we don't trust each other, the contract will get very thick as we each try to make sure that there is no loophole the other can take advantage of.
With a high degree of trust, the contract tends to be much more brief. With a very high degree of trust, the contract can literally be a talk over coffee and a handshake.
So it all depends.
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I disagree. The thumbs-up was in response to the very clear request "please confirm flax contract." In that context, I think 99% of people would take that as confirmation of the contract rather than an "I got your message" response. But it does underline your point, which is correct: when it comes to contracts, it's wise to be as painfully clear as possible.
Well, you can put me in that 1%. I think it was reckless of the buyer to assume that the contract was approved and to not ask and confirm that the contract was agreed to.
I do agree with this. It's bad business practice.