Vidhara

The Indian Contract Act, 1872

§200Ratification of unauthorized act cannot injure third person

An act done by one person on behalf of another, without such other person’s authority, which, if done with authority, would have the effect of subjecting a third person to damages, or of terminating any right or interest of a third person, cannot, by ratification, be made to have such effect. Illustrations (a)A, not being authorized thereto by B, demands, on behalf of B, the delivery of a chattel, the property of B, from C, who is in possession of it. This demand cannot be ratified by B, so as to make C liable for damages for his refusal to deliver. (b)A holds a lease from B, terminable on three months’ notice. C, an unauthorized person, gives notice of termination to A. The notice cannot be ratified by B, so as to be binding on A.

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Official text: India Code (official)

Official India Code text: The Indian Contract Act, 1872 (9 of 1872), English PDF (bitstream 123456789/2187/2/A187209.pdf, 568,075 bytes) fetched directly from indiacode.nic.in (Akamai edge, DNS via dns.google) on 2026-07-16. Extracted via pdftotext 26.07 -bbox and @nexlex/ingest inline parser. Automated parse; footnotes/amendment history excluded; illustrations restored via illustration-aware re-extraction on 2026-07-19; spot-verified; full clause-level proofread pending. Sections 2-3 repaired 2026-07-25 by re-extraction from the same source PDF (568,075 bytes, sha256 d756d45a…): a page-10 footnote block had been absorbed into s.2, splitting definitions (b)-(j) into s.3 and leaving s.3's own provision missing (D-027).

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