Can this idea be turned on its head to engineer adversarial legal language that sounds reasonable but actually has terrible implications for the signee?
I've heard that in situations like this courts will usually uphold the spirit and not the letter of the contract (same as eg if you have a typo and add a zero somewhere). Not a lawyer and might be 100% wrong on this.
INAL, but I think this is true to a certain extent.
I’m pretty sure for a contract to be legal both sides need to receive “valuable consideration” (something of value). So, if you get completely screwed over, I think there can be a legal remedy.
But, I don’t think there’s much a court will do if you come out on the losing end of a contract, just based on the terms themselves as long as both parties still received something of value.
I’d say it has more to do with the notion that a contract that represents a unilateral mistake of which the no mistaken party knew or should have known of, then the contract is voidable by the mistaken party.
After all, it’s unlikely that you’re going to get no consideration in a contractual transaction… but if you get absolutely nothing, sure, the contract could be void for lack of consideration.