The Four Corners Rule is a legal doctrine that courts use to determine the meaning of a written instrument such as a contract, will, or deed as represented solely by its textual content.
The doctrine states that where there is an ambiguity of terms, the Court must rely on the written instrument solely and cannot consider extraneous evidence.
In contract interpretation, the Four Corners Rule refers to a common law doctrine dating back to old English courts that requires the court to resolve contractual disputes based on the words contained in the disputed contract.
The doctrine requires a court to discern what the contracting parties intended by using the whole document; no cherry picking.
The following is an incomplete list of examples where courts used the Four Corners Doctrine while interpreting the disputed-document: This law-related article is a stub.