Talk:Contract/Archive 1

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If a contract is addressed to 2 partie's ,by one other Co. and both the partie's do not sign as one is unagreeable ,can the contract be void? Or is it still bound to the ONE who was willing to sign or again can it just be a voided contract in the eye's of the law.

Generally, it is possible to be bound w/o signing a contract but it all depends on the context. Hopefully one day the contract section will be improved enough to have this question answered on one's own. PullUpYourSocks 18:37, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

UK/Commonwealth input

As currently written, this article is very U.S.-centric. Contributions from those knowledgable in the workings of other common law jurisdictions would be very welcome! --Russ Blau (talk) 16:43, May 25, 2005 (UTC)

I'm making changes from the perspective of an Australian law student... but I must say, the article itself will require extensive structural changes. Enochlau 17:01, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I've made a small number of modifications and guessed that statute of frauds is a US-ism, though I stand to be corrected. Here "Statute of Frauds" refers precisely to *the* Statute of Frauds (which now only covers guarantees), while there are other legislative rules requiring writing we don't give them that name. Francis Davey 2 July 2005 15:47 (UTC)

No, in commonwealth countries, the type of legislation is referred to as statute of frauds, even though the actual legislation may have a different name. Enochlau 05:03, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

Length

Now that the article is a little more complete, it's now rather lengthy - it would be great if someone could assist in perhaps moving some of the content into other pages, and perhaps check whether the headings are logical. Enochlau 04:43, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I'll have a look and think about this if I get time. There's a lot of useful US material, I would like to check my EW material and see what I can do. Francis Davey 2 July 2005 15:47 (UTC)

Title

I'm wondering if a title such as "law of contracts" or "contract law" may be more appropriate for this article. The title "contract" on its own suggests the physical document more than the theory behind it. Any thoughts? - PullUpYourSocks 03:08, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Contract would be the correct place for a general article discussing all of the important facets of the topic. We should adjust content to fit that ideal, not rename articles, and have no general article at the main topic location. So for a general coverage of all topics relating to contracts, what do you feel is missing, and why not try adding it? - Taxman ^Talk 14:03, Jun 21, 2005 (UTC)

Truth be told, I'm not totally convinced one way or another so I'm more than willing to go with whatever the consensus is on the title. It's shaping up to be a good article that touches on most of the core legal principles of contracts. But that's just it, the article describes a great breadth of law and goes beyond the mere definition and description of a contract. I'm having a hard time discerning how this article would be different from an article called "Contract law"/"law of contracts", are they one and the same or is one a subset of the other? In my mind, as contract does not have any real meaning without the theory behind it, I've always thought that "contract" was a subset of "contract law". I may stand corrected but I think it would be good to distinguish the two terms. -PullUpYourSocks 03:43, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Well it's more the general wiki thing that articles should be at the most common name for the subject. That's straight from the longstanding naming conventions. What would more people look for when wanting to know all about contracts? Maybe it's a toss up with contract and contract law, but I'd bet on contract since it's simpler. I'm starting to see your point too, but I certainly don't see a value to two articles. Not unless there is a really important distinction I'm not aware of. If there's not, then a redirect from one to the other solves most of the problem. - Taxman ^Talk 04:40, Jun 22, 2005 (UTC)

I think that contract and contract law should be distinguished. The understanding of a contract given by contract law is only one view. There are quite a few alternate theories. For example, a contract can be seen as based on a moral obligation to keep a promise (Charles Fried), or it can be seen as based on consent (Randy Barnett). These, whilst covered by contract law theory, should not be seen as merely peripheral to it. After all, the world exists outside of the law as well. --Yu Ninjie 9 July 2005 02:28 (UTC)

Aren't the different ways to understand a contract is dealt with in the contract theory article? In any case, separating contract and contract law, i think would be like separating the equation from the explanation on say, a physics-related article. Enochlau 05:06, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

Footnotes?

Hello everyone:

In a few weeks (or whenever I have the time) I am thinking about adding citations here to all the major American cases and/or the Restatement of Contracts or the UCC, but the problem is that since we have all these Commonwealth citations already, we are going to end up with some really big inline citation blocks which might look, well, frightening to non-lawyers.

Would anyone mind if I put all the citations into a References section at the end and then implemented internal links to those references with the ref and note inline template syntax? --Coolcaesar 23:25, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

This might be a good issue to discuss on the Law WikiProject. It would be good to have a policy for all law articles on case citation. --PullUpYourSocks 03:10, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

That's quite a reasonable suggestion - it would make it look more like a law review article, and less like a case brief! I'll be glad to help. -- BD2412 ^talk 03:17, August 5, 2005 (UTC)

Good idea. Enochlau 08:44, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

Oops. I just rediscovered my own edit. I posted this two months ago and forgot all about it! Anyway, I am too busy right now (since I have a real full-time job now at a law firm), so if anyone has the time, feel free to be bold. --Coolcaesar 12:11, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

Congrats. Enjoy the job. Enochlau 12:30, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

Implied in Fact

I think that a restaurant would be a better example for an 'implied in fact' contract, especially coming from the perspective of the UK where medical services are free. Gingekerr 17:43, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

Be bold. Enochlau 08:46, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

UK Common Law

If to be complete, authority needs to be added but this will depend on jurisdiction.

