For anyone interested, the Article I section is 1-206. Underused, IMHO.
Nope, Zehmer.
Read a synopsis here. Good stuff! It’s a “test question” on a bunch of other law school web pages too.
Suppose I am walking along the sidewalk, lose my footing, fall down, hit my head and am momentarily knocked-out. Someone notices this has happened and calls an ambulance. The ambulance arrives as I sort of half wake up and the guy asks if I’m okay. I say “sorta”. He asks if he wants him to take me to the hospital. I say “I guess so.” He takes me to the hospital. After a couple hours of observation I feel myself again and go home. I can’t recall giving permision to the ambulance guy to take me to the hospital.
Did I enter into an enforceable contract with the ambulance company? Was I competent to enter into a contract? What if I didn’t wake up until I got to the hospital? What if I told the ambulance guy that my brother is coming to pick me up and he’ll take me to the hospital but the ambulance guy decides that he needs to take me now and does so against my wishes, but I am not able to resist at the time?
RufusLeaking: that probably isn’t a contract because there isn’t a valid acceptance (an aguably point, to be sure). The woozy patient is much like an intoxicated person, and since the ambulance company knows of his “intoxicated” condition, his acceptance is voidable.
But the ambulance company can still recover the costs of the services they rendered in quantum meruit, which is a subtitute theory used when there isn’t an enforceable contract, but where one party might be unjustly enriched at the expense of the other.
FWIW, all of the study outlines I made back when I was a law student are available on my web page. The contracts outline is one of the more popular ones, so I suspect it’s pretty decent. Anyone who wants an overview of contract law might want to take a look.
Zehmer. And although I’m no civil law guru, I remember this one, as it’s a Virginia case!
I have a vague notion that there is some sort of ‘cold feet’ allowance for purchases such as property. I am wording this badly but hopefully someone will sense what I mean. Basically I sign a contract to buy your house from you for $100,000. The next day I re-think it and decide it was a bad move. I thought there was still an out for me in that case (something tells me you have a week to do this for property). Anyone know what I am talking about or did I just make something up? The Zehmer case seems to belie this notion but I can’t help thinking there is something like this (perhaps it has become a standard part of contracts?).
Depends on the country. In Iceland your word is contract.
Good question. There’s two possible things that you may be thinking of here. The first is a contract contingency. These are common in residential real estate contracts. One of these is an attorney approval clause/rider. This gives your attorney a chance to review the contract and make some changes if necessary within a set time limit. While there’s usually a good faith requirement, if you get cold feet within the approval period, you can can probably find a way out of the contract. A similar contingency is a home inspection clause. If your home inspector finds a problem, you may be able to get out of the deal. Two cautions: I said these were common. That doesn’t mean that they’re always there. If you’re making a written purchase offer on a house, make sure the contingencies that you want are present. Also, you can’t just say you want out. You have to come up with a defect in the house or (unresolved) problem with the contract.
The other thing that you might be thinking of is a statutory right of rescission. I’m not aware of any law which would create such a right when you’re buying real estate, though. It’s been a while since I looked at these, and I don’t recall if the statutes I’m remembering are Federal or state (Illinois), but in some cases you can get out of home repair contracts, contracts resulting from a door-to-door sales approach, or (I think) some used car sales. A typical cooling-off period is 3 days. Don’t rely on these when signing a contract. It’s much better not to have signed at all.
Usual disclaimers. While IAAL, I’m not your lawyer and may not be licensed in your state. This is general information and not intended to be legal advice. See a lawyer in your state for that. I’ll add a non-usual disclaimer, too. I haven’t confirmed my recollections re: rights of rescission, as it’s too late to start doing legal research, as I might otherwise do for a question like this.
I’m not going to repeat any of the other information, but just hit this bit. With some exceptions not really relevant here, a contract doesn’t need witnesses or a special format in order to be legally binding. ABC corp and XYZ corp can just have some random person write up a contract and (presuming they were authorized to do so etc.) a court will attempt to enforce it. Where lawyers come in is in covering all contengencies and in making sure that terms are properly spelled out. A written contract comes in handy for showing exactly what both people agreed to; it’s pretty easy for someone to misremember or ‘misremember’ a verbal contract. Having witnesses serves to provide evidence that both sides did actually sign the piece of paper in question in case someone tries to back out or claim that they actually agreed to some other document.
Also, in many areas verbal contracts aren’t allowed for transfer of real property (like land) or for contracts involving more than a certain amount of money, such contracts have to be at least written and might need to be witnessed or notorized to be valid.