Could a contract with ludicrous terms be enforced? Say, for example, that A makes a contract with B. A agrees to sell his very rare car, of which no more are up for sale, to B for £1. Later, when B comes to collect A's car in exchange for a quid, A refuses to go ahead with the deal. A says that the deal was so ridiculous that no reasonable person would have actually believed that someone would uphold A's end of it. B sues A because A has not followed through with the deal. a. Can a court enforce this contract if it were written and signed on paper, or does A's defence hold up? b. If the contract were verbal, would a court ever be able to enforce it? c. If A thought his defence would hold up, and thus made the exact same contract with two other people as well as B (without anyone but A knowing), how would a court respond if A lost?
Consideration has to be sufficient; it does not have to be adequate See What is a contract and what is required for them to be valid? Consideration need not be adequate; that is, the deal does not have to be &quot;fair&quot;. Consideration must be sufficient - this is different from adequacy. Insufficient consideration falls under: performance of a duty imposed by law, performance of a duty imposed by an existing contract, acceptance by a creditor of part payment by a third party, composition with creditors, moral obligation (i.e. you can't do it for love), illusionary or uncertain promises. Parties are free to make whatever bargain they choose and it is not for the courts to enquire as to whether it was an objectively &quot;good&quot; bargain for both parties. The court does not care why you made the deal you did or if anyone else would make such a deal (with some very narrow exceptions: see unconscionability) or even if you come to regret the deal you made: they will just enforce it. In fact, contracts where one person promises to pay £1 or some other nominal sum are so common that they have a name: Peppercorn contracts. That's because under common law (civil law is different) &quot;bare&quot; promises cannot be enforced but if I pay you £1 in return for your promise, then we have a contract.
as a witness. You secretly disapprove of the thing taking place Does this actually invalidate the document (as not properly witnessed)? No. In regard to the substance of a contract, witnessing does not imply, entail, or require approval thereof by the witness. The meaning or relevance of a witness's signature is nothing more than him or her certifying that the act of "2+ other parties entering a contract" took place indeed. And are you committing a crime by doing it? I highly doubt it, regardless the country or jurisdiction. The witness's [bizarre] act of acquiescence falls short of criminal conduct such as (1) forging someone else's signature, or (2) fraudulently "acknowledging" the presence of the contracting parties when in fact at least one of them was totally absent. Only if the witness subsequently acts in a way that hinders the purposes of the contract, thereby causing harm, the harmed party(-ies) might sue the witness for tortious interference with business or relation (or its equivalent in other non-U.S. jurisdictions). For instance, suppose a contract-based transaction requires involvement by a third party, who is hesitant to perform the transaction because suspects that the witness's signature was forged. That suspicion may prompt the third party to inquire of the witness whether he actually signed as witness to the contract. If the third party rejects the contract-related transaction due to the witness's [false] denial, the harmed party(-ies) in the contract may sue the witness for any losses (examples: bounced checks, costly delays, missing of deadlines, provable loss of business opportunities) that his false denial caused.
What if somebody copies your signature on a contract that says you can't sue them? what can the judge do to stop this paradox? I will assume that by "copying the signature" you mean "without the person's consent". In that case, the contract is void and consequently unenforceable. However, it would need to be proved that the person whose signature was unlawfully used did not intend to be a party to that contract. For a contract to be valid, the parties must have knowingly and willfully entered it, whether it is via a document or through their subsequent conduct/actions. False pretenses, identity theft, and akin offenses preclude these two essential requirements of any contract. Moreover, if the person who forged the signature is a party to the contract, then that unlawful act clearly contradicts the prerequisite "covenant of good faith and fair dealing" that is presumed in contracts. The remedies or actionability available to a person whose signature has been forged depend on the laws of each jurisdiction.
Contracts A contract is not a piece of paper; it is an agreement intended to be legally binding between 2 or more people and it may be verbal or written or a combination of both. That said, where a person has signed a document knowing that it contains contractual terms, in the absence of fraud that person is bound by the terms: it is immaterial whether the person signing reads the document or not. So there are two reasons why a signed contract would not be binding: the person did not know it contained contractual terms fraud. It is in the second case that the validity of the signature would matter. Fraud would have to be proved: it would not be sufficient to say "I did not sign that"; the person would need to demonstrate that a fraud has been perpetrated. Signatures Particularly today, with the ability to scan a signature it is trivially easy to affix anyone's signature to anything. However, a party to a contract is entitled to rely prima facie on the validity of the signature. A person would have to provide evidence that it was not their signature or had been affixed without their knowledge or consent. A court would look at the entire circumstances surrounding such a claim; if a person had, up until the dispute, acted as though they had signed the document then a court would probably not countenance an argument that they hadn't. It is always possible to construct contrived circumstances where this or that could happen but, in reality, they are extremely rare. Unless you are dealing with a con-artist, you can trust the signature; if you are dealing with a con-artist, you have bigger problems. See, the President has endorsed this answer:
No The contract is created at the moment that an offer was accepted. In normal circumstances: You accepted an offer that they made to the general public by sending a purchase order for specific items at specific prices, or They accepted your offer by communicating their acceptance to you (being advised that the goods have been dispatched counts). However, in this circumstance, the company has been explicit that the contract is only created when either: You checkout and pay, or They “supply an invoice to you.” It appears that neither event happened so there is no contract. Their specific terms have overridden the common law rules on offer and acceptance (as they are allowed to do) and the offer has not been accepted until you receive their invoice. Specifically, it cannot be accepted by performance (dispatching the goods) and the requirement for the invoice to be supplied overrides the postal rule. Note that, in this case, you got lucky. 99 times out of 100 there would have been a valid contract and you would have breached it. In future, cancel orders specifically, don’t make assumptions.
