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REPRESENTATIVE SIGNATURE VALID WITHOUT CORPORATE SEAL
When the representative of a juristic person signs (or applies his personal seal to) a litigation document or commercial document on the juris-tic person's behalf, he will generally add words to the effect that he is acting as the corporate rep-resentative, and will also apply the corporate seal, in order to make it clear that the act so performed is a specific act of the juristic person. But in practice it often happens that such a representa-tive fails to sign or apply his seal, or fails to apply the corporate seal, and courts have taken differ-ing views as to the legal force of such docu-ments.
In a 2000 civil appeals judgment, the Supreme Court held that where a document bears only the signature or seal of a juristic person representa-tive, it is sufficient for the representative to have indicated that he is signing on the juristic person behalf; it is not essential that the corporate seal also be impressed on the document.