Template:Contract vs document

The contract versus the written agreement

The contract, consensus ad idem is an immaterial thing. It has no physical extension. It does not intrude on the mortal plane. Its best Earthly representative is the written agreement, a memorial on parchment wherein the parties do their best to set out the boundaries of their compact. The document is not the contract; the contract is not the document — they are spirit and flesh; a Platonic ideal and its flickering shadow on the grotto wall. But if there is one some executed paper, a court will be disinclined to look beyond its “four corners” when divining the parties’ commercial intentions in signing it. This is in part convenience, in part laziness, but in part the fair assumption that since the parties were bothered to write down the important parts of their agreement, that which they didn’t write down either didn’t exist or can’t have been important. Since an issue that has made it to the attention of the Queen’s Bench Division must be important, the Court will put the benefit of the doubt not with one party or the other, but the paperwork both of them signed. Arguments as to other terms are for the birds: God might not be your witness, so the written accord will have to do.