Adhesion Contract

  

Your dog Rover is setting up a partnership with Godzilla. Given their massively different statures in power, adhesion contract rules will likely apply.

That is, as a rule of law, Rover will be protected from Godzilla using his full heft, and that fire-breathing thingy, to bring leverage against Rover in signing this partnership contract, which details the lemonade stand they wish to open together.

In more practical application, insurance companies with massive power over individuals fall under this rubric. It exists via an early 20th century set of laws, which viewed large corporations as unwieldy beasts that had to be controlled, such that they played by basic rules that put the small actor on equal footing with the big. Were these rules not in place, nearly infinite leverage could have been applied by corporate America, virtually stifling the rights of the little guy.

Related or Semi-related Video

Finance: What is a partnership?23 Views

00:00

finance a la shmoop. what is a partnership? a marriage. joint ownership

00:08

of a bar. when two dudes put up half the dough each to share 50/50 in a time [two different people offer money for keys]

00:14

machine. well a partnership is just the merging

00:16

of two individuals in doing a given business deal or setting up a business

00:20

structure. if both are owners then both are liable for you know bad things

00:26

should they happen. partnerships carry a lot of financial danger if one partner

00:31

goes off the rails and decides to commit fraud in the name of the company or that

00:35

evil partner enters into a stupid company bankrupting contract, well then [bad contract sold to unsuspecting victim]

00:40

both parties pay for it. the innocent partner pays just as much in the form of

00:45

whatever financial damages befall the partnership as the evil one, and

00:49

partnership liabilities include personal assets if the partnership is structured

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like a general partnership with limited partners having no personal liability so [ liability structures defined]

00:59

for all the good that a partnership can have it can get bad and ugly so you got

01:06

to enter partnerships carefully. spend lots of dough on lawyers before you set

01:09

it up so you don't have to after. [money exchanged for partnership contract ]

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