Legal Question in Administrative Law in California

Re: Fax Agreement

No, there is no such requirement. As with most kinds of documentary evidence, it will be up to the proponent of the document to esablish its authenticity and credibility at trial. In fact, I was not aware that FAX machines placed time and date stamps on INCOMING faxes. Mine only seems to mark outgoing faxes.

With some kinds of documentary evidence, there are statutory requirements for admissibility. A will, for example, must bear the signatures of two witnesses. However, undated documents are not disqualified per se. They may be just slightly less credible or harder to prove authentic.

Here's another way to look at it. Suppose merchant A makes an offer by letter to merchant B, and merchant B mails back an acceptance by mail. Probably both letters will be dated as to when written, and probably the envelopes will be postmarked. However, A probably didn't write "received April 22, 1926" across the top of the acceptance letter from A. This doesn't affect the validity of the contract.

I guess the moral of the story is that you shouldn't confuse the facts with the proof of the facts. If a FAX accepting a time-sensitive offer had to be sent on May 8th, and it was, the lack of a date thereon doesn't invalidate the acceptance, it only makes it harder for the accepting party to prove timely acceptance.

Finally, please keep in mind that FAX machines are under the control of the owning party, and are notoriously variable and inaccurate in time-stamping faxes, whether incoming or outgoing and can be deliberately set with the wrong time and date.