Failure to sign a draft in which space is reserved for the signature creates a presumption that a contract was not entered into
- On the face of it, the existence of a draft of an agreement that was not signed raises a difficulty from the point of view of the person claiming to conclude a contract, since the mere preparation of a draft of a contract that is supposed to be signed indicates that the parties intended to conclude a contract by way of signing a written and signed agreement and not by way of conduct. The Tel Aviv District Court summarized the case law and the literature regarding the lack of discretion due to the lack of a signature in a civil case (Tel Aviv) 3303-12-10 D.M.S. In the Tax Appeal v. Nisco Electricity and Electronics in the Tax Appeal [Nevo] (Judgment of June 30, 2016), as follows:
"Failure to sign a written contract will, in general, be far-reaching and perhaps almost conclusive proof of the claim that the parties have not reached a final conclusion, and therefore the wording of the contract is invalid, if one of the parties to the contract raises such a claim. However, there may be exceptions, albeit rare, in which the court will be persuaded, on the basis of the evidentiary material brought before it, that there was indeed a final agreement between the parties, even though their signature or the signature of one of them is missing on the written agreement.
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It was copied from Nevo, and this is how the scholars Friedman and Cohen summarized the ruling on the matter (p. 452): 'We should not learn from the case law that dealt with the subject except this: a signature is still an expression of the first degree of the existence of a conclusion to enter into a contract. A document without a signature creates a presumption that it is not binding. This presumption stems from life experience and trading methods. In order to contradict the presumption, significant evidence is needed.'
It is also possible, in my opinion, to add a number of cases in which increased validity should be given to the presumption of lack of discretion in light of the absence of a signature on the agreement: