Carlill v Carbolic Smoke Ball Company

Proof, should you need it, that you don’t have to sign a contract for it to be legally binding. AstraZeneca, eat your heart out.

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Harking back to our theory that a written contract is simply the earthly memorial of a spiritual contact, the unsigned unilateral contract, curiously is an exception. Witness the advertisement, to the right, that the Carbolic Smoke Ball Company Ltd when in the London illustrated news during the latter part of the coronavirus lockdown last year.

Here, the operating theory is that there is no other communication, understanding or preceding relationship from which one could infer contractual relations. The opera and exceptor have never met each other. Therefore, the written terms of the contract and the spiritual essence of the contract are identical. It is almost as if affecting one's signature to a contract, counterintuitively, dissociates that form from the bargain itself. The signature is the lady protesting too much: it is a statement that this memorial is a written representation of something else.

See also

• Covid-19
• Contract