No Or at least not necessarily. Contract terms are legally one of three types: Conditions, Warranties, or Intermediate. Breach of any term allows the aggrieved party to sue to recover damages - monetary compensation to restore them to the position they would have been in had the breach not occurred. Breach of a condition also (or instead) allows them to terminate a contract. Breach of a warranty does not. Intermediate terms are terms that might be a condition or might be a warranty depending on how egregious the breach was. A contract can explicitly make a term a condition, the historical and still used phrase being that X is “of the essence”. If the contract is not explicit (most aren’t), then that is the concept that the court uses to decide - is the term “of the essence”, that is, absolutely fundamental to the performance of the contract. Similarly a term can be explicitly a warranty, usually by saying party Y “warrants” something. Most incidental or procedural terms are warranties - if breached, they never give rise to a right to terminate. Most terms are intermediate, particularly most terms about time. Normally, intermediate terms are warranties but if a breach is egregious enough, then this can elevate the term to a condition. Payment terms are a classic: if you are a day or a week late in making payment, the other party can’t cancel the contract. If you are a year late, they can. Somewhere in between, your breach changes the term from a warranty to a condition. For your situation, the early delivery is clearly a breach of a warranty, not a condition. If it even is a breach - the contract may say that they are obliged to deliver by 1 December: delivery on 1 November is clearly in compliance with that term. If it is a breach, you do not have the right to terminate the contract and if you tried you would be breaching the contract yourself by repudiation. By the way, repudiating the contract is definitely breaching a condition. A huge number of contract disputes turn on who validly terminated and who repudiated the contract. If it is a breach, you can sue for damages which, since they have not charged you for November, would be what it cost you or what you lost by having their bin on your premises for a month. My guess that this would be in the order of zero.
The issue is not enforceability per se, it is the problem of proving what you agreed to. If the landlord adds conditions that are against your interest, he would need to show that you agreed to those conditions: if you add conditions against his interest, you'd have to likewise prove agreement. Since you both have copies of the agreement, it's a matter of comparison to see if the documents are the same. Rather than voiding the earlier agreement and rewriting everything, the change can be initialed. If you were to cross out the rent and insert a lower figure, you would need proof that he agreed to this (hence, his initials on your copy). In your case, the change is apparently in your interest rather than his, so there's no realistic way that this could become an issue (that I can think of: maybe there's a clause that has to do with the move-in date and moving in early actually works against your interest, in which case he would need to prove that you agreed. The fact of moving in early is sufficient proof of agreement).
it's not illegal to sign a contract that demands illegal things, however, such a contract, in general, is called an illegal contract. Illegal contracts are null and void. Contracts that violate public policy never have force in the first place. A contract can't force people to declare lies under oath or demand them to murder someone. Thus, a contract demanding such is illegal. As a result, such a clause would not just be unenforceable, it might void the entire contract wholesale if it is not severable. In the least, any clause demanding illegal acts was null and void ab initio, and never was valid. void contracts in law germany explicitly makes contracts void that are &quot;Sittenwidrig&quot; in § 138 BGB and also illegal ones in § 134 BGB Declarations to the Agentur für Arbeit are made under threat of perjury, and thus lying is illegal. It is also Sittenwidrig. This makes the provision void. Murder is illegal, inciting to murder someone is illegal, and so a contract to murder someone for pay is void. Such a contract also is Sittenwidrig. Selling the right to ask to marry your daughter per see isn't illegal, but it is Sittenwidrig and as such the contract is void. california judges refer to such contracts as illegal contracts, defining this as a test where making non-enforcement of such a contract something of public interest: It is in the public interest that people tell the truth to the unemployment office, so a contract demanding you to lie is illegal. It is illegal to lie on the stand (perjury), and thus the contract is illegal. Conspiracy However, the contract can also be evidence of criminal activity in itself: It manifests the will of two parties to commit an illegal act. That is the core of a conspiracy charge. Conspiracy is illegal and usually a felony. germany: Conspiracy to commit a crime is §30 STGB