The following is from this article by Drew Combs on the AmLaw Daily:
Latham & Watkins and Manatt Phelps & Phillips are the targets of a malpractice lawsuit filed by ECC Capital Corp., which accuses the firms of botching a deal to sell its mortgage-origination business and a subprime-loan portfolio to Bear Stearns & Co.
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In the [...]
At a CLE session at the ABA annual meeting I learned of LaPoint v. AmeriSourceBergen Corp., No. 327-CC (Del. Ch. May 1, 2007), a Delaware Court