Even then I might want to keep the scope narrowly to employment contracts. A contract between two large companies would have wider implications if it could be invalidated completely.
My understanding is that contract law is nuanced and it is important for the functioning of society that small mistakes can be fixed without major repercussions, but I am in favor or making sure large employers aren’t misleading employees.
I presume, perhaps incorrectly, that an industry would spring up around "standardized contracts" offered for very cheap/free. Seems like something Intuit might offer for free as a hook to get you on the platform.
Individuals would also likely use standardized contracts when dealing with other individuals, ideally. I would be okay with exempting them, but I really do think there benefits to centralizing on some standardized contracts. We could do something like what GitHub does when you look at licenses and it tells you what the license grants and denies. You could probably get specific case law for questions, because there are a lot of cases using the exact same contract.
I think it's typically (though not always) an anti-pattern for two individuals to write their own contract. I do not want my landscaper to write his own contract, which I then have to make sure I understand correctly. I'd much rather get "Standardized Lawn Care Contract V2 /w Owner Liability Option" and be able to find an infographic that summarizes who has what responsibility, up to what amounts, etc, etc.
> Even then I might want to keep the scope narrowly to employment contracts. A contract between two large companies would have wider implications if it could be invalidated completely.
I specifically limited it to contracts between individuals because I think having lawyers at-hand is a fair expectation of companies. They have enough resources to find out what's enforceable and what isn't, and B2B contracts would typically be for amounts where hiring a lawyer doesn't erase all the gain from the transaction.
You find out your contract has an invalid clause. What now? Contract null and void and you pay back all the wages received? Or just stop being employed from that moment forward?
In that circumstance, if both parties are still happy with the terms they would presumably sign a new contract minus the unenforceable terms.
If the company opts not to create a new contract, I would say it counts as firing the person without cause.
It is an interesting question though, especially as it pertains to future incentives. Something like the person having earned a bonus that hasn't been paid out yet, the contract is found invalid so the bonus part is scratched out.
Perhaps the individual deserves a choice in that case, whether to proceed without a contract or under the terms minus the unenforceable parts, or maybe something more punitive to the company like the individual keeping any rights they got and the company losing theirs.
I still think it's a workable idea, but you do raise an interesting point that's probably worth adjusting my idea around.
This is a big reason why I think clauses in contracts with individuals should not be separable. The entire agreement is either valid or not, you can't stuff it full of a tenuous wishlist of rights.
Lawyers are far too expensive to ask every citizen to hire one every time they want to find out which clauses are blatantly unenforceable.
Maybe it made sense when the sum of laws that apply to everyone was a reasonable quantity, but at this point even lawyers only really know the parts they specialize in.
There have to be millions of pages by the time you include all the case law that set precedent.