Section 368 — Contract interpretation: good faith and ordinary usage
Statutory text (Thai original)
สัญญานั้นท่านให้ตีความไปตามความประสงค์ในทางสุจริต โดยพิเคราะห์ถึงปรกติประเพณีด้วย
Verbatim from the Royal Gazette / Office of the Council of State
English translation
Contracts shall be interpreted according to the requirements of good faith, ordinary usage being taken into consideration.
This English translation is provided for reference only and has not yet been firm-verified. Always rely on the Thai original.
Firm annotation
Section 368 is part of Book 2 (Obligations) of the Thai Civil and Commercial Code. This entry is awaiting firm-authored commentary; the statutory text above is verbatim from the Office of the Council of State (OCS Krisdika) Thai source, with the English translation from the FAO/UN FAOLEX repository. Always rely on the Thai original for legal proceedings.
Why this matters in practice
For lawyers: apply Section 368 together with Section 171 (true intent over literal text) when contract language is ambiguous. For laypersons: if a contract term is unclear, courts will look at what both parties genuinely intended and at normal commercial practice, not just the exact words.
Legislative history
Part of the original Civil and Commercial Code codification; no major subsequent amendment.
Supreme Court decisions interpreting this section
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Supreme Court Judgment No. 13098/2555 (2012)
Contract interpretation under Section 368 requires reading the agreement as a whole, with reference to true intent (Section 171) and commercial practice.
In interpreting an overdraft agreement's interest rate provisions across multiple renewals, the court applied Section 368 together with Section 171, finding that the true intent of progressively higher rates correlated with higher credit limits governed the dispute.
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Supreme Court Judgment No. 679/2547 (2004)
The title of a contract does not dictate its legal effect; the court looks to the genuine intention of the parties.
The name given to a contract does not conclusively determine its nature; the court interpreted a contract titled 'sale of master tape' as transferring only the physical tape, not copyright, based on the parties' true intent under Sections 368 and 171.
Curated decisions with case numbers verified against the Supreme Court database. English renderings are the firm's editorial translation for study.
Cited in 54 Supreme Court decisions (1957 to 2024)
Selected citing decisions
- Decision 452/2567 (2024)
- Decision 3416/2566 (2023)
- Decision 3031/2566 (2023)
- Decision 2345/2565 (2022) Brand Ambassador Contract Breach — Restoration Required
- Decision 655/2565 (2022)
- Decision 8429/2563 (2020)
- Decision 4023/2561 (2018)
- Decision 2673/2561 (2018)
This list is selected automatically, weighted towards judgments that turn on this section rather than ones that merely recite it when passing sentence. It has not yet been reviewed by the firm.
Most often cited alongside
Sections that appear in the same judgments as this one most often. The figure is the number of decisions.
Counted across the firm's corpus of 83,652 Supreme Court decisions, 1921 to 2026. The count is complete; the stated year range trims rare outliers so it describes where the citations actually sit. These figures are computed by us and are not official court statistics.
Frequently asked questions
Can a court rewrite ambiguous contract terms under Section 368?
No. Section 368 allows the court to interpret ambiguous terms in light of good faith and ordinary usage, but it does not permit the court to substitute new terms for what the parties agreed. The court finds the true intent, it does not create a new agreement.
Cite this section
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Plain citation
Civil and Commercial Code, s. 368 (Thailand) -
Academic citation
Civil and Commercial Code (Thailand), s. 368. ThaiLawOnline, https://www.thailawonline.com/thai-civil-code/section-368/ (accessed 8 August 2026). -
Thai citation
ป.พ.พ. มาตรา 368 -
Permalink
https://www.thailawonline.com/thai-civil-code/section-368/ -
Embed on your site
<blockquote cite="https://www.thailawonline.com/thai-civil-code/section-368/"><p>Contracts shall be interpreted according to the requirements of good faith, ordinary usage being taken into consideration.</p><footer>Civil and Commercial Code, s. 368 (Thailand) — <a href="https://www.thailawonline.com/thai-civil-code/section-368/">ThaiLawOnline</a></footer></blockquote>
The Thai text is authoritative. The English is an unofficial translation by ThaiLawOnline, free to reuse with attribution.