A Saskatchewan court rules emoji is just as valid as a signature and orders a farmer to pay $61,442 for unfulfilled contract
  • healthetank@lemmy.caEnglish
    27·
    1 year ago

    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.

    • ConTheLibrarian@lemmy.worldEnglish
      11·
      1 year ago

      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.

    • Bo7a@lemmy.caEnglish
      111·
      1 year ago

      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.

  • Sir_Osis_of_Liver@kbin.social
    22·
    1 year ago

    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.

  • Pseu@kbin.social
    21·
    1 year ago

    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.

    • wjrii@kbin.social
      14·
      1 year ago

      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.

  • Madrigal@kbin.social
    161·
    1 year ago

    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”.

  • AlgonquinHawk@lemmy.mlEnglish
    9·
    1 year ago

    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?

  • Bo7a@lemmy.caEnglish
    38·
    1 year ago

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