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Open Source Casebook

Model CLA Policy and Rationale

Introduction

Technology companies frequently receive and use code from outsiders; this outside code may be important to core products. Outside code can be a tremendous resource, but it also carries responsibility. This document spells out corporate best practices for accepting code contributed by third parties and explains the basis for these practices in agency law. These best practices consist of three components: an Apache-type Contributor License Agreement (CLA), a procedure for accepting CLA signatures, and a procedure for accepting code submitted under the agreement.

This document will summarize the legal framework around code ownership, laying out the rationale for employing an Apache-type CLA, and then discuss the specific laws and operational concerns attendant to each part of the CLA signing and code acceptance process.

Overview

Under international copyright law, copyright attaches automatically in the creation of creative works, such as software.1 The moment a work of sufficiently original software is fixed in a tangible medium, it is protected by copyright. Domestic copyright laws often place copyright ownership in the hands of a creator’s employer.2 When a programmer submits code to a company, that code may be owned by the programmer’s employer. To ensure that a company is granted the permissions necessary to utilize the code it receives, Contributor License Agreements (CLAs) should generally be obtained from every organization whose employees contribute code. The language of the Apache CLA, and the best practices for accepting CLAs, serve two interrelated aims: First, to ensure that the company is granted permission to use the code. Second, to ensure that the CLA effectively binds the signee’s organization.

The language of the Apache CLA protects companies by clarifying the ownership and permissions of intellectual property created and used in the course of the code contribution relationship.3 Section 2 of the agreement grants the receiving company a “perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable4 copyright license” to the organization’s contributions. The “no-charge, royalty-free” language permits the receiving company to use the code without incurring expense. The “non-exclusive” language reserves the organization freedom to use the code itself, or to license the code to others under different terms. Section 3 spells out patent license terms, granting the receiving company and downstream users a perpetual license to any patents implicated by the contributed software. Section 3 also incorporates a litigation-deterring license-termination mechanism.5 Sections 4 and 8 require the signee to certify that they wield the requisite authority to enter into the CLA on behalf of their organization. These clauses alert the signee that proper authority is required to enter into the agreement on behalf of their organization. It also places the responsibility on the signee to ensure that such authority is secured.

In addition to the terms of the CLA itself, an effective CLA acceptance procedure consists of three protective measures to ensure that the CLA binds the signee’s organization. First, authentication, such as email verification through a document signing service, should be used to verify the identity of the signee. This provides assurance that the signee is a real person and a representative of the contracting organization. Second, signees’ professional titles should be reviewed, and submissions should be rejected if the signee’s title is not one that generally confers authority to contract on behalf of an organization.

For example, a software engineer usually does not have the authority to sign documents for their company, though they may try. This is done to ensure that the company’s reliance on the authority of these signees is reasonable.6

Third, all employees of the contributing organization should be individually appointed to contribute under the agreement by an established point of contact before making contributions. Funnelling all contributors from a given organization through a single point of contact prevents contributions from being made without the contributing organization’s knowledge, and prevents misunderstanding.

Discussion

This discussion will first delve into the legal and operational considerations underpinning the language of the Apache CLA, then lay out best practices for CLA submission and code contribution acceptance procedures with an eye to the particular fact patterns that may be relevant for receiving companies.

CLA

Standard inbound license

Using one standard inbound license that grants the receiving company broad permission to use contributed code in products is beneficial to the company and downstream users alike.

Technology companies will of course want to make productive use of any code made available to them. However, if all of the code being received by a company was subject to various inbound licenses with conflicting terms, the bureaucracy for authorizing use of any specific third-party code for any specific purpose would be cumbersome. Whenever contributed code were to be used, the particular license terms for every single file would need to be reviewed to ascertain whether the application would be permitted under the terms of that code’s specific license.7 This would require considerable human resources and would slow down the engineers trying to utilize the code.

The benefits to the company under the standard inbound license pass to downstream recipients as well. Explicit patent permissions and disclaimers of obligations and warranties clarify the recipients rights and duties; the broad grant of rights provides code recipients opportunities to make productive use of the software; adherence to a single standard license promotes consistency and common understanding for all participants.

Grant of patent license

Section 3 of the Apache CLA operates to clarify that the agreement controls all aspects of the intellectual property interest in the software. Having patent license terms clearly and explicitly stated protects all parties’ interests.

