3 ms·

It's in an email. Why would that be problematic for court?

• bilbo0s 5y ago
  Because it's not a contract. If emails were contracts, every email that comes later would supersede it. You can't run things that way. If you agree to it, put it in a contract. But if you wanted to allow emails as contracts, then the last email on a subject would always be the final contract for instance. It would be too unfair and difficult to sort out. For instance, was the highlighted email the last email on the subject? If not, do those subsequent emails also represent contracts? What was in the last email? The game could go on and on. Whereas with a properly executed contract, everyone knows what everyone signed. Now it can influence legal proceedings, but only insofar as it illustrates where a negotiation was going. And again, subsequent emails would point to where those negotiations landed in the end.
  • gnicholas 5y ago
    In some jurisdictions, courts use a "four corners of the document" test, and nothing outside of the document can be used to interpret the meaning of the contract. Other jurisdictions allow extrinsic evidence (like this email) to help interpret the language of the contract. We would need to know what the governing jurisdiction is for this contract in order to know how much an outside email would matter in court. But in the court of public opinion (which matters somewhat for famous people and well-known companies), these legal technicalities won't matter. The headline will be that a Marvel exec said that they would need to revisit the compensation if they didn't do a standard theatrical release.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]