Canadian judge rules thumbs-up emoji can represent contract agreement | Hacker News Reader

Canadian judge rules thumbs-up emoji can represent contract agreement

theguardian.com

11 pointsmgbmtl12 comments

Retroactively everyone should look through all the emoji contracts they've signed.

Give me a million dollars. Thumbs up emoji.

Now you're in for a million dollars.

This is not how contracts work. Please do not be so obtuse.

This doesn't seem like a good outcome. I bump that stupid thumbs up by accident far too often, to think that could constitute a contractual agreement is mind boggling.

And what if you bumped an autocomplete message that said: “looks good to me”

Should you be allowed to back out of any contract by pretending you didn’t accept when you sent a message of acceptance?

The judge here made the right call and the examples given in the article highlight why this was the correct decision.

Yes. A written contract should require a legal signature, be it a written signature or an electronic signature. Replying 'looks good to me' (or hitting thumbs up) over a text message etc should not be considered a legally binding contract, especially when you are talking about big ticket items such as multiple-tens-of-thousands of dollars in produce.

In any rate, once old mate sent the thumbs up, they should have exchanged actual contract documents.

This is why contract laws exist and shouldn't be eroded with nonsense like this.

Your desire for “actual contact documents” is complete overkill from my perspective. Verbal contracts are a thing in many jurisdictions.

Formalities can help prove things but they are often not required.

Contracts do not usually require a signed piece of paper and never have. Informal agreements are every bit as legally binding.

I do not know about this situation in particular, though. Reading emojis is like reading tea leaves.

Reading the case[1], there's relevant background specific to the circumstances. The judge notes the two parties had demonstrated a long history of executing contracts and doing business in this manner.

Most of the other comments here (at least at the moment) seem to have missed this nuance. The earlier HN post linked by OP mgbmtl has more interesting discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36618977

[1] https://www.canlii.org/en/sk/skkb/doc/2023/2023skkb116/2023s...

Welp that's it for my phone it's going in the fuckin lake right n

I hadn't seen the CBC article was posted earlier and has more comments:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36618977

Also, not just emojis, your innocuous comments on a random forum (like this one) could probably also be considered contacts.

The people who were aghast at FTX approving expenses via Slack emojis can apologize now.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com