Comment by lisper | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lisper | Hacker News Reader

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Your question makes a mistaken assumption about contracts. Contracts are not "legal" or "illegal", they are "binding" or "non-binding". And a contract that stipulates that you will sign something else later is generally non-binding. The people who ask you to sign such contracts are counting on you not knowing that.

There are several criteria that a contract needs to meet in order to be binding. Interestingly, being written down and signed is not one of them. Verbal contracts can be binding. The reason for writing them down and signing them is to avoid he-said-she-said type arguments if there is a dispute.

One of the criteria for a legally binding contract is that there has to be an actual "meeting of the minds", i.e. that the two parties have to actually agree on what their obligations under the contract actually are. An obligation to sign some unspecified thing in the future does not meet that criterion because you don't know what you are agreeing to.

(For this reason, a ToS "contract" which allows one party to change the terms unilaterally cannot be binding. You have to be given the opportunity to reject the changes.)

But most people don't know these things, and so they allow themselves to be manipulated by charlatans who do.

Disclaimer: IANAL. But I've signed a lot of contracts, some of which I shouldn't have.

Contracts absolutely can be legal or illegal. Binding/unbinding contracts are a related but separate concept.

A legal contract is a contract whose terms do not violate the law or public policy and whose terms are enforceable. A binding contract is legal contract that has been signed by all parties involved. It is perfectly valid to question whether a contract is legal or illegal, regardless of whether that contract is binding.

"Legal", "enforceable", and "binding" are all more or less synonyms in this context. Yes, it's true that a "legal" contract is a thing, but it's really just a synonym for "enforceable", which is really just a synonym for "binding". None of these things mean the same thing as "legal" in the sense that it is, say, "not legal" to rob a bank. There is nothing illegal under contract law in signing a contract to rob a bank. Such a contract is not binding/enforceable/legal but there would be no legal repercussions under contract law if you signed such a contract. If you robbed the bank you'd be charged with bank robbery, and if you didn't rob the bank you could be charged with conspiracy. But under no circumstances could you be charged with a contract violation (which is always a civil matter anyway, not a criminal one).

> A binding contract is legal contract that has been signed by all parties involved.

That is just flat-out false. Verbal contracts can be (legally) binding and hence enforceable. It's not common because of the practical difficulties of ascertaining what the terms of a verbal contract actually are or were, but it's not unheard of.

IANAL, and apropos of nothing in particular, there is a fun English case Everet v Williams [1725] (also known as the "Highwayman's Case").

They were highwaymen who agreed to share the loot. A dispute arose between them, and Everet decided to petition the court. This turned out to be a Bad Idea.

According to https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/92239/strange-case-evere... :

> [Consequently] An order was issued for the arrest of Wreathock and White, Everet’s solicitors, on a charge of contempt of court for even bringing the case to the court’s attention at all. And for his part in the fiasco, barrister Jonathan Collins was ordered to pay all the costs himself—earning him a unique place in British legal history as the only barrister ordered to pay the costs of a failed case.

Both Everet and Williams were eventually tried and hanged.

> [The case] is frequently cited as an example of the legal principle ex dolo malo non oritur action—“no right of action can have its origin in fraud.” Or, in other words: You can’t expect the law to help when what you’re doing is illegal in the first place.

Wreathock, the solicitor, was convicted of robbery in 1735. He was sentenced to hang, but it was commuted to transportation to Australia.

An aside joke ... An Englishman goes to apply for a job at an Australian company. Australian: Do you have a criminal record? Englishman: I didn't know you still needed one.

I think you're way out of your league here if you're saying that there is nothing illegal under contract law to sign a contract to rob a bank. Not to mention that you've now gone from trying to be pedantic about the fact that there's no such thing as a legal contract, to now saying that it's actually just a synonym for binding contract. If all you cared about was the overall intention and meaning instead of trying to get into the nitty gritty, there'd have never been a point in you posting to begin with.

