Jamie Sutherland & Imogen Dodds consider electronic signatures & formality requirements
- The High Court decides that an email footer can be a ‘signature’ creating a binding contract for sale of land.
- Its decision coincides with a Law Commission report recognising the legal effect of electronic execution of documents.
- The test is whether the ‘signature’ was inserted with the intention of authenticating the document.
As every property practitioner knows, s 2(3) of the Law of Property (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1989 (the 1989 Act) requires a contract for the sale or other disposition of land to be ‘signed by or on behalf of each party’. Neocleous v Rees [2019] EWHC 2462 (Ch), [2019] All ER (D) 25 (Oct) was the first occasion on which the court was asked to determine whether an email footer satisfied the requirement for a signature in s 2(3). The issue arose in the context of an alleged compromise agreement between the parties to a property dispute, which was contained in an exchange of emails
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