WhatsApp Texts Are Not Contracts, Judge Rules in $2M Divorce Row (thetimes.com)
- Reference: 0180615940
- News link: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/26/01/19/1919236/whatsapp-texts-are-not-contracts-judge-rules-in-2m-divorce-row
- Source link: https://www.thetimes.com/article/418cd0ad-6215-470e-944e-87a434f1684e
Hsiao-mei Lin, 54, presented messages from her former husband Audun Mar Gudmundsson, a financier, in which he stated he would transfer his share of their Tufnell Park property to her. Lin's lawyers argued that because Gudmundsson's name appeared in the message header on her phone, the messages should be considered signed.
Mr Justice Cawson disagreed, finding that the header identifying a sender is analogous to an email address added by a service provider -- a mechanism for identification rather than part of the message itself. The judge also found the content of the messages did not actually amount to Gudmundsson relinquishing his share.
[1] https://www.thetimes.com/article/418cd0ad-6215-470e-944e-87a434f1684e
Anything but work... (Score:4, Interesting)
Sounds like this couple was a class act with the Icelandic financier husband being accused of addiction to meth and cocaine. The wife is a successful painter with an elite education who claims her only source of income is renting rooms in that home to Airbnb guests. She probably could teach, resume her painting career, do something for income... But she makes a choice of wanting a house and monthly support money from her now ex husband, and having strangers in the house with her kids. The text in question is more of an offer than anything and she replied accepting the house offer as long as there's also monthly money paid to her. Meanwhile he's declared bankruptcy and probably doesn't want to work to avoid paying her. At least their problems didn't set a precedent a WhatsApp message is a written contract.
Setting a precendent (Score:2)
> At least their problems didn't set a precedent a WhatsApp message is a written contract.
It might come as a surprise but "oral- or verbal- contracts" (also called "handshake agreements" elsewhere) are a thing.
Also, the issue of the ruling is whether the court could trust the "sender" information and consider it something genuinely sent by the message author.
By some moon-logic, because in e-mails the sender is part of the headers and those can be altered while in transit as part of normal operations, therefore in WhatsApp which absolutely does NOT run on e-mail protocols (and relies instead o
Re: (Score:2)
Oral contracts are a thing, which one should avoid like the plague, because they're notoriously difficult to enforce. In common law jurisdictions, real property is treated very specially, for example in the US one typically requires a notary on any signature dealing with real property like a deed, quitclaim, etc; the instrument is invalid unless notarized.
That said, the texts went like this:
> One of the messages stated: "I suggest that the responsibility for taking care of the kids goes to u 100%, then I can sign over my share of Southcote road to u without any complications as I don't need any accommodation in London." He continued, “Please let me know that u r happy with this and we can then close the financial part of the divorce this week,” with Ms Lin replying, “with some monthly maintenance then ok.”
In my reading, that's an offer to sign over a share, not actually doing the signing and completing the transaction
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"accepting the house offer as long as there's also monthly money paid to her" A counter-offer is legally considered a rejection of the original offer. By asking for more, she was rejecting his offer to give her the house.
Makes sense (Score:2)
Email / test senders are also veeeery easy to fake and then bear no marks of being faked. Hence everything a signature needs is absent beyond the basic claim to identity.
Wrong metaphor for WhatsApp (Score:2)
Yes, e-mail headers could be altered (and routinely are for functional reason) by absolutely any relay along the route.
And even when using things like S/MIME or PGP, they are not authenticated (again because they can be altered as part of a normal e-mail transit)
BUT WhatsApp does not rely on the e-mail protocol.
It uses a variation of the Signal Protocol which works differently and thus the point of this metaphor is moot.
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And how does WhatsApp determine identity of a sender? By the login. A login can be stolen and get hacked. Using a login does reliably identify a person.
The second thing is that "signing something" is a legal act that you need to do intentionally and knowingly. A WhatsApp (or any other message) without a signature manually typed in or preconfigured by the sender or at least accepted and confirmed by the sender cannot ever be considered a "signed contract". The "deliberate act" is missing. That said, some thi
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I don't think anyone asserted that the messages weren't sent by the people who purported to send them. In fact, [1]Steven Fennel, for the trustees, said: 'The fact the identity of the sending account is clear does not mean that messages from that account are "signed".' [msn.com]
So it was only the second of your reasons that kicked in... not any doubt about the validity of the sender's identity.
[1] https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/whatsapp-not-a-contract-high-court-rules-as-artist-loses-claim-that-ex-husband-signed-over-house/ar-AA1UhyT4
Signal protocol (Score:2)
My main point is that the e-mail metaphor is not well adapted to describe how modern secure chat service work.
While the points made about e-mail are valid, they are simply not applicable to WhatsApp because it works completely differently.
> And how does WhatsApp determine identity of a sender? By the login.
Actually: no.
One doesn't "login" (in classical the sense of sending credential to a server and it answering) into most modern secure chat systems.
Identity of a sender is determined by secure cryptographic keys held by the client, and server has little to do with this (Ther
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> - You would need to steal the whole device while it is operating and unlocked to be able to access those.
Or borrow it. You know, like if you live in the same house before the divorce.
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> A login can be stolen and get hacked.
And particularly relevant for a divorce situation, a significant other who can grab your phone and knows your passcode certainly doesn't count as being you.
They can be contracts (Score:2)
It's very easy to make contracts, they often don't require a signature. If you go into a shop, pick up an item, give the right amount of money to the cashier and walk out with it, that money becomes owned by the store and the item becomes owned by you because a contract got formed. This message just isn't enough to form the kind of contract needed to shift house ownership.
Headline misleading - real estate need signature (Score:2)
The core of the situation is that UK law specifically requires real estate contracts to be in writing, and signed.
Agreements generally can be entered into by text message, no problem at all. And there's probably a decision somewhere that manually typing in your name at the end of a text message constitutes a signature.
The argument here was that if the messaging app automatically put in a name, then that constituted a signature. A bad argument.
Ah (Score:1)
Interesting.
And in Canada, a thumbs up response is considered a [1]contractual agreement! [slashdot.org]
[1] https://yro.slashdot.org/story/23/07/06/1955226/canadian-judge-says-thumbs-up-emoji-amounts-to-contract-acceptance
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[blink gif guy turning his head like confused german shepard dog]
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No! No blinking! No head turns! Those can also be construed as a legally-binding agreement.
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The UK has a special rule for real estate, requiring writing and a signature to be valid. Good reasons for that, because of the value and life implications of real estate transactions.
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> The UK has a special rule for real estate, requiring writing and a signature to be valid.
Same in the US for real property contracts; both signatures on the written contract.
Re: Ah (Score:2)
This was the first thing that came to my mind too.