Origin of works

Sections 5 and 7 require the signee to represent that all contributions under the agreement are the “original creations” of the contributing organization. This is done to protect the receiving company (and downstream users), because the CLA may not shield recipients from claims by owners of code that is submitted to them by a third party. Requiring CLA signatories to certify that their code contributions are their original creations - hence copyrighted works that they actually own - gives recipients some recourse against those signatories if their contributed code turns out to have been improperly obtained from a third party.

Works made for hire

A benefit of the Corporate CLA is that it protects receiving companies from termination of transfers. As works made for hire are ineligible for termination of transfers,8 receiving companies are assured that their license to use the code will not be threatened by termination if the code is contributed through the engineer’s employer’s CLA, as this establishes that the code is a work made for hire, which is subsequently properly licensed.

Individual CLA

For circumstances where the code being contributed is not done within the scope of the contributor’s employment,9 contributors should be required to sign a CLA in their individual capacity.

Procedure

Signatures

As discussed in the overview, copyright ownership is a complex animal. Because copyright ownership is complex, the execution of an agreement that licenses rights to copyrighted material is a complex matter as well.

For instance, sometimes employees are not aware of the ramifications of exectuing an agreement on behalf of their employer, which is why having clear policies in place to account for such situations is essential.

This section will highlight the particular fact patterns that may be relevant to a company employing a CLA, and then detail the legal framework underpinning the issue of unauthorized signees.

Fraudulent signee

To illustrate what a fraudulent CLA submission might look like, let’s say an engineer named Alice contacts B Corp to say that she represents A Corp and wants to sign B Corp’s CLA on A Corp’s behalf. Alice signs the CLA and proceeds with submitting code to B Corp. B Corp proceeds with using that code in products across the company. It is later discovered that the code Alice submitted wasn’t actually owned by either Alice or A Corp - in fact, Alice doesn’t even work for A Corp and her name isn’t actually Alice. B Corp just recklessly incorporated and utilized code that belongs to a completely unrelated third party, and now that third party may have a cause of action against B Corp. This fact pattern demonstrates the value of authentication (such as email verification), as it ensures that the people signing a CLA are who they say they are.

Unauthorized signee

An unauthorized signee could be an engineer employed by an organization signing a CLA on the organization’s behalf, where the engineer is confused about the need for special authority to enter into such an agreement. Suppose the engineer proceeds with signing the agreement and contributes code, but then the organization discovers this errant engineer’s actions and revokes the agreement. This could require that the receiving company isolate and remove all of the code contributed by the engineer (and by other employees of the organization). This unauthorized signee scenario is a realistic fact pattern in the world of code collaboration, and is one reason why measures should to be taken to ensure that CLA signees are authorized.

Corporate signing authority

Under American corporate law, officers of a company generally only have authority to enter into contractual agreements on behalf of the company if the company’s board of directors explicitly bestows such permission.10 Traditionally, “C-level” executives like CEOs or CTOs are each explicitly granted a degree of signing authority in the company’s bylaws, but there could be a narrower or broader designation of authority as the board sees fit.

This raises the obvious concern that, without reviewing every contributor’s company bylaws to determine whether a given officer has been granted signing authority, a company might be authorizing CLAs that are unenforceable against contributors. Here, Section 4 of the Apache CLA again operates to protect the contracting parties from surprise by requiring that the signee certify their authority to take the action on behalf of the company.

It is important to note however that, while Section 4 does place responsibility on the signee, it is likely insufficient protection on its own should the receiving company accept this assertion from a signee whose title belies authority to grant the company a perpetual license to code owned by the signee’s employer. A court might view the receiving company’s acceptance of that CLA as unreasonable reliance upon the authority of the signee.11

Fortunately, it is an established tenet of agency law that when an agent holds actual or apparent authority to act on behalf of the agent’s principal, the principal is bound by the agent’s actions.12 This tenet permits a receiving company to accept CLA submissions with assurance that the agreement will be effective without needing to implement an onerous procedure,13 but does require that the receiving company ascertain that the signee holds actual or apparent authority.

Actual authority

Actual authority represents the ideal scenario whereby an officer acting on behalf of a company is taking an action with the company’s knowledge and consent.14 Of course, a company should always endeavor to ensure that all of its contractual agreements are entered into with actual authority. If an agent represents themselves to speak for an organization and enters into an agreement contrary to the organization’s interests, it creates conflict that can harm both parties to the contract.

