Article 171

What it means when you sign

This article says when staying silent counts as deception. Deliberate silence about a fact or circumstance is deception if it is proven that the person deceived would not have entered the contract had they known of that fact or circumstance.

Two conditions come out of the wording: the silence must be deliberate, and it must be proven that the other side would not have contracted if they had known. The article does not say what remedy follows, and it does not say how the proof is made.

When you are about to sign, this article means that a party cannot simply keep quiet about a fact that would have changed the other side's decision, if the silence was intentional. A clause stating that the other side has made no representations, or that it relied only on the written terms, may not settle the matter where a deliberately concealed fact is shown. It is worth asking what facts matter to the decision to sign, and whether the contract records them.