With that said, if you're under that impression then I'm afraid there's likely not much of a point in discussing this further with you and you're welcome to continue believing what you like.

> I think you're way out of your league here if you're saying that there is nothing illegal under contract law to sign a contract to rob a bank.

Could be. Like I said at the beginning, IANAL. But if you are any less out of your league than I am, it would be pretty easy for you to cite the specific provision of contract law that would make it illegal, and how it would be prosecuted. Would it be a criminal offense? Felony or misdemeanor? Or would it be a civil suit? Who would be the plaintiff? Under what provision of contract law would they sue? What would be the actual damages?

At worst, signing a contract to rob a bank might be evidence of a conspiracy [1] but conspiracy is not part of contract law. Merely signing such a contract in and of itself is not an illegal act. I could sign such a contract, for example, as part of an April Fools joke and that would be perfectly legal even if the contract that I signed were drawn up by a lawyer and was prima facie valid and enforceable.

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[1] https://www.justia.com/criminal/offenses/inchoate-crimes/con...

This is really just bad man. It's why people shouldn't get legal advice from places like HN.

First, the vast majority of contract law is common law, not statutes. Second, you seem to think something being illegal means it's criminal or civil. No the contract itself is an illegal contract by its very nature. In fact any contract whose purpose is to acheive an illegal end is an illegal contract. This is not in any statute but rather a common law principle:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_agreement

Please, I get people don't like my tone, I'm rude, people want to downvote rude people and that's fine... but for anyone reading this please do not get your legal advice from HN. It's really just a very misinformed and poor place to try to understand the law.

In this very thread we have someone saying you can unilaterally modify a contract just by striking sections out with a pen. That just doesn't fly even if you do manage to trick the other party into signing it. And now we have someone who tried to be all clever and pedantic about the difference between a legal contract and a binding contract (before completely walking back on that distinction) and thinks there's nothing illegal in contract law about a contract that requires someone to rob a bank.

Be very skeptical about what you read on this site on matters other than programming and technology. That's all I ask. Too many people pretend to be experts on matters of consequence, and it creates a great deal of noise. Downvote away.

> I'm rude

No, you're pedantic. Not that that's much better, but the first step in addressing a problem is achieving clarity about what it actually is.

Go back to the original question I was responding to:

"why in the world is that kind of contract legal?"

The intent of that question is pretty clearly "why does the law not sanction people who draw up that kind of contract in the same way that it sanctions people who (say) rob banks or sell heroin or falsify business records?" And the answer is: because that kind of contract is not illegal in the same sense that robbing banks is illegal or selling heroin is illegal or falsifying business records is illegal. Yes, it is true that as a term of legal art there is such a thing as an "illegal contract" but the word "illegal" in that context has a very different meaning. There are no legal sanctions for drawing up or even signing an "illegal contract". They are simply unenforceable [1].

You are absolutely right that people should not take anything said on HN as legal advice. But by the same token nothing said on HN should be critiqued by the standards of legal advice, especially when the person you are critiquing has explicitly disclaimed being a lawyer. There is a reason that IANAL is a thing.

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[1] https://www.upcounsel.com/types-of-illegal-contracts and note that 1) this page appears on a site offering legal services, and 2) the link for the word "illegal" takes you to a page describing "unenforceable contracts".

> Verbal contracts can be binding.

Yes this is true, although most jurisdictions impose fairly low upper limits on the amount of consideration that a verbal contract can cover. As of 2012 the most common value was $500 or less (and probably is still the same level or close to it in most areas). Anything involving consideration valued at more than $500 USD was not binding unless written.

> Verbal contracts can be binding.

Furthermore, contracts can be implied. IANAL, and I can't quote the UK case, but IIRC correctly it boils to whether there was "an intent to create legal relationships". The case involved a lottery pool in which the pool won. There was one named winner, and he decided not to pay out the winnings to the other participants. The other participants sued to obtain their share of the payout, naturally. They won the case because although no verbal agreement was made, there was an implied legal contract.

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