However, ascertaining actual authority rests upon facts that are outside the scope of what a receiving company may reasonably observe or control.15

Apparent authority

Apparent Authority covers situations where someone transacting with an officer of a company relies on the officer’s authority to enter into that transaction based on the company’s representations that the officer wields such authority.16 In other words, when a contracting party reasonably relies on the authority of an agent of a corporation in order to bind that corporation in an agreement, that agreement remains valid against the corporation, even if the corporation did not actually authorize its agent to enter into the agreement.

The benefit of apparent authority is that it presents criteria that are within a receiving company’s means to control. For this reason, while it should be a clear aim to enter into all agreements with actual authority on the part of all contracting parties, these best practices focus on ensuring that apparent authority is satisfied.

In order for a receiving company to ensure that its CLAs are legally enforceable under a theory of apparent authority, it should take care that its CLA acceptance procedure satisfies the two criteria for apparent authority: 1) the company must reasonably believe that the signee has authority, and 2) that belief must be traceable to the manifestations of the contracting party (the company or organization the signee is acting on behalf of).17

The receiving company’s belief in the authority of the signee should be reasonable in order to shield the signatory corporation from being contractually bound by the actions of a non-executive employee. Imagine if a B Corp executive were to wave in a C Parcel Services delivery driver and have the driver sign a contract between B Corp and C Parcel Services for new shipping rates for B Corp deliveries worldwide; it would be unreasonable to enforce that agreement against C Parcel Services.

The belief should also be traceable to the manifestations of the signatory corporation in order to shield the signatory corporation from the fraudulent acts of third parties. If someone walked into B Corp headquarters purporting to be an attorney acting on behalf of C Parcel Services, offering new shipping rates for B Corp deliveries, and B Corp were to sign that agreement with the attorney, it would similarly be unenforceable if the attorney’s claim to represent C Parcel Services were not traceable to some manifestation on C Parcel Services’ part.

The determinations of whether the belief in a signee’s authority is reasonable and traceable to manifestations of the company forms a very fact-and-context-dependent inquiry; but these are helped by common-sense considerations as to whether a given agent wields the mark of authority.

It is important to note that the corporation’s manifestation need neither be direct nor in writing; bestowing a given title on an individual will do.18 For this reason, a CLA acceptance procedure may rely heavily on consideration of the CLA signee’s title to ensure that the role is one that reasonably carries authority for the transaction and that this authority is conveyed by a manifestation of the contracting corporation. This is also why receiving companies should be careful to utilize authentication, to ensure that this manifestation is directly traceable to the contracting corporation.

A statute from the California civil code spells out the overarching principle at work in this apparent authority determination, and it provides a helpful lens for evaluating whether apparent authority may be satisfied:

“Where one of two innocent persons must suffer by the act of a third, he, by whose negligence it happened, must be the sufferer.”19

This dynamic formula can operate in one of two ways in the context of honoring contractual agreements. The first, relying on the notion that a principal must take care in appointing and monitoring its agents,20 would have the contract be enforceable against the party who did not exercise care in monitoring its apparently-authorized agent’s activity (signing the CLA and submitting code under it). The second application, turning on reasonable reliance, would make the contract unenforceable by the party who accepted an agreement signed by a low-level employee on behalf of an entire company.21 This critical lever underscores the importance of considering the title of every CLA signee before accepting CLA submissions.

Additionally, this lever highlights the value of funneling all contributors from a given organization through a single, authorized contact. CLA signees, by requirement, should hold an office of authority at their organization, and should assume the responsibility of designating a Point of Contact for managing the code contribution relationship.22 This shields the receiving company from arguments that a rogue engineer contributed code unaware of the CLA. Moreover, by funneling contributors through a point of contact at their own organization, it creates the opportunity for that organization to exercise reasonable care in apprising itself of the activities of its employees.

Multiple signatures

In addition to maintaining a single version of the CLA that is used for all contributors, another best practice for maintaining CLAs is to only accept a single CLA from a given contributing organization. There are three reasons for this: First, there could otherwise be a problem at the code contribution stage. If code were to be contributed by an engineer who was covered under multiple CLAs, an additional layer of review would be required to determine under which CLA the code was contributed.23

Second, if the terms of the company’s CLA were ever to change, there could be confusion as to which terms were controlling if multiple CLAs with different terms were executed. Third, accepting multiple CLAs from different officers at a given company could undermine the validity of all of the CLAs signed by that company. The receiving company would have trouble arguing that it reasonably relied upon the authority of a CLA signee if the company were to ignore evidence that the signee’s organization had multiple officers each declaring themselves to be the single designated authority at the organization responsible for managing the CLA relationship.

