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An agreement to carry out an illegal act is an example of a void agreement. For example, an agreement between drug dealers and buyers is a void agreement simply because the terms of the contract are illegal. In such a case, neither party can go to court to enforce the contract. A void agreement is void ab initio, i e from the beginning while a ...
Mistake of law is when a party enters into a contract without the knowledge of the law in the country. The contract is affected by such mistakes, but it is not void. The reason here is that ignorance of law is not an excuse. However, if a party is induced to enter into a contract by the mistake of law then such a contract is not valid. [3]
Typical grounds for a contract being voidable include coercion, undue influence, mental incompetence, intoxication, misrepresentation or fraud. [1] A contract made by a minor is often voidable, but a minor can only avoid a contract during his or her minority status and for a reasonable time after he reaches the age of majority.
The act of invalidating the contract by the party exercising its rights to annul the voidable contract is usually referred to either as voiding the contract (in the United States and Canada) or avoiding the contract (in the United Kingdom, Australia and other common law countries). Black's Law Dictionary (relevant to US law) defines voidable as ...
An "agreement to agree", where a purported contract contains an obligation to enter into a subsequent agreement in the future, the terms of which are not certain at the time of the initial agreement, is generally considered to lack sufficient certainty to constitute a legally enforceable contract and is therefore unenforceable. [1]
First, where a party to a contract exercises an express right of termination, he or she is sometimes said to have exercised a right to rescind the contract. Secondly, where a party is faced with a repudiation, the party can elect to terminate the contract; this too has often been referred to as an election to rescind. "Rescission" at common law.
In most jurisdictions, courts routinely "blue pencil" or reform covenants that are deemed not reasonable. The blue pencil doctrine gives courts the authority to strike unreasonable clauses from a non-compete agreement, leaving the rest to be enforced, or actually to modify the agreement to reflect the terms that the parties originally could have and probably should have agreed to. [3]
The term void ab initio, which means "to be treated as invalid from the outset", comes from adding the Latin phrase ab initio (from the beginning) as a qualifier. For example, in many jurisdictions where a person signs a contract under duress, that contract is treated as being void ab initio. The frequent combination "null and void" is a legal ...