Man to pay Ksh.8M after court rules thumbs-up emoji 👍is a valid contract signature

A Canadian Court has ruled that the ‘thumbs-up’ emoji can be used to affirm a person has reached to a  contract with another.

In the ruling delivered by the Court of King’s Bench in the province of Saskatchewan, Justice Timothy Keene said the symbol marked the “new reality in Canadian society” where people need to adapt to new forms of communication such as through hearts, smiley faces and fire emojis.

The judgment was made at the onset of a multi-million case involving a dispute between a grain buyer and a farmer where the two differed over terms of the agreement after the farmer responded with a thumbs-up emoji to a request by the buyer but failed to reach his part of the deal by delivering the grain.

Delivering the judgment on Friday, the Judge ordered the farmer to pay $61,442 (about Ksh.8.7 million ) for an unfulfilled contract to the buyer.

“This court readily acknowledges that a 👍 emoji is a non-traditional means to ‘sign’ a document but nevertheless under these circumstances this was a valid way to convey the two purposes of a ‘signature’,” he wrote according to New York Times.

“This appears to be the new reality in Canadian society and courts will have to be ready to meet the new challenges that may arise from the use of emojis and the like.”

The buyer, Kent Mickleborough with South West Terminal is said to have sent a mass company advertisement text message to clients in March 2021 informing that the company was looking to buy 86 tonnes of flax at a price of C$17 (Ksh.1,794) per bushel.

He spoke with Chris Achter, a farmer on the phone and texted a picture of a contract to deliver the flax in November where he asked him to confirm the flax contract via a text.

Achter responded with a thumbs-up emoji even though he did not deliver the flax in November and by that time, prices for the crop had increased.

The pair disputed over the meaning of the emoji with buyer Mickleborough arguing that he at the time understood that Achter had agreed to the terms of the contract and the gesture was his way of signaling that agreement.

The farmer had however defended his thumbs-up emoji saying it only indicated he had received the contract in the text message but was not to mean he had agreed to the terms of the deal.

“I deny that he accepted the thumbs-up emoji as a digital signature of the incomplete contract. I did not have time to review the Flax Contract and merely wanted to indicate that I did receive his text message,” Achter had said in an affidavit.