Signature authority for corporations? Let's say I'm a disgruntled McDonald's employee. One day I walk up to someone and give them a piece of paper saying "McDonald's agrees to give you ONE MILLYUN DOLLARS in exchange for your pocket change. Signed, me, on behalf of McDonald's." Now, I really doubt that this contract could be enforced against McDonald's in court. Presumably their articles of incorporation specifically set a list of people with the authority to enter into contracts like this, and presumably that list included only high-level directors and such. Yet clearly other people in the organisation have some authority to enter into contracts, for purposes ranging from signing payroll checks to buying supplies. So how is all this regulated? What determines what agreements a given employee can enter into on behalf of their company, particularly if there aren't any specific provisions in that person's employment contract?
In Australia a person must have ostensible authority as an agent (agency by estoppel) to bind their corporation. If a person claims the authority and a reasonable person would believe in the circumstances that they have the authority then their actions bind the company. See http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/ca2001172/s769b.html for the law and http://www.mondaq.com/australia/x/386390/Contract+Law/Companies+and+perils+of+ostensible+authority+the+danger+of+paying+money+to+a+third+party+and+not+to+the+creditor for a case. To take your example (and putting aside the fact that the purported contract is probably unenforceable in itself), if a reasonable person would conclude you had the authority (in your capacity as director or senior executive) then it would bind McDonalds; if you were a store manager or burger flipper, it wouldn't.
TL;DR: You have to do something to accept a document; a signature is often used because it is simple and permanent; signature alone is often not enough (e.g. wills); claiming a false signature annuls the contract for both parties and you cannot keep the accrued benefits. Signing something means you accept it and it becomes legally binding. Many things can become binding without signature (including your usage of this website) and signatures alone are not considered trustworthy in many circumstances. Important documents (e.g. wills, marriages, real estate transactions) in many jurisdictions require a public official (notaries, marriage commissioners etc.) or a trustworthy person (lawyers, doctors, professional engineers, etc.), who will often require rigourous identification documents, and/or witnesses to be involved for the documents to be legally effective. Some high-value commercial transactions will also involve witnesses for signature, or require witnesses for executions of certain articles. Otherwise I can always claim that I didn't really sign that document when it becomes convenient for me. You can and people do. Then the parties go to court or other dispute resolution mechanism, and the judge will consider all relevant evidences to decide (often on a balance of probabilities, i.e. more likely than not) if you consented to a document. Particularly, &quot;when it becomes convenient for me&quot; is often after some elements of the contract having been executed, which is evidence in favour of the existence of the contract and nonexistence of a contract removes obligations and rights for both supposed parties, as such the executed part could be undone. If for a sales contract the other party has sent you a computer, you cannot claim that you did not sign that contract and keep the computer they sent. Without the contract, the computer is not rightfully yours. Also, claiming false statements for benefit or under oath is fraud/perjury and can be criminally prosecuted. So, why are they used everywhere? You have to do something to affirm your consent to a document. It is symbolic but symbolic does not mean meaningless and a symbol of your consent is often desirable. A signature is simple and: affirmative of your intention, unlike a simple visual inspection of document (perhaps eventually someone will argue your eye movement can be used, e.g. for VR) permanent, unlike oral declarations (which can still be legally valid, even if hard to prove)1 which is enough for most purposes. As a bonus, it is also somewhat unique and can be compared to certain extent. For purposes demanding higher level of confidence, ID documents can be demanded and more complex procedures (e.g. with notaries and witnesses) can be undertaken. Of course, you could make an audio recording for oral declarations, but audio recorders were not commonly available and it would be too complicated if the entire contract is not read aloud in that recording.
This is not an NDA (non-disclosure agreement), it is a non-compete agreement. An NDA would tell you that you cannot disclose anything you did or saw at your old employer's place. A non-compete agreement is what you have here, an agreement that limits your ability to get work. If what you say is correct, then your employer is not exactly the brightest. You stay that you haven't been given a written notice, and your contract says that a "Notice of termination will only be valid if it is given in writing". So you haven't been given valid notice. There is no reason why you would sign the non-compete agreement. If they plan to fire you without notice if you don't agree, they have a problem: Your contract doesn't allow them to do that. And they have apparently not given any written notice yet. So what they can do is as soon as they decide that you are not signing, they can give you one month written notice.
Yes, that would, or at least could, be a legal contract. The key thing that makes a contract between two parties is the agreement, the intention to enter into a binding contract. The written words are only evidence of their agreement, and the specifics of what is agreed to. An oral (spoken) contract can be valid and binding (although in some cases the law requires a written contract). Electronic contracts do not need to be done through a site such as docusign, although there are advantages to using such a process. A typed signature will be legally binding if it is intended to represent agreement to the contract. The US federal e-sign law says that no specific technology is required to make a valid electronic signature. See What gives e-signatures legal standing/force in the United States? and https://law.stackexchange.com/a/79670/17500 for more details. That the contract words are copied will also not impair the validity of a contract. Many bushiness use form contracts. Many lawyers create new contracts by putting together parts of old contracts that served their purpose. The person sending the offer and proposed contract must make sure that the other party understands that this is to be a binding contract, and agrees to the use of an electronic signature, and agrees to the contract as a whole. It would be a good idea if a bit more detail were included than in your example. Must the agency find people acceptable to the client? Haw soon must it find them? How much must the client pay? How soon must it pay? A good contract will specify such details.
