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Comment by SHOwnsYou | Hacker News Reader

I understand that the court offered to allow an explanation for the "NO LIMIT" response, but that is not where I was going with the lack of explicitness with the "NO LIMIT" response.

What is troubling about it is that contracts can be altered (by an IM conversation no less) from extremely explicit verbiage to less explicit verbiage.

But be careful to note that I am not so much concerned about the particular case in question, but rather the precedent it sets.

More regarding this case - I am shocked a single person has the ability to completely nullify a previous contract stipulation and provide a new one without so much as a signature.

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There are several factors that led to this, primarily:

1) written modifications (with signatures) were allowed 2) under Delaware law, conduct or statements could modify a written contract with a signed writing clause

Clearly in this case statements could not modify this contract (as it was explicitly prohibited). However the court ruled that the IM conversation was not a statement but writing.

The court also decided that since Delaware law allows statements to modify a contract (even one that requires signatures), this also applies to written modifications.

While I agree that it's shocking that a contract can be modified so easily without a signature, that's a law that is already on the books. The only precedent that has been set (as far as I can see, IANAL) is that IMs are writing.

I agree, it seems strange that the clause in the contract, which before must have been something along the lines of "$45.00 per referral, to a daily maximum of $XX or 200 referrals..." has been changed to simply "NO LIMIT." Add to that the fact of how vague "NO LIMIT" as a statement is (perhaps he meant "NO, LIMIT"?) and the dubious authenticity of the actual purchases, and it seems strange to me that this was decided in favor of the affiliate.

The VP could have responded to "awesome!" with "I think you didn't understand me if you think that's awesome. I meant, 'NO, THERE IS A LIMIT.'"

But he didn't.

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