DB> Rod, I'm not saying all the clauses in the contract are enforceable -

RS> You were attempting to suggest that the well known problem with
RS> conditions on a ticket not being enforceable was due to

RS> those only being visible too late. In fact there are plenty of
RS> examples where conditions arent enforceable even when seen early
RS> enough.

DG> The only reason that these conditions are unenforcable is due to
DG> them being illegal.

That is indeed ONE of the reasons. Its rather more complex than that tho,
case can indeed be made that you only see that stuff at the completion of
the transaction, you dont get a chance to read the conditions first and
so it cant be claimed you read and implicitly agreed to them before
completing the transaction.

Its not just illegality thats important either, in some circumstance you
just dont have any right to agree to some things. For example you cant
agree in even a formal written and signed agreement with someone that if
you dont do something, you first born will work for them for award wages
for say 5 years. That other person, your first born, is not within your
power to agree on stuff like that about their work.

Then there is the consideration of unconscionable contract conditions,
which may indeed have been formally agreed on, but where one party to the
agreement has in effect been cooerced in some way. Again, not necessarily
binding.

Or say even a pre nuptial agreement. In some situations the general
requirement to provide financial support for some people can in fact see
a court override a formal written contract anyway.

The whole question is a hell of a lot more complex than it looks.

DG> One of the fundamental principals of contract law is that you are
DG> unable to contract out of legal obligation.

Yes, but in some circumstances you can even do that too. For example
its possible to agree that there is something special about the
transaction so that warrantees dont apply. You can for example
acknowledge that you are buying seconds and that the same
considerations of merchantable quality dont apply as would normally.

DG> If a particular clause in a contract does this then it would be
DG> up to the legal system to decide whether the entire contract was
DG> invalidated, or just the said clause.

And in the case of shrinkwrap contracts, what was actually being discussed,
it could even be decided that you never agreed to a damned thing and
that whatever silly constraints purported to be agreed to on the object
code produced by a particular compiler were just irrelevant to the user
of the compiler.

Personally I think that if a particular compiler had what purported to
be a requirement that the user could only use the compiler for 1 hour a
day, the supplier of the compiler would have buckleys enforcing that.

--- PQWK202