KEY POINTS
- A farmer used a ‘thumbs-up’ emoji in response to a contract sent to him via text message.
- A Canadian judge has ruled this was enough for him to enter a legally-binding agreement.
- He was ordered to pay a grain buyer $92,520.
A Canadian judge has ordered a farmer to pay C$82,000 ($92,520) after ruling that a “thumbs-up” emoji he sent entered him into a binding legal agreement.
The Court of King’s Bench in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan heard that on 21 March, 2021, grain buyer Kent Mickleborough, who was looking to buy flax, sent a message to a number of producers.
Mickleborough then spoke with farmer Chris Achter over the phone before drafting a contract in which the company he worked for, South West Terminal, offered to buy 86 tonnes of flax for delivery in November.
He signed the contract, took a photo of it, and sent it via a text message to Achter along with the message: “Please confirm flax contract.”
Achter responded with a “thumbs-up” emoji, . But come November, the flax didn’t arrive.
The judge ruled that farmer Chris Achter accepted a contract to buy 86 tonnes of flax when he responded with a “thumbs-up” emoji to a text message with a picture of the contract. Source: AAP / Johan De Meester/Ardea.com/Mary Evans
In an affidavit, Achter said that the emoji only confirmed that he had received the contract and that he “understood the complete contract would follow by fax or email” for his review and signature.
“I deny that he accepted the thumbs-up emoji as a digital signature of the incomplete contract,” he said in an affidavit. “I did not have time to review the Flax Contract and merely wanted to indicate that I did receive his text message.”
But South West Terminal argued it had implied acceptance, with Mickleborough stating in an affidavit that he had previously dealt with Achter’s company “by having Chris execute the contract by text message”.
Justice Timothy Keene wrote in his summary judgement that the case “led parties to a far flung search for the equivalent of the Rosetta Stone in cases from Israel, New York State and some tribunals in Canada, etc. to unearth what a 👍 emoji means”.
Ultimately, he ruled in favour of South West Terminal.
“This court readily acknowledges that a 👍 emoji is a non-traditional means to ‘sign’ a document but nevertheless under these circumstances this was a valid way to convey the two purposes of a ‘signature’,” the judge wrote.
Achter’s legal team raised concerns that a ruling in favour of the “thumbs-up” emoji as a means of contractual acceptance would “open the flood gates” to new legal interpretations of other emojis, but Justice Keene dismissed those concerns.
“This Court cannot (nor should it) attempt to stem the tide of technology and common usage – this appears to be the new reality in Canadian society and courts will have to be ready to meet the new challenges that may arise from the use of emojis and the like,” he wrote.