It is the tenant's responsibility to understand the written contract. Oral statements about the contract do have to be consistent with the written contract (that is, in the context where you ask the landlord what a particular clause means before signing -- not in the case where you are modifying an existing contract). If I were renting a room and the contract says "Du må betale $1000 hver dag", which I don't understand because my Norwegian is terrible, I would ask about this, and the landlord might say that it means "You must pay $1000 every month", which could be a decent deal. Actually, the clause says "You must pay $1000 every day". When the reality of the situation becomes clear, then it is obvious that we didn't have an agreement in the first place. Perhaps he mis-spoke, or his English is as bad as my Norwegian, but I would not be held to rate in the written contract, assuming that I could back up my claim that he gave me that interpretation: the lease would probably be voided, as not an actual agreement. The underlying principle is that there has to be a "meeting of the minds" where the parties understand what they will get and what they must give, and there was a demonstrable failure of understanding. On the other hand, if I sign a contract without really reading it carefully, and there is a clause in English (which I speak) saying that I have to pay $1000 a day, but I didn't really think about the clause so that in a sense I didn't understand what I had agreed to, well, I may still be on the hook. (On the third hand, a court would probably say that's a ridiculous rent and void the contract on policy grounds). In general, "not my first language" is not a get-out-of-contract card, though attempts to trick people into signing documents in languages that they really have no understanding of won't be successful. Virtually nobody but a lawyer actually understands contractual language, yet contracts are enforced all the time. A contract can be explicitly modified by verbal agreement, or can be entirely verbal, but oral agreements face evidence problems, namely, what exactly did A and B say? It's scientifically well established that parties can be morally certain that the conversation went "A" (for one person) and "Not A" (for the other person). Using "could" rather than "would" in speech makes a huge difference in interpretation. There is a rule, the parol evidence rule, which essentially says that unless there is a good reason to not do so, the contract as written is what is enforced. Even if the conversation had been written into the contract, there's no basis in the contract for objectively determining whether a thing is old and "just broke". So even as an additional clause in the contract, it doesn't afford you a clear escape hatch. You might be able to prove with expert testimony that indeed the pipes had been corroding for a hundred years, and you could not have caused the pipes to burst.
Two essential elements of a contract are that each part gives something of value (such as money, or whatever the club has to offer), and each part has an obligation (the member must give money and do certain things, the club must allow the member to use the facility). Without these elements there is no contract, meaning that the &quot;member&quot; has no obligation to pay (and the courts will then order the return of the membership payment). If indeed the club can revoke membership at any time and for no cause, there is no contract and no legal justification for the club to keep your money. The status of social clubs is not entirely clear, and it's not clear whether &quot;membership&quot; is a contractual matter, however an organization like Elks is a corporation, and state laws regulate expulsion of members of a corporation. They will typically require termination that is fair and reasonable and is carried out in good faith, as discussed in this article. In the cited cases where a person was expelled, it was for violation of the rules. It is unlikely that corporate laws of any state allow unilateral expulsion of a member for no cause.
If two parties have a contract, where one party is required to do X in exchange for the other party doing Y, then the terms specified in that contract would determine what happens. You would have to see exactly what it says, especially if the other party has the option to not give you money. A contract might say "A shall at his option give B $5,000 by date X; if A elects not to make payment, notice must be given 60 days before X". Failing to give timely notice is thus breech of contract. However if the clause only says "A shall at his option give B $5,000 by date X", then there is no requirement for advance notice. And this assumes that there is a contract whereby both parties have some obligation to the other. A gift, on the other hand, carries no obligations on the giving party. There may be some social code to the effect that they should have told you by now, but failing to give advance notice is at most rude and certainly not legally actionable.
A settlement is fundamentally a contract where parties A and B promise to do certain things (one of them being "stop litigating"). A court order is an enforceable order to do something. A contract cannot be directly enforced (where force is used to make a person comply), it requires a court order for actual enforcement. The conditions of a contract might be enforceable, but you can't get the sheriff to come out based just on a contract. It appears that you got to the "facilitation" phase where the parties talk about the issue and the CRT case manager talks to the parties in neutral terms, aiming for an agreement. If you don't reach an agreement, the Tribunal Decision Process escalates the matter. Under the decision process, the CRT member makes a decision, and it can be enforced in court. They state that "For a $25 fee, the CRT can turn your agreement into an order, if both parties agree that an order should be issued. This is called a “consent resolution order”." I suppose that you did not go through that step, and you only have an agreement. So you would need a separate court process to get a court order. Because everything that you did in this negotiation phase is confidential, if you want CRT to give you something that is enforceable, you have to present the case from the beginning, since they don't have access to what has happened before. The problem in your account is that a settlement has to be reached by yourselves – possibly with the assistance of the CRT case manager. I assume you did actually get a settlement (agreement) with the landlord, but have not filed for a consent resolution order. It may be that the case is too old for you to just pay the $25, and it does require agreement by the other party. Read their FAQ about how cases end.