Ratification – Conditions

Q.
What is ratification and how is it affecting the principal? In what conditions can a contract be ratified?

A.
To ratify means to approve and confirm an act done as if the principal (without his knowledge) were there although the representative agent was in fact the person who carried out the act.

Under certain conditions an act which, at the time it was entered into or done by an agent, lacked the authority, express or implied, of a principal, may by the subsequent conduct of the principal become ratified by him and made as effectively his own as if he had previously authorised it.

Where the act has been done by a person not assuming to act on his own behalf, but for another, though without his precedent authority or knowledge, and is subsequently ratified by that other person, the relation of principal and agent is constituted retrospectively, and the principal is bound by the act whether it is to his advantage or detriment, and whether liability therefor is founded in contract or in tort, to the same extent and with all the same consequences as if it had been done by his previous authority.

A ratification may be of one act or a series of acts; and as a general rule every act, other than one which is void at its inception, may be ratified, whether legal or illegal, provided that it was capable of being done by the principal himself.

The act of a public officer, such as a sheriff's officer, performed in his public capacity, is not capable of ratification by a private person, but, where a sheriff professes and intends to act on behalf of a private individual, or a corporation, the private individual or corporation can ratify his act.