In these cases, it is stressed that, as long as the essential conditions of an agreement have been agreed, an e-mail, letter or handwritten note with bare bones may be imposed as a binding settlement agreement. Therefore, if, at the end of a long day of mediation, one party wants to ensure that the other party does not change its mind later, it should ensure that the other party signs a document that reflects the essential conditions of the agreement. This document may not be too formal. The court found that a binding agreement had been reached in the e-mail exchange. In that decision, Honorary Justice Pelling stated: “If the parties intended to enter into a legally binding agreement by objectively judging the terms and conduct of the parties, the fact that certain economic or other conditions have not been agreed does not prevent the parties from having entered into a binding agreement.” If the documents indicate that the parties have agreed on all the conditions necessary to execute a contract, the Tribunal would have difficulty concluding something else, even if the parties do not consider themselves to be formally bound. But when will an agreement be complete, final and binding? Is approval of a reference amount sufficient or are further details required? It is precisely these questions that were asked by the court in the Bieber case, among others, against Teathers Limited 2014 EWHC 4205 (Ch). Take, for example, Zimmerman v. McColley. In Zimmerman, Opal and Edward McColley authorized their granddaughter to negotiate on their behalf with Auto-Owners Insurance Company to settle their rights to assault following a car accident. During the pre-complaint period, the granddaughter communicated several times by telephone with the recipient of the claims, and her communication culminated in a conversation in which the manager asked the granddaughter if the claim could be paid for $115,000. After speaking to the McColleys, the granddaughter agreed to accept the money and inquired about signing publications and obtaining a cheque. On that date, but not before that date, the sponsor stated that compensation would be paid by a structured comparison.

After the granddaughter`s claims officer said he had run a structured plan, the granddaughter said her grandparents would not accept the agreement. The McColleys then took legal action and filed a petition to enforce the transaction agreement. Just like the Zimmerman case, in Sands v. Helen HCI, LLC, the parties had a back-and-forth exchange between them. The parties exchanged several emails regarding the dismissal of an appeal as a precondition for the resolution of another case. A few days after one of the parties responded with an email that said “deal. Jeremy [Johnson] will work with you to get (sic) and the other council to get papers,” replied the opposing lawyer, who had previously stated that “if we get this agreement, I think it will be a simple substitute question to put in place the Sands-Helen HCI agreement,” he replied on the grounds that there was no longer an agreement because the proposed comparison documents were not acceptable. This case shows how important it is for the parties to strive to obtain formal transaction agreements as quickly as possible and to know, in all correspondences, whether their offer is a starting point for negotiation or whether it should lead to a binding agreement. Although the case is widely applied, it can be difficult to consistently apply rapidly evolving transaction negotiations, as opposed to, for example, trade negotiations, where a more detailed contract has been agreed over the longer term. CasaS` code of conduct for transaction agreements contains a set of guidelines that parties must follow. Its objectives include helping employers, workers and their representatives understand the impact of Section 111A of the Labour Law Act (ERDF) of 1996 on the negotiation of transaction agreements.