Case Study on the Legal Effects of Letters of Intent

양해사항확인장의 법적 효력에 관한 사례 연구

The Pennzoil case and the SME case illustrate the difficulties which originate from inadequate drafting of letters of intent. In both cases the judges had to face the crucial question as to whether or not a given letter of intent had a binding nature; they had in other words to decide whether the wills expressed in such letters still belonged to the pre-contractual stage, or whether their incorporation into a pre-contractual document meant that negotiations were over and binding obligations had already arisen for the parties. In other words, some problems may occur when a party has documented a stage in the negotiations by letters of intent. The letters may well explicitly spell out if, and to what extent, the parties should be bound by what they have already agreed or to carry on negotiations in order to reach the final contract. But if the letters are silent, some problems would arise. Contracting parties are, therefore, well advised to spell out if, and to what extent, they should be bound by such preliminary agreements. Here again, it might be prudent to explicitly set forth that the parties should not be bound until there is a final written contract signed by authorized representatives of the parties but that they shall abstain from such measures which may defeat their stated objective to reach final agreement, e.g. by diminishing the value of performance under the contemplated contract.