Here is the actual judgement.
After a phone conversation between the parties, the farmer received a text containing the photo of a contract, along with “Please confirm flax contract” and responded with 👍. The validity of electronic communications or signatures is not at dispute. At question is the definition of 👍. The farmer's disposition sums it up nicely, "thumbs-up emoji simply confirmed that I received the Flax contract. It was not a confirmation that I agreed with the terms of the Flax Contract".
In the ruling the judge observed that the parties had in previous years used similar contract terms, with responses along the lines of “ok”, “yup” or “looks good”; making it more plausible that the affirmative 👍 response means "yes, I agree" and not just "yes, I received it".
The use of emojis is an interesting twist and what probably caused this case to make the news, but the real issue is unclear communications. 20-20 hindsight in my eyes is that the buyer could have avoided this by asking "please confirm flax contract acceptance" and the farmer could have avoided it by responding "received".
