Legal Definition and Related Resources of Adhesion Contract

A contract that is drafted unilaterally by the dominant party and then presented on a take it or leave it basis to the weaker party, who has no real opportunity to bargain about its terms. Restatement Second, Conflict of Laws, §332a.

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Adhesion Contract in Historical Law

You might be interested in the historical meaning of this term. Browse or search for Adhesion Contract in Historical Law in the Encyclopedia of Law.

Search for legal acronyms and/or abbreviations containing Adhesion Contract in the Legal Abbreviations and Acronyms Dictionary.

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Contract Of Adhesion in the American legal Encyclopedia

What does Adhesion contract mean in American Law?

The definition of Adhesion contract in the law of the United States, as defined by the lexicographer Arthur Leff in his legal dictionary is:

A species of contract marked out for greater judicial scrutiny (including invalidation and judicial modification) than the ordinary kind, on the ground that one of the parties, typically a consumer, is not given the opportunity to “make” the contract or shape its terms, but rather must either “adhere” to it as presented or not at all, on a take-it-or-leave-it basis. This state of affairs is said to arise because of inequality of bargaining power between the profferor of the contract and the “weaker” party.

The concept must be used with caution, however. One set of legal responses would be proper with respect to “adhesion contracts” used by all members of a particular industry such that a consumer could not acquire certain goods or services at all except on a particular set of terms. But the same response might not be proper if each member of an industry refused to change the terms of its own contract, but the contracts of each were not identical, such that a consumer could get materially different terms by choosing to deal with one competitor rather, than another. To be concrete, the situation in which all automobile manufacturer’s put a disclaimer of warranty into their unmodifiable contracts would seem different from one in which half disclaim all warranties and half do not, or at least would “undisclaim” if paid extra.

Meaning of Adhesion Contract

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