I've worked in agriculture all my life and a case like this doesn't surprise me in the least, nor does the inevitable responses in social media that infantalize farmers as dumb hicks who have to be protected from themselves. If you're responding to a buyer offering an $57,000 contract with an emoji you're not acting very professionally. This is nothing more than seller's remorse. You'd better believe that this farmer would be threatening lawsuits if the price for flax had fallen in the meantime and the buyer was the one arguing about the thumbs-up signal.<p>Regardless, this shouldn't have been an issue at all if the farmer had adequately hedged his position with an offsetting buy option at the sale price that would have captured any significant price movement (outside of any basis shift).<p>This farmer was playing loose with risk management and wanted someone to eat his $25,000 mistake (higher $82K later crop value minus original approx $57K contract value at $17/bu for 86 tonnes).<p>EDIT: now that I think more about it, I'd guess this farmer completely forgot about the sale agreement and this argument about the emoji was a post-hoc invention by his lawyer to try and weasel out of paying the terminal $82,000.
It's unfortunate that pretty much all decisions become precedent (given that Canada/Saskatchewan has Common Law). In a case like this where the farmer responded with the thumbs up emoji, claims it was only to signal "ACK'd and will respond later", but didn't respond with "yes" or "no" afterwards, I suppose it's fine to assume that the thumbs up was a sign of legal/contractual assent and he's trying to retcon what actually happened.<p>But do you want it to be codified as precedent that signing with a thumbs up is a valid legal signature? Also, the meanings of emoji change (see the sexual connotations that many emoji have picked up since their release - those connotations weren't present on day zero), so how do you protect against that?
I am confused why anyone would even consider this news. If there is considerarion to the farmer then what is so special about the emoji? Any reasonable person considers it an affirmative response.<p>Think of it this way, if this was some EULA and instead of "i agree" there was a thumbs up emoji, would it not still be valid?
I love all of the people in the comments arguing about the minutiae of whether a thumbs up constitutes signing a contract.<p>Aren't all of you usually banging on about the dystopian corporate hellhole the world is becoming?<p>Why in the fuck would a thumbs up ever constitute formally signing a contractual agreement. Even the idea of verbal agreement is a disgusting concept ripe for abuse by assholes.<p>People thumbs up a message to go to dinner with friends, knowing full well they can cancel any time they want. People do not thumbs up a contract/payment worth big money expecting that they're signing off on it.
The judge notes the two parties had demonstrated a long history of executing contracts and doing business together in this manner, which he used as a basis to find "consensus ad idem" (a meeting of the minds).<p>This is novel and the lack of traditional formality may seem a bit scary. But compared to all the sleazy browsewrap and clickwrap Terms of Use pages out there on websites which have some degree of jurisprudence to support them, it's downright incandescent in clarity (especially the ones that bury their copy-pasted terms on an ancillary page).
Now that there's legal precedent for this, I can't wait to sign my cellphone and internet contracts with emojis when they're up for renewal to see if they'll accept them - somehow I doubt it.<p>Pictures are ambiguous. A response like "I will deliver X amount of flax to you at Y price" and not delivering months later would be grounds for a lawsuit, but a picture of a thumbs up? Nah.<p>Maybe I'm getting old, but it seems so foolish to apply legal power to a picture of a thumbs up when an eggplant colloquially means "penis" and a leaf means "weed".