![]() ![]() A party who signs an agreement without reading it can avoid being bound to its provisions when the party was induced to sign the agreement without reading it by a fraud or wrongful conduct by the other contracting party. “Fraud or a confidential relationship giving rise to an affirmative duty of disclosure are obvious exceptions.” 1 Witkin, Summary of California Law, Contracts § 118. There are some exceptions to this general rule, however. Hampshire Construction Co., 50 Cal.App.3d 654, 660 (1975) Larsen v. Thus, as long as a party entering into the contract has the capacity of reading and understanding it, the party will be bound by its contents and is not permitted to say that its explicit provisions are contrary to its intention or understanding. ![]() This makes sense from a commonsense standpoint, because courts do not want to reward people for being negligent in entering into contracts contracting parties are held responsible for taking part fully in the contracting process. ![]() See 1 Witkin, Summary of California Law, Contracts §§ 118-9. Therefore, the parties are bound by those terms even if they did not read the document and even if they are ignorant of some or all of its terms. 343, 351–53, (1929).įor clarity, parties who accept or sign a document that appears on its face to be a contract are deemed by law to agree to all of its terms. Further, when a party “is negligent in not informing himself of the contents, and signs or accepts the agreement with full opportunity of knowing the true facts, he cannot avoid liability on the ground that he was mistaken concerning such terms.” Id. on the ground that he did not know its contents, the question, in the absence of misrepresentation, fraud, undue influence, and the like, turns on whether he was guilty of negligence in signing without such knowledge.” Knox v. “Where a party to a written contract wishes to avoid liability. “ party is bound by provisions in an agreement which he signs, even though he has not read them and signs unaware of their existence.” N.A.M.E.S. Unfortunately, while it seemed like a good idea at the time to skip reading the contract to save yourself the time and headache, you likely won’t have much success convincing a court not to enforce a contract against you because you didn’t actually read it. You go back and read the contract and think to yourself, “Wow, if I’d realized this is what the agreement said, I definitely wouldn’t have signed it as is.” It’s not fair to enforce something you didn’t know about, so there’s no way it’s enforceable if you didn’t read it, right? A dispute arises about the agreement you signed. Anyway, if there’s a problem later, can’t you just come clean and say that you actually didn’t read it? Sure enough, just your luck. You know that’s bad, but it was just one time and you figure it’ll probably work out alright. You remember signing that one contract, but truth be told, you just didn’t have the time or energy to read it. You had all of these projects coming across your desk and you were on a major time crunch and oh, by the way, you had a pounding headache that whole week too. So, things got a little crazy at work for you.
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