--Philip McNeill 13:49, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

The major problem with law articles on Wikipedia is that one person writes a section, but only adds in authority from his/her jurisdiction (for good reason of course). So, if you are able to patch up where it lacks, please feel free to add it in. See also above for comments about whether we should use the template referencing system, to reduce clutter. Enochlau 14:18, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

Conspicuousness/Related

I was wondering, and I suppose an answer to this should maybe be added somehow in the page, if someone is aloud to add something someone unrelated to the purpose of the agreement in the contract. Say, I sign a contract with someone who wants to sell me book, but I (through my own fault) did not read the entire agreement, and in the agreement, something completely unrelated to the sell was added such as a promise to give all my property to the person who sold me the book. Now would the person be aloud to go in court, and with this book-selling contract, win all my property? Wouldn't this be dismissed as a scam, even if I agreed?

Or, would a phone company be allowed to record our phone calls, without a specific reason, even if they added in the contract that they are allowed to do so?

I don't know what the contract law is in your jurisdiction, but in most U.S. states, I think those kinds of clauses would be held unenforceable on grounds of unconscionability . Such clauses would literally "shock the conscience" of the court. Plus you might be able to rescind on grounds of fraud---that is, you would not have consented to the execution of the contract if you had been conscious of that clause; and you also might be able to sue for the tort of fraud. But I'm just guessing. Are you a law student? --Coolcaesar 23:34, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

(I'm an Australian law student) My contracts is starting to get hazy, but generally it is presumed that you have agreed to the written terms of the contract that you have signed, but as Coolcaesar noted, there may be ways to get around it. Enochlau 00:05, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

nominated terms

What are nominated terms

I don't know what you mean. If you're referring to nominate contracts, they are the types of contracts where some terms are implied by law based on the name of the type of contract. For example, a contract for the sale of goods would usually be a nominate contract because the law will imply many terms unless specifically overridden by express agreement of the parties. Innominate contracts are those where the only terms are those expressly agreed to by the parties. --Coolcaesar 05:12, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Puff or puffing or puffery?

The article says the term of art for sales talk is "puff," but here in the U.S. I was taught in Contracts that it was called "puffing." Also, Black's Law Dictionary, 7th ed., does not have a definition for "puff," but it does have a definition for "puffing," which includes the following note: "also known as puffery." I suspect that this is yet another American English v. Commonwealth English difference. Can anyone let us know exactly where the term "puff" is used instead of "puffing"? --Coolcaesar 18:47, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

• In England & Wales we talk about a "mere puff", although I cannot provide a source for that off the top of my head. It implies you're right that this is a cross-Atlantic problem, though. AndyJones 19:06, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
  • "Mere puff" was mentioned in the Carlill v Carbolic Smoke Ball ([1893] 1 QB 256) case, as per Lindley LJ at 261. Sir Jimmy 10:29, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Estopple

I noticed that there are no reference to estopple at all in the article. Is that because its is seen as two different parts of law? (ie. Common law and equity), or has someone simply forgotten? Sir Jimmy 10:31, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

See the Estoppel article. But yes, its exclusion is more due to the fact that it hasn't been written rather than an explicit intention to leave it out. enochlau (talk) 13:40, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Fork

About forking this article:

• Such a major change should not be done without prior discussion. I have reverted it. In particular, a lot of other pages need to be changed (e.g. the pages linked from the infobox), so this change shouldn't be taken lightly.
• Unless we actually have content on contracts in the civil law, it is premature to fork it to common law/civil law articles.
• Never move an article by copying and pasting. Use the move button and then recreate the original article if you really want to do this.

enochlau (talk) 04:00, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

I concur. From what I've read, civil law doesn't have a law of contracts per se, but rather treats it as part of the law of obligations. Therefore, I think any discussion of civil law contracts should be in a Wikipedia article on the law of obligations which should be linked to appropriately in a See also section in the footer of the Contract article.--Coolcaesar 06:26, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

Contractor?

I am trying to remove direct links to the contractor disambiguation page. As you'll see, it has a definition there, which is used by a few pages as a link, and seems sensible from those pages (see for example mentor). The definition does not really belong on the disambiguation page, could it be teased in here somewhere, so it all looks a bit more sensible? I'll not do anything for a while, as I don't want to over-lengthen or mess about with this article. A separate page just for a definition seems wrong, and a Wiktionary link in mentor would spoil the article. Help! LeeG 13:35, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

From what I understand, the definition provided on contractor ("A contractor is a legal term...") is not the legal term as it suggests. My legal dictionary states that a contractor is "the builder of a construction project". The usage suggested seems to be the more general, everyday usage. enochlau (talk) 17:24, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, that is interesting. I had started to form the opinion that I would move that definition from the disambiguation page to the independent_contractor article as it seemed to fit better there, and it's easy to link back to contract. If it is not a legal definition I'll delete the bit that makes it purport to be so. Off to check out the Black's Legal Dictionary... LeeG 18:05, 3 June 2006 (UTC)