Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/02/14/i-agree-to-disagree.html
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I understand that they make it totally completely impossible to understand.
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Driftwood : It’s all right. That’s in every contract. That’s what they call a sanity clause.
Fiorello : You can’t fool me. There ain’t no Sanity Clause!
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Oh, I’m capable. But I’m not willing. My time is not free.
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In meatspace, I have signed vanishingly few legal contracts. It is insane that on one busy day of internetting / app downloading you could sign literally dozens. It’s crazy that it’s so commonplace on the internet to just do things that require legal clearance. Although the internet has started infecting the meatspace in this regard. I do walk by a sign every time I go to the zoo that basically has me signing a contract that they can put my likeness all over the internet. A “walk-through” I suppose…
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“This agreement allows us to screw you. Good luck!”
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There are parts of IT contracts that I suspect many lawyers struggle with understanding. Someone without legal training who is signing up for any kind of cloud service barely has a hope.
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If you get close to the sign you will see fine print about liability for escaped lions.
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The terms of service were on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying “Beware of the Leopard”
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Related to this, when I tried renting a bikeshare bike at the dock I was required to read and agree to ~20 screens of legal agreement text presented on an outdoor LCD screen while people behind me were waiting. Not ideal circumstances for making a measured judgement about a contract.
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How close should I get to the lions, legally?
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As your attourney I advise you to get something very fast. With no top.
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Not an attorney (but available to play one on television!), but I thought an extremely important part of making a contract enforceable is that both parties need to agree to the terms of the contract. So how can you agree to something you are unable to understand?
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Well, we certainly can’t stop here.
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The same way you can enforceably agree to something you haven’t even read.
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I know you are criticizing the rulings that have trended this way, but my point is still out there. A valid contract must have both 1) an understanding between the parties on what is being agreed upon and 2) some consideration (“I give this, you give that”). Without both things, you don’t have a contract.
So I guess I’m asking how the hell a court can decide that there was a contract if the defendant can show there was never a valid understanding on the terms of the agreement.
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I balked once at signing an NDA that had a clause saying I couldn’t acknowledge the existence of the NDA. Got the legal folks to strike the clause.
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“But let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil.”
I don’t think Jesus would have approved of online terms of service.
Unfortunately, we’ve already had the experts working on that.; and not having their faces gavelled in, with prejudice, nearly as often as one would have hoped.
If contracts you can’t read is invalid, does that mean social contracts you can’t read (i.e., laws) are also invalid?
