Similarly, the Court of Appeal rejected the contractor`s argument that the guarantee had paid too much for the completion of the work, since, in the compensation agreement, the contractor had agreed to accept the losses paid and to be bound by the evidence of the guarantee, unless the contractor provided direct proof that the guarantee had not incurred the costs he had claimed or that he had paid the losses. Although the contractor`s administrator stated that too many payments were made to complete the projects, he provided no direct evidence to prove overpayment. The compensation agreement required direct evidence to raise a contentious issue of overpayment. Therefore, there was no need for a replacement procedure because the contractor did not provide direct evidence, as requested by the compensation agreement. Despite the contractor`s allegations that there was no default and that the guarantee paid too much, the Court of Appeal unanimously decided to grant the guarantee and found that the guarantee proved a delay and that it paid for losses, as required by the compensation agreement, while the contractor did not offer actual evidence contrary to the evidence. The Court of Appeal rejected the contractor`s argument that the guarantee should be seized within one year and decided that the six-year period for a contract written under Georgian law was applicable and that the period had been extended to twenty years by the terms of the compensation contract because the contractor had signed the compensation contract “under close”. Although the signing of a “secret” document implies a somewhat archaic rule of law, which is recognized only in Georgia and some other states, signing under the seal can greatly expand the time required to implement a sealed agreement in those states. The legal provisions relating to the signature under the seal therefore indicate the impact that contractual terms may have on the signatories, whether or not the parties understand these conditions. Cagle`s contractor clearly did not understand the legal impact of the compensation agreement.
A thorough review of this compensation agreement could have allowed the contractor to identify the conditions to which the contractor did not wish to consent and to take steps to avoid the risks inherent in these contractual conditions. For example, the contractor could have avoided the risk of signing the compensation contract “under lock and key” by cancelling the letters “L.S.” as he or she was. A careful review and evaluation of the contractual terms prior to signing may therefore pay off in the long run. The letters “L.S.” represent “the place of the seal” in Latin. These letters serve as legal evidence that the party whose signature precedes these letters signed the document under the key.