WHAT IS THE PAROLE EVIDENCE RULE?

 The courts lay great importance on the performance by the parties to a contract of their obligations under the contract and will always be ready to come to the assistance of a party who has been prejudiced by the other party's failure to perform. To do so, the courts will need to now precisely what the respective rights and obligations of the parties under the contract are and to do so will rely heavily on any written agreement.

The courts have therefore evolved a rule, known as the parol evidence rule, which holds that, where there is a clear and unambiguous written agreement between the parties, this will be deemed to be the only and exclusive record of their agreement and neither party will be permitted to allege that the terms of the written agreement bearing his signature are not the true terms, and that he signed the document believing it to contain other terms or to mean something else.

This principle will be taken very far, and he will not be permitted to say that he had been mistaken about the meaning of certain terms which he did not understand, or even that the agreement was in a language he did not speak, because the courts will hold that he should have clarified all uncertainties before putting his name to the agreement.

Only where he can show that he was willfully deceived by the other party as to the meaning of the agreement or what it contained, and that pm the strength of this misrepresentation he put his name to the agreement, will he be held not to be bound to the terms of the contract. The onus on him to prove this will be a heavy one.

The consequence of this may be that in the case of a contractor who, in submitting his tender to carry out certain work, attaches conditions or qualifications to his tender (as contractors frequently do), and thereafter signs a written contract without ensuring that his qualifications are embodied in the document, and in fact they are not so embodied, it will probably be held that the conditions have fallen away.

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