Farmer owes $82,000 in contract dispute over use of a ‘thumbs-up’ emoji, judge says
Farmer owes $82,000 in contract dispute over use of a ‘thumbs-up’ emoji, judge says
A Canadian farmer owes $82,000 for breach of contract after using a “thumbs-up” emoji in a text.
he had done at least four other contracts with Achter via text. He said the only difference this time was Achter responded with a “thumbs-up” emoji instead of “ok”, “yup” or “looks good.”
I think this precedent set between the two parties is relevant, giving an otherwise casual text message a little more authority. Not that one word text responses are how you should enter a contract, but it’s what they had already been doing.
Lots of people are going to complain about it, but having this context makes it more clear. I’ll bet that there’s precedence that things like a nod, physical thumbs up, uh huh, etc. constitute acceptance of contracts too. This could easily be an intentional act by the farmer to imply acceptance in a way that he thought wouldn’t hold legal weight if he decided to renege on it later. I wonder if the previous one word acceptances ended up in the farmers favour and the emoji just happened to be the one that didn’t.
That said, it’s also a good reminder on the other side that if you’re entering in a high value contract it’s good to ensure clear communications. While the case did work out in the buyers favour, a simple response of “is that an acceptance of the contract” would have saved a lot of time.
Agreed totally, precedence makes all the difference here. If there's two people had an established history of agreeing to deals via text with one word answers, it's hard to deny.
Did he sign anything?
If you read the article, this farmer had accepted contracts from the buyer through text multiple times. The only difference this time was the thumbs up vs. saying ok.
That and he could get $41 / bushel instead of the $17 that was in the contract.
Edit: let my flesh is this out a little more.
In my opinion, he was trying to back out of the contract and thought he could based on a technicality. That he didn't physically sign it. But he didn't physically sign the others and still accepted and delivered those.
Just heard about this last night on the WAN show. That's just nuts.
While the novelty of accepting a contract through emojis is pretty goofy, judges applying contract law to hold people to commercial promises like this is otherwise a pretty run-of-the-mill thing, even when the promise was over text.
I think the key was he had done it a few times before. Only difference being an "ok" message and a thumbs up emoji.
Until fairly recently, hand signals was the main way of buying and selling stocks!