Vetting code contributions

Above, it was noted that copyright law often operates to place ownership of creative works in the hands of one’s employer, but that is not always the case. In this regard, ensuring that all contributors from a given organization are funneled through a responsible contact serves another important purpose. Suppose an engineer whose employer has signed B Corp’s CLA submits code to B Corp. But let’s say that the engineer had written that code before going to work for that employer. If this engineer has not signed the B Corp CLA in her individual capacity, and if she is not certifying that the code is being contributed as property of the engineer’s organization (by coordinating through the point of contact assigned to the agreement), then B Corp does not have a license to use that engineer’s code. Funneling contributors through a single point of contact helps to ensure that the engineers’ submissions will be considered property of the engineers’ employers.

GitHub

Under the Apache CLA, the definition of contribution requires that the contribution be intentional. Under any circumstance where code is not submitted through a formal process, the intentionality of that contribution is put in question. Accordingly, a uniform code contribution process should be employed, which usually, but not always, takes the form of pull requests through GitHub.

Generally, as part of a contribution process, a contributor company will create a fork of the repository being contributed to, make edits and additions to the repository, and then submit a pull request to update the canonical version. Such a procedure entails two roles: someone who initiates the pull request (submitter), and one or more people who have authored the actual content of the pull request (commit authors).

Often times the submitter and commit author may be the same person. However, it may also be the case that multiple employees at the contributor company will have made edits to the fork, in which case the submitter would only be one of the authors of the commits being submitted. In order to accept the pull request, it should be verified that the submitter and commit authors are all covered by a CLA.24 In certain cases the submitter and commit authors may be covered by different CLAs, in which case it’s helpful to have a procedure in place to determine intentionality on the part of the commit authors.

Guidance

Instructions

As described throughout this document, having a procedure for accepting CLA submissions plays a vital role in the aims of validating the agreement and avoiding any potential problems. As a best practice, this procedure should consist of: a check to see if the contracting party has already submitted a CLA, verification of the signee’s email address to ensure that it is a company address, and evaluation of the signee’s title to ensure that the signee wields signing authority.

Titles that confer authority

Per the discussion of apparent authority above, the act of conferring a given title upon an employee constitutes a “manifestation” that may be “reasonably” relied upon for establishing apparent authority. When evaluating a CLA signee’s title, the following positions are regarded as wielding the requisite authority to execute the agreement:

President/CEO: presidents hold broad authority to take executive action on behalf of their company and will be considered to have authority to execute virtually any agreement.25

Vice-President: there have been cases where a vice-president was found to lack apparent authority to sign on behalf of a company, but this turned on the contracting party’s knowledge that the vice-president lacked this authority26 or where the agreement concerned matters outside the vice-president’s scope of employment.27 Generally, a vice-president will be found to wield authority to execute an agreement of significant import, such as a CLA.

General Manager: though an uncommon title in the context of software engineering and CLA execution, general managers are regarded as having broad authority to act on behalf of their company in the ordinary course of the company’s business.28

Chief Technology Officer/Director of Engineering: a “chief” officer or “director” holds significant executive authority, but this authority is generally confined to a specific function. Chief or director positions in departments that are related to software engineering can provide strong assurance of CLA signing authority.

Counsel: attorneys employed by a company may potentially be subject to heightened fiduciary obligations to the company, just as its officers and board of directors are. Absent evidence to the contrary, an action taken by counsel could be treated as a decision made with the company’s full knowledge and consent.

Titles that likely lack authority

If a corporate CLA were submitted by an individual with a title other than one of those listed above, it should be evaluated carefully. Accepting a signature from an employee with an irregular title might be appropriate after discussion to clarify the nature of the signee’s authority, but without such assurance it should likely be rejected. The following positions represent the most common titles of corporate CLA signees that should be regarded circumspectly:

Software Engineer: companies must be wary of engineers attempting to sign corporate CLAs, as they may be acting independently of the organization they work for, and likely do not wield signing authority to bind the organization.

