약관규제법에 관한 최근 대법원 판례 동향

This article reviewed ten key cases on the Act on the Regulation of Terms and Conditions from the Supreme Court of Korea from 2014-2016. Among the ten cases, there are four incorporation control cases, two interpretation control cases, three content control cases, and one miscellaneous case. Though Act on the Regulation of Terms and Conditions has not been a major issue in many cases, there were some meaningful decisions by the Supreme Court of Korea. Regarding incorporation control, the court ① recognized selective terms and conditions as a terms and conditions and declared that criteria for abstract content control is different than criteria for specific content control, ② clarified the meaning of ‘repeating or expatiating a provision in statute’ in the ground for exemption of duty to inform and set its limitation, and ③ clarified the meaning of exclusion of contract as a result of breach of the duty to inform and the relationship between breach of the duty to inform and individual agreement. Regarding interpretation control, the court reconfirmed ① the supplementary nature of contra proferentem rule and ② the rule of objective⋅uniform interpretation based on the understanding of general customer. Regarding content control, the court cleared up some issues regarding the duty to restore on cancellation of contract. As a miscellaneous case, there was a case about whether the Act on the Regulation of Terms and Conditions is applied to a contract containing a foreign governing law which reconfirms precedent. Meanwhile, these cases also suggest new issues, like relationship between abstract content control and specific content control, excessive reliance on the breach of the duty to inform in practice, loosening the rule of objective⋅uniform interpretation, harmonization between strengthening content control and freedom of contract.