I would like to see a court case involving this, as it doesn't seem right.

Contracts aren't programming languages. Lawyers make mistakes. There's a process to handle this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rectification_(law) tells me "Rectification is a remedy whereby a court orders a change in a written document to reflect what it ought to have said in the first place" as the term in English law, and says "In the United States, the remedy is commonly referred to as reformation."

https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=9c7749da-c692... gives an example for Australia: "A Court will correct missing words or incorrect clause numbers in a contract because these are obvious errors."

Furthermore, contract law is not criminal law.

> by using CSS for displaying the numbers, you put the validity of the documents in the hands of the rendering engine.

Any automation tool could result in a regression which may generate invalid numbering. At any rate, I doubt a court would ignore mens rea.

Sigh, just embed a PDF reader if it's that's important.

Hope I can help fellow web devs dodge a bullet… When you deal with legal documents, it's better to forget about HTML semantics and especially CSS styling. If you get too smart around ordered lists and they render incorrectly for some reason, you're on the hook!