An email disclaimer is a

disclaimer A disclaimer is generally any statement intended to specify or delimit the scope of rights and obligations that may be exercised and enforced by parties in a legally recognized relationship. In contrast to other terms for legally operative langua ...

notice Notice is the legal concept describing a requirement that a party be aware of legal process affecting their rights, obligations or duties. There are several types of notice: public notice (or legal notice), actual notice, constructive notice. ...

or warning which is added to an outgoing

email Electronic mail (usually shortened to email; alternatively hyphenated e-mail) is a method of transmitting and receiving Digital media, digital messages using electronics, electronic devices over a computer network. It was conceived in the ...

and forms a distinct section which is separate from the main message. The reasons for adding such a disclaimer include

confidentiality Confidentiality involves a set of rules or a promise sometimes executed through confidentiality agreements that limits the access to or places restrictions on the distribution of certain types of information. Legal confidentiality By law, la ...

copyright A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive legal right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, ...

contract formation Offer and acceptance are generally recognized as essential requirements for the formation of a contract (together with other requirements such as consideration and legal capacity). Analysis of their operation is a traditional approach in contract ...

defamation Defamation is a communication that injures a third party's reputation and causes a legally redressable injury. The precise legal definition of defamation varies from country to country. It is not necessarily restricted to making assertions ...

discrimination Discrimination is the process of making unfair or prejudicial distinctions between people based on the groups, classes, or other categories to which they belong or are perceived to belong, such as race, gender, age, class, religion, or sex ...

harassment Harassment covers a wide range of behaviors of an offensive nature. It is commonly understood as behavior that demeans, humiliates, and intimidates a person, and it is characteristically identified by its unlikelihood in terms of social and ...

, privilege and

viruses A virus is a submicroscopic infectious agent that replicates only inside the living cells of an organism. Viruses infect all life forms, from animals and plants to microorganisms, including bacteria and archaea. Viruses are found in almo ...

Issues frequently dealt with in email disclaimers

Confidentiality

A disclaimer may be added to mitigate the risk that a confidential email may be forwarded to a third-party recipient. Organizations may use the disclaimer to warn such recipients that they are not authorised recipients and to ask that they delete the email. The legal force and standing of such warnings is not well-established.

Contract

A disclaimer may state that the email does not form a contract. This may not be effective as the substantive body of the email may contradict and override this. In the case of ''Baillie Estates Limited against Du Pont (UK) Limited'', which was heard in the

Outer House The Outer House (abbreviated as CSOH in neutral citations) is one of the two parts of the Scottish Court of Session, which is the supreme civil court in Scotland. It is a court of first instance, although some statutory appeals are remitted ...

of Scotland, it was found that a contract was in effect, as attached to the relevant email, even though there was a standard disclaimer.

Copyright

Republication of emails may be protected by copyright law and a disclaimer may warn that such rights to copy the text of the email are reserved by the originator.

Viruses

Computer virus A computer virus is a type of malware that, when executed, replicates itself by modifying other computer programs and Code injection, inserting its own Computer language, code into those programs. If this replication succeeds, the affected areas ...

es may be spread by email. To mitigate the risk that a recipient might sue the sender of an infected email, a disclaimer might warn of the possibility of infection and advise the recipient to conduct their own scan. The disclaimer might provide details of the outgoing scanning which has already been performed to provide some guidance about the level of risk.

Effectiveness of disclaimers

The Economist published an article asserting that disclaimers are presented largely as a result of imitation and habit, that people have long stopped paying attention to disclaimers, and suggested that they may not be legally enforceable. In the United States, the overuse of boilerplate disclaimers by law firms has been criticized as potentially rendering the disclaimers ineffective. With little case law addressing email disclaimers, concerns remain that the use of a disclaimer provides little or no benefit to an attorney other person who misdirects an email that contains privileged or confidential information. If the recipient of a misdirected email is not bound to a confidentiality agreement, the inclusion of a disclaimer has no binding effect upon that person. In the EU, there is a directive that instructs courts to strike unreasonable provisions of consumer contracts that have not been freely negotiated by the consumer.

Length and other awards

The Register ''The Register'' (often also called El Reg) is a British Technology journalism, technology news website co-founded in 1994 by Mike Magee (journalist), Mike Magee and John Lettice. The online newspaper's Nameplate_(publishing), masthead Logo, s ...

'' conducted a survey in 2001 and found that

UBS Warburg UBS Group AG (stylized simply as UBS) is a multinational Investment banking, investment bank and financial services firm founded and based in Switzerland, with headquarters in both Zurich and Basel. It holds a strong foothold in all major fina ...

had the longest disclaimer — 1,081 words. Other categories in their ''Email Disclaimer Awards'' included the ''Most Incomprehensible Disclaimer'' and the ''Most PC Disclaimer''.

References

{{Reflist, 2

External links

Email Disclaimer Awards 2001
- by

Stupid Email Disclaimers
- examples collected by

postmaster A postmaster is the head of an individual post office, responsible for all postal activities in a specific post office. When a postmaster is responsible for an entire mail distribution organization (usually sponsored by a national government), ...

Jeffrey Goldberg. Email