From: John Blair <jdblair@frodo.tucc.uab.edu>
Date: Sat, 17 Jan 1998 08:14:12 +0800
To: "James A. Donald" <jamesd@echeque.com>
Subject: Re: Legality of faxed signatures.
In-Reply-To: <199801162211.OAA14165@proxy3.ba.best.com>
Message-ID: <199801170006.SAA06076@frodo.tucc.uab.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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Any lawyers on this list may want to correct me, but as I understand 
it contract law is *extremely* flexible concerning what a "signature" 
is.  It is perfectly legal to negotiate a contract via conventional, 
plaintext e-mail.  If you wrote a contract for me to sign and I wrote 
back "I accept this contract" then legally a contract would exist.  
This is the same as if you phoned me, described a problem, and agreed 
to pay me to solve the problem.  Legally a contract would exist 
(though it would be foolish not to put the contract in writing in 
most situations).  The law is concerned more with the ritual of 
forming the contract (preferably by writing it on some medium that 
can be examined at a later date) followed by some sort of record that 
both parties agree on the contract they formed.  In fact, businesses 
work like this all the time.  The reason it works is that the best 
way to enforce a contract is to *trust* the person you're forming a 
contract with.

Obviously, just negotiating a contract via e-mail is dangerous.  All 
of us know there are ways to forge or repudiate parts or all of this 
transaction.  A paper signature, just like a digital signature, is an 
excellent tool for non-repudiation (You say: I didn't sign that!  
Your opponent says: we know you signed this b/c this is your 
handwriting/public key/etc).  Whether or not it seems to be a good 
idea from the viewpoint of computer science is irrelevant-- the law 
focuses on the *ritual,* not the specific form of the document.

Note-- I'm deriving this statement from a study that I did on digital 
signatures in contract law that was part of my undergraduate thesis.  
I am not a legal expert.  If I am totally off-base please explain to 
me where I am wrong so I may revise my notions concerning contract 
law.


......................................................................
.                                                                    .
.....John.D.Blair...   mailto:jdblair@uab.edu   phoneto:205.975.7123 .
                   .   http://frodo.tucc.uab.edu  faxto:205.975.7129 .
 ..sys|net.admin....                                                 .
 .                     the university computer center            .....
 ..... g.e.e.k.n.i.k...the.university.of.alabama.at.birmingham....




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