contract-law
Contracts that require you to lie
<p>This workplace question recently made it on the StackExchange hot questions list: <a href="https://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/187089/severance-contract-requires-a-lie-is-this-enforceable">Severance contract requires a lie. Is this enforceable?</a></p>
<p>Now, consider the following:</p>
<ul>
<li>In most cultures, lying is seen as immoral or, at least, ethically questionable.</li>
<li>Contracts that require a party to do something illegal are usually not enforceable.</li>
<li>However, lying is not illegal in general, but only in very specific circumstances (fraud, for example).</li>
</ul>
<p>This made me wonder: <strong>Are the any jurisdictions where the requirement to lie makes a contract unenforcable?</strong> Is there any country where the &quot;right to not have to lie&quot; is seen as such a fundamental human right that you can't be compelled by a contract to do otherwise?</p>

<p>In the linked question the requirement that is allegedly a lie is in a severance agreement which states that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The contract has terms that require me to tell anyone who asks that I
was not, in fact, laid off, but instead that I voluntarily resigned
from the company.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I would not call that a lie. It is, instead, a mutual agreed change in the reason for leaving employment, that by virtue of an agreement for severance being executed, becomes true. The termination of employment may have initially started out as a layoff, but once you agree to leave in exchange for a severance payment instead, it becomes a voluntary resignation.</p>
<p>The colloquial meaning of the word &quot;lie&quot; includes lots of things (like broken promises) which are not considered to be lies in the legal sense, or even if a more strict sense of the word &quot;lie.&quot;</p>
<p>Similarly, a contract hiring you to be an actor and in the course of an acting performance, to say things that are not factually true to an audience that knows you are acting, is also not a lie.</p>
<p>The set of things that aren't legally fraud (which would cause a contractual requirement to be void as contrary to public policy), but are &quot;lies&quot; in a strict sense yet aren't illegal, is pretty narrow.</p>
<p>It might encompass a contract as a P.R. agency for a political campaign that requires that agency to produce materials consistent with a candidate's message. But there aren't all that many other examples I can think of.</p>

<p>In the specific case mentioned, there is no requirement to lie since the employee resigned in exchange for some compensation. So that is not a good example. Any contract that required you to violate the law is unenforceable, so if a contract entails perjury or lying to government authorities, that contract would be unenforceable (on that point). But you could still be required to affirmatively lie to others, i.e. make a false assertion and not just fail to tell the &quot;whole truth&quot;.</p>
<p>In Islamic law, actual lying is a &quot;mortal sin&quot;. A contract that requires lying is forbidden in Islam. It is therefore possible that there is a legal jurisdiction that follows this religious principle – perhaps Iran, Afghanistan or Saudia Arabia. Most Muslim-majority nations have fairly secular legal systems, but the three that I suggested tend to highly-localized non-secular law enforcement. It is reasonably possible that such a contract would be illegal in one of those countries, but research on such cases is extremely difficult. It is also likely that such a holding would only be w.r.t. a Muslim defendant.</p>