Chief Financial Officer, Director of Sales, Product Manager: as a counterpoint to the examples concerning chief officers and directors above, “chief,” “director,” or “manager” roles that are not natured to be external-facing, or which do not concern themselves directly with software engineering or external collaboration could be found to lack the authority needed to enter into the agreement.29

Legal Assistant: Whereas counsel for a company may hold the authority to make representations and warranties on behalf of the company, and can bear responsibility for ensuring that their actions are undertaken with the full knowledge and consent of the company, the same would not necessarily apply to a legal assistant. Sometimes companies employ paralegal “contract managers” specifically responsible for managing licensing relationships, but this constitutes the sort of case where a discussion for clarification is advised.

Minimal information collection from corporations and individuals

Minimizing the collection of signee personally identifiable information (PII) reduces maintenance costs and protects signees’ privacy, but a certain amount of information collection is indispensable. One should be able to trace title from a given submission to a known human being or entity. The two pieces of information that should always be collected from CLA signees are email address and name. For corporate CLAs, the name of the corporation and the signee’s corporate title should also be collected.

Email address verification serves three critical purposes: identity verification, company employee status verification, and means of contact.

Obtaining the name of the signee is indispensable for identity verification, but is also necessary for substantiating the agreement.

In the case of corporate CLAs, the collection of this information not only furnishes evidence of the agreement in the event of suit, it provides the criteria for establishing apparent authority. The email address establishes that the signee really is an employee of the company they represent and are acting in their capacity as an agent of the company. The title establishes whether the company has conferred authority upon the signee to execute the agreement.

  1. The Berne Convention requires that copyright rights vest automatically at the time of creation. WIPO-Administered Treaties: Berne Convention For The Protection Of Literary And Artistic Works, Article 5(2). Wipo.int. N.p., 2016. Web. 24 Jun. 2016. ↩

  2. “A ‘work made for hire’ is … a work prepared by an employee within the scope of his or her employment.” 17 U.S.C. § 101. See Miller v. CP Chems., Inc., 808 F. Supp. 1238, 1242-44 (D.S.C. 1992) (software written at home during off-hours, without direction or extra compensation from employer found to be a work-for-hire), appeal dismissed, No. 93-1045 (4th Cir. April 13, 1993); Genzmer v. Pub. Health Trust, 219 F. Supp. 2d 1275, 1276 (S.D. Fla. 2002) (same). ↩

  3. https://www.apache.org/licenses/cla-corporate.txt ↩

  4. When employers hold copyright to the work product of their employees, this can benefit receiving companies and downstream users because works for hire are ineligible for termination of transfer. See 17 U.S.C. §203(a) (In the case of any work other than a work made for hire, the exclusive or nonexclusive grant of a transfer or license of copyright … is subject to termination under [certain] conditions[.]). This means that the receiving company does not need to fear that the contributing organization or their successors in interest could attempt to terminate the license 35 years after granting it. ↩

  5. This mechanism stipulates that the patent license between the contributor and any given entity terminates if the entity institutes patent litigation. See Clause 3 of http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0. ↩

  6. See e.g. Meyer v. Ford Motor Co., 275 Cal. App. 2d 90, 102 (Cal. App. 3d Dist. 1969) (“Although it is established that ostensible authority can be created only by the acts or declarations of the principal, not by those of the agent, the principal need not have been in direct contact with the third party; the manifestation of the principal may be to the community at large, and may consist of appointing the agent to a particular position.”). CLA be signed by “the chairperson of the board, the president or any vice president and the secretary, any assistant secretary, the chief financial officer or any assistant treasurer” in order to (almost) incontrovertibly establish the legitimacy of the agreement under California law. Cal. Corp. Code § 313. ↩

  7. This could arise if a contributor sought to limit the use of their code to internal uses by the company, to limit the company’s permission to charge end users a fee in connection with use of the code, or by a litany of other possible criteria were every inbound code contribution subject to a negotiated license. ↩

  8. See 17 U.S.C. § 203(a) (“In the case of any work other than a work made for hire, the exclusive or nonexclusive grant of a transfer or license of copyright … is subject to termination…[.]”). ↩

  9. Copyrighted works created “within the scope of one’s employment” are treated as works made for hire. Works created outside the scope of employment, such as works created prior to being employed, or works created by an engineer using the engineer’s own time and resources (and that are unrelated to the employer’s business) are owned by their specific author. ↩

  10. See, e.g., Cal Corp Code § 208(b). ↩

  11. See Airline Support, Inc. v. ASM Capital II, L.P., 279 P.3d 599, 609 (Alaska 2012) (remanded for determination of “whether a credit manager of a company’s accounts receivable department would typically have the authority to sell one of the company’s significant assets”). ↩

