Re: Verbal Agreements

Subject: Re: Verbal Agreements
From: Jan Henning <henning -at- r-l -dot- de>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Tue, 22 Oct 2002 11:31:46 +0200


All the party needs to do is deny that they ever made the agreement. Or make up a
new provision - that you failed to meet. Then it becomes your word against
theirs.

While you are correct that a court may side with you or feel sympathy with you
and award you the case that doesn't mean the agreement was "legally binding." It
just means you were able to convince a judge to side with you.

Any valid contract is legally binding. Valid contracts can be made in written form, orally, or even without any verbal communication at all: If you take a newspaper from a rack and pay the cashier a dollar, you have just entered a valid legal contract that gives both you and the cashier's company certain legal rights.

For a contract to be enforceable requires, among other things, that the content of the agreement can be established reasonably accurately. And it is in this regard that oral agreements usually present big problems.

In the frequent situation where just the two parties to the contract are present at its conclusion, it may indeed come down to "my word against his or hers". Going to court in a situation like this amounts to a gamble, especially in the absence of corroborating circumstantial evidence. Witnesses improve the situation somewhat, but are no guarantee either.

Because of this, a written contract should be created as a matter of course, as all participants in this discussion seem to agree.

Whether any contract, oral or written, is enforcable even if the contents is not in dispute, is another matter entirely. Again, several participants in this discussion have pointed out that even a court decision in your favor does not help much if the award is simply uncollectible.

Regards
Jan Henning


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