Beware: an auto email sign-off can be sufficient to ‘sign’ an agreement by Helen Evans Hill Dickinson LLP
In the recent case of Neocleous v Rees [2019] EWHC 2462 (Ch) an email with an automatically generated signature was considered sufficient for the purposes of section 2 of the Law of Property (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1989 (“the 1989 Act”) to bind the parties to an agreement for the transfer of land in settlement of a right of way dispute. 8
The case concerned a right of way dispute between the Claimant and the Defendant where part of the Defendant’s land was only accessible via the Claimant’s land. Whilst the right of way appeared on the Defendant’s title, it was not registered against the Claimant’s title and so the Defendant applied to the HM Land Registry to register the right of way 7