Aspectos materiais e processuais dos contratos conexos em sentido estrito

Abstract

The development of business activity, technological advances, and the globalized structure of economic relationships – that have intensified the complexity of social and economic relations – are increasingly being reflected in contractual constructions. In the so-called post-modernity, economic goals are no longer achieved just through one contract, but are assembled through several contracts, strategically organized. The contract is no longer seen as an atom, and it is being studied as a molecule, a set of contracts linked to each other in order to produce a specific result. In this context, the connected contracts theory is developed, as a way of providing legal structure to the new contractual relationships, that aim to achieve an objective that would not be achieved by contracts individually considered. Nevertheless, with a new legal theory comes new challenges: what are the implications of the connected contracts? Does this phenomenon produce material or procedural impacts on the understanding of legal relationships? Once a connection is identified, do the contracts that compose it become inseparably linked? Should the connected contracts be judged as one (a molecule) or would each of the contracts individually considered (the atoms) still produce legal effects? To answer these questions, the study of connected contracts is proposed in three blocks: (i) bibliographical review of the treatment of the matter in national law; (ii) deepening of its intrinsic characteristics; and (iii) analysis of repercussions of the recognition of connected contracts, with a focus on connected contracts executed between equal parties, that are explicitly or implicitly connected by the will of the parties. It is expected that this work elucidates the material and procedural repercussions of connected contracts, bringing clarity to a question that today "haunts" the matter: what legal treatment should be adopted in the face of the phenomenon of connected contracts.