  12. “Any contract or conveyance made in the name of a corporation which is […] done within the scope of the authority, actual or apparent, conferred by the board or within the agency power of the officer executing it, […] binds the corporation[.]” Cal Corp Code § 208(b). ↩

  13. For instance, a California-based company could require that the CLA be signed by “the chairperson of the board, the president or any vice president and the secretary, any assistant secretary, the chief financial officer or any assistant treasurer” in order to (almost) incontrovertibly establish the legitimacy of the agreement under California law. Cal. Corp. Code § 313. ↩

  14. “An agent acts with actual authority when, at the time of taking action that has legal consequences for the principal, the agent reasonably believes, in accordance with the principal’s manifestations to the agent, that the principal wishes the agent so to act.” Restat 3d of Agency §2.01 (3rd 2006) ↩

  15. An example would be if the president of a company were personally instructed by the company’s board not to accept a CLA, yet the president were to proceed with signing it anyway. The receiving company may be faultless for trusting in the president’s apparent authority, even though the president lacks actual authority due to the action of the board. ↩

  16. “Apparent authority is the power held by an agent or other actor to affect a principal’s legal relations with third parties when a third party reasonably believes the actor has authority to act on behalf of the principal and that belief is traceable to the principal’s manifestations.” Restat 3d of Agency §2.03 (3rd 2006) ↩

  17. Id. ↩

  18. “A principal may also make a manifestation by placing an agent in a defined position in an organization or by placing an agent in charge of a transaction or situation. Third parties who interact with the principal through the agent will naturally and reasonably assume that the agent has authority to do acts consistent with the agent’s position or role unless they have notice of facts suggesting that this may not be so.” Restat 3d of Agency, § 3.03 (3rd 2006). ↩

  19. Cal Civ Code § 3543. ↩

  20. A principal is liable for the torts of its agent if it is negligent in “selecting, training, retaining, supervising, or otherwise controlling the agent.” Restat 3d of Agency, § 7.05 (3rd 2006). ↩

  21. “Apparent authority ends when it is no longer reasonable for the third party with whom an agent deals to believe that the agent continues to act with actual authority.” Restat 3d of Agency, § 3.11(2) (3rd 2006). ↩

  22. “It is your responsibility to notify the Foundation when any change is required to the list of designated employees authorized to submit Contributions on behalf of the Corporation, or to the Corporation’s Point of Contact with the Foundation.” Section 8 of The Apache Software Foundation Software Grant and Corporate Contributor License Agreement, at https://www.apache.org/licenses/cla-corporate.txt ↩

  23. This is designed to clarify situations where it is unclear whether the code is being submitted on behalf of an engineer’s employer as opposed to being submitted by the engineer in her individual capacity, but could be triggered by the existence of multiple CLAs for a given entity. ↩

  24. All individuals under a single authorized group for a single given CLA are considered to be the same entity, both under the terms of a CLA and the law. One key measure in ensuring the intentionality of a submission is requiring that all of the commits authored in a given pull request are subject to the same CLA. ↩

  25. See Menard, Inc. v. Dage-MTI, Inc., 726 N.E.2d 1206 at 1216 (Ind. 2000) (even where president possessed neither actual nor apparent authority to enter agreement, corporation subject to liability due to the president’s inherent authority). ↩

  26. The contracting party knew that the corporate vice president lacked authority to agree to a three-year ship charter. The contracting party could not reasonably rely on the vice president’s claim of authority, and the senior management of the company did nothing to manifest that such authority existed. Armagas Ltd. v. Mundogas S.A. 1 A.C. 717, 777-78 (1986). ↩

  27. Vice president found to lack authority to sign on behalf of company where the contract concerned the vice-president’s individual transactions. Morris v. Griffith & W. Co., 69 F. 131, 137, 1895 U.S. App. LEXIS 3080, *17 (C.C.D. Ohio 1895). ↩

  28. Anderson v. McAllister Towing & Transp. Co., 17 F.Supp.2d 1280, 1289 (S.D.Ala. 1998). ↩

  29. See Orient Overseas Container Line v. Kids Int’l Corp., 1999 A.M.C. 961 (S.D.N.Y. 1998) (“Director of Imports” lacked actual authority to execute a guarantee on behalf of a third party to induce a shipping company to release merchandise absent the original bills of lading). ↩

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