Adhesion contract
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An adhesion contract (also called a "shrink wrap" or "take it or leave it" contract) is a contract where one party sets all (or substantially all) the terms and conditions of a contract, leaving the other party to either accept the terms or not enter into an agreement.
These types of contracts are most common in software purchases and insurance policies. In addition, government contracts contain numerous clauses which, by law or regulation, must be included AND are considered to be included even if omitted from the contract itself.[1]
As such, under the legal doctrine of contra proferentem, any ambiguity in a contract â such as whether a loss is covered by a policy â is strictly construed against the party who wrote the language.
References
- â This is called the "Christian" doctrine, which has nothing to do with religion but was the name of the company involved in the case. Interestingly, it was the company -- not the government -- which successfully argued that an inadvertently omitted clause -- beneficial to its position in a dispute -- had to be included by regulation.