ZF Lee
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Disclaimer: This ain't legal advice. Consult your lawyer.
I haven't seen many of them even in my freelance contracts, but a recent business law assignment triggered the issue in my mind.
I'm currently studying English Common Law and Malaysian law (where it has provisions that don't need the latter), and there's a whole legal debate on how much an exemption clause can cover.
For brevity, the following scenerio will fall into the fields of contract law and business (no consumer law?) Probably we still might fall into consumer law, if there are provisions, depending on some countries, but that's for Alice's rabbit hole....
Let's say Peter hires Tom from Auto Inc. to make him a robot to clean his office.
Tom makes him the bot.
However, the robot cleans the house like crap. Contract breach.
However, in the terms and conditions, there's an exemption clause that states, 'We won't be responsible for paying any damages resulting from harm or loss due to negligence of our employees, agents, or assets of Auto Inc.'
(paraphrasing a bit here on the legal writ)
We call this a fundamental breach, since the duty of producing the robot F*cking failed, which is central to the contract.
My first thought was like WTF? You are saying, 'OK, I'm an expert in this field, but if I do something terribly wrong here, don't blame me!'
I'm not sure whether US law does discuss a bit of the extent of exemption clauses, but could exemption clauses cover fundamental breaches? (in real life or as a general rule)
I haven't seen many of them even in my freelance contracts, but a recent business law assignment triggered the issue in my mind.
I'm currently studying English Common Law and Malaysian law (where it has provisions that don't need the latter), and there's a whole legal debate on how much an exemption clause can cover.
For brevity, the following scenerio will fall into the fields of contract law and business (no consumer law?) Probably we still might fall into consumer law, if there are provisions, depending on some countries, but that's for Alice's rabbit hole....
Let's say Peter hires Tom from Auto Inc. to make him a robot to clean his office.
Tom makes him the bot.
However, the robot cleans the house like crap. Contract breach.
However, in the terms and conditions, there's an exemption clause that states, 'We won't be responsible for paying any damages resulting from harm or loss due to negligence of our employees, agents, or assets of Auto Inc.'
(paraphrasing a bit here on the legal writ)
We call this a fundamental breach, since the duty of producing the robot F*cking failed, which is central to the contract.
My first thought was like WTF? You are saying, 'OK, I'm an expert in this field, but if I do something terribly wrong here, don't blame me!'
I'm not sure whether US law does discuss a bit of the extent of exemption clauses, but could exemption clauses cover fundamental breaches? (in real life or as a general rule)
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