1 yr. ago • 92%

Canadian judge rules thumbs-up emoji can represent contract agreement

www.theguardian.com Canadian judge rules thumbs-up emoji can represent contract agreement

A Saskatchewan court rules emoji is just as valid as a signature and orders a farmer to pay $61,442 for unfulfilled contract

Saskatchewan @lemmy.ca Sask judge rules thumbs-up emoji can represent contract agreement

News @lemmy.world Canadian judge rules thumbs-up emoji can represent contract agreement

35 comments

👍

55
Ehh, reading the article makes it clear that the farmer fucked up.

Best case, he gave it a thumbs up to show he read it and then forgot to ever follow up or reject the contract. However it seems like he had previously accepted and executed contracts via text, which reduces this likelihood.

Worst case, he did the thumbs up to show he agreed to it, and now is trying to back out either because he can't make the deadline, or because the price of it has shot up.

Neither case is great for the farmer. Contracts can be made from whatever form - verbal contracts are perfectly acceptable, so I'm not sure why people are freaking out about this. If he had said "Agreed", or "yes" in response to the text then that would be taken as confirmation of the contract too.

27
- Its worth noting that they had completed "15 to 20 contracts previously" and that they had negotiated previous contracts via text message. This process became the norm during the pandemic.
  
  In other words it's within this context that made it agreement... not that thumbs ups can universally be used to agree to contracts.
  
  11
- Perhaps it is just me. But I thumbs up requests to review stuff all the time. It has never meant "I reviewed that and agree"
  
  I consider it as assent to do the thing they asked me to do. Which seems like it was 'review this'.
  
  I guess it is time to change. Maybe an alias from ":thumbs up:" to "I will take a look!" is in order.
  
  10
  
  I always go for the trusty 👀
  
  12
  
  It's a yes basically.
  
  Q: "Can you review this?". A: "yes [I can]".
  
  Q: "have you reviewed this?" A: "yes [I have]”.
  
  But having to explain to coworkers that Y means yes and N means no, don't leave any room for misinterpretation.
  
  7
  
  "On it" or "checking" is my acknowledgement.
  
  👍is my approval.
  
  Last thing I want is a trainee jumping the gun!
  
  5
Legally, saying 'sorry' is not an admission of guilt in Canada, but a thumbs up is enough to agree to a contract.

Glad the judiciary is keeping us on our toes.

22
This kind of ruling would make sense for a $20 bicycle, but I'd expect the bar for mutual agreement to be higher for a shipment of $60,000 worth of flax.

21
- I had a feeling that there is more to this than the article states, so I followed the link to the decision. Basically, on three occasions the broker had sent a pic of a signed contract, asked the farmers to “confirm” or something similar, then received only a text message and, eventually, the flax.
  
  The judge basically just said they had set a pattern, and that “👍” was equivalent to “looks good,” “ok,” and “yup,” which had been used before. It was a summary judgment, meaning that the farmer’s lawyers were not disputing the broker’s story about the three earlier contracts. Then, per the judge, the standard in Saskatchewan is “what would a reasonable person in the broker’s position believe.” Finally, I’m no expert on Saskatchewan civil litigation, but the standard was probably “preponderance of the evidence” or “balance of the probabilities,” meaning it’s just more likely than not that the broker was in the right.
  
  So, you’ve got a written offer and a written acceptance, at least in a form that has resulted in flax deliveries on several previous occasions. Farmer was just annoyed that prices had gone up and he wouldn’t be able to take advantage.
  
  14
- When the dreaded Argentinian gourd shipment ruins your career because of a thumbs up emoji
  
  2
Great, so now we need a new emoji that unequivocally means “I have seen and acknowledge this post without necessarily agreeing or supporting its message”.

15
- 👀
  
  17
- Sounds to me like there's now a legal precedent for me to leave people on read.
  
  12
- we need a spleunge emoji!!!
  
  2
  
  E is for pants.
  
  1
- We use a custom one that's just 'ACK'
  
  1
I imagine that kind of financial penalty is going to cripple that farmer for a very long time…

The issue on the farmers part though is that it seems like he was busy fulfilling the contract and didn’t meet the deadline, and is using the emoji argument as a way out of the contract?

9
Did he send a seperate message or use the reply/comment feature?

4
Irrelevant, the 💩 emoji is the one that needs to be legally binding

1
This is ridiculous. An emoji is not a signature, and a text message is not a contract. WTF...

-5
- Depending on your country contracts are also created just by spoken agreements, so sure any form in which intent is clear to both parties might count
  
  16
  
  And writings don't need to be physical writings either. An email signature could suffice in some circumstances.
  
  4
- I’m getting “old man yells at cloud” vibes
  
  8
  
  That explains my sore back!
  
  9

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