Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Contracts

People often underestimate the importance of contracts. In any transaction there are at least two parties involved. Although they may use the same words to discuss a matter, such as "reasonable time", "standard quantity", "substantially similar", etc., each of these terms is ambiguous and the parties may attribute very different meanings to them. In other circumstances, the parties may deal with certain terms such as price, date, and quantity, but fail to deal with other matters such as place of delivery, delivery fees, duration of contractual obligation, etc. If something later goes wrong with the relationship and there is a dispute on any of these matters, the court will look to the Contract between the parties first for answers. If the answers cannot be found wihtin the "four corners" of the Contract then the Judge will seek outside evidence and testimony and the matter will become one of "he said, she said" which places both parties in the precarious position of suffering significant loss. When entering into a transaction for a lengthy duration, a significant quantity, or a substantial price always have an attorney prepare, or at least review, the Contract to insure that you are protected and, if not, you do not enter into a bad transaction.

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