Assent

Whether you actually agreed, and how the company proved it.

Assent is the legal question of whether you genuinely agreed to a contract term. Clicking a button below a link you never opened is different from scrolling through terms and typing your name.

How a company captured assent - a checkbox, a banner, a wall of text, an in-store signature, a third-party app - often decides whether its arbitration clause applies to you at all. The same company frequently has three or four different assent flows, and whether they match is itself a finding.

Related terms

• Class action - One lawsuit brought on behalf of everyone harmed the same way.
• Class representative - The named person who stands in for the whole class.
• Class certification - The court ruling that lets one case speak for everyone.
• Arbitration clause - Contract language sending disputes to a private forum instead of court.
• Class-action waiver - A term saying you may only bring a claim for yourself, never as a group.
• Unconscionability - A contract term so one-sided a court refuses to enforce it.
• Contract of adhesion - A take-it-or-leave-it contract with no room to negotiate.
• Negative option billing - You are charged unless you act to stop it.