Canadian court rules that the "thumbs-up" emoji qualifies as a "contractual agreement"

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

Canadian Court Rules a Thumbs-Up Emoji Counts as a Contract Agreement - The New York Times

WWW.NYTIMES.COM

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The ruling pointed to what a judge called the “new reality in Canadian society” that courts would have to confront as more people express themselves with thumbs, hearts and smiley faces.

 

Quote

 

Be careful before you casually dash off another thumbs-up emoji: A Canadian court has found that the ubiquitous symbol can affirm that a person is officially entering into a contract.

 

The ruling pointed to what a judge called the “new reality in Canadian society” that courts would have to confront as more people express themselves with hearts, smiley faces and fire emojis — even in serious business dealings or personal disputes.

 

The case questioned whether a farmer in Saskatchewan had agreed to sell 87 metric tons of flax to a grain buyer in 2021. The buyer had signed the contract and texted a photo of it to the farmer, who had responded by texting back a “thumbs-up” emoji.

 

The farmer, Chris Achter, contended that the “thumbs-up emoji simply confirmed that I received the flax contract” and that it was not confirmation that he had agreed to the terms of the deal, according to the ruling. He said he had understood the text to mean that the “complete contract would follow by fax or email for me to review and sign.”

 

The grain buyer, Kent Mickleborough, pointed out that when he had texted the photo of the contract to Mr. Achter’s cellphone, he had written, “Please confirm flax contract.” So when Mr. Achter replied with a thumbs-up emoji, Mr. Mickleborough said he had understood that Mr. Achter “was agreeing to the contract” and that it had been “his way” of signaling that agreement.

 

The judge noted that Mr. Achter and Mr. Mickleborough had had a longstanding business relationship and that, in the past, when Mr. Mr. Mickleborough had texted Mr. Achter contracts for durum wheat, Mr. Achter had responded by succinctly texting “looks good,” “ok” or “yup.”

Both parties clearly understood these terse responses were meant to be confirmation of the contract and “not a mere acknowledgment of the receipt of the contract” by Mr. Achter, wrote Justice T.J. Keene of the Court of King’s Bench for Saskatchewan. And each time, Mr. Achter had delivered the grain as contracted and had been paid.

 

As such, Justice Keene ruled last month that there had been a valid contract between the parties and that Mr. Achter had breached it by failing to deliver the flax. The judge ordered Mr. Achter to pay damages of 82,200 Canadian dollars, or about $61,000.

 

“This court readily acknowledges that a 👍 emoji is a nontraditional means to ‘sign’ a document but nevertheless under these circumstances this was a valid way to convey the two purposes of a ‘signature’ — to identify the signator” as Mr. Achter because he was texting from his cellphone number and “to convey Achter’s acceptance of the flax contract,” Justice Keene wrote.

 

 

[CitizenVectron]

What about animated gifs?

[GeneticBlueprint]

32 minutes ago, CitizenVectron said:

What about animated gifs?

[Jason]

I'm sure @Commissar SFLUFAN gives this turn of events

[b_m_b_m_b_m]

I got to be more careful with my irony reactions

[Dodger]

Eggplant 🍆 about to be considered sexual assault 

[best3444]

That's cute. Funny enough I have to use the thumbs up a ton throughout my work day because I work with a mail sorting machine. When there are jams and I'm "sweeping" I constantly have to give the thumbs up to the operator when it's ok to run again. Vice versa as I operate every other day. 

 

But a contractual agreement is hilarious. 

[LazyPiranha]

I don’t know, given the history of extremely casual contract acceptance between these two, I didn’t seem that egregious of a ruling.  It doesn’t necessarily imply that ALL contracts can proceed as such, but if you’ve been doing business for years off of something as flimsy as “yup” in a text then you’ve only got yourself to blame.  

[unogueen]

Fuck you

[unogueen]

why didn't you thumbs up?