I just ran across a case from California where:

• a company executive signed a letter agreement, on his company's letterhead, but with no indication of his title;

• the company backed out of the deal;

• the other side sued both the company and the executive in his personal capacity; and

• the company's D&O insurance carrier successfully denied coverage, on grounds that D&O coverage doesn't include garden-variety breaches of contract; and

• the carrier therefore didn't have to pay for the executive's defense.

See August Entertainment, Inc. v. Philadelphia Indemnity Ins. Co., 146 Cal.App.4th 565 (2007).

A Massachusetts appeals court has held that Amazon.com was bound by an exchange of emails that agreed to the essential points of a dispute settlement with Basis Technology Corp. The decision is summarized on the law.com Web site. "Thomas J. Gallitano, a lawyer for Basis, said a statement in the e-mail exchange confirming that six different points in the e-mails contained the essential business terms of the settlement agreement was pivotal to the court's decision. 'Had that language not been in there, the case may have turned out differently, said Gallitano of Boston's Conn Kavanaugh Rosenthal Peisch & Ford."

Jay Parkhill posts about his experiments with digital signatures on contracts, and concludes that for now, nothing beats good old fashioned FAXing of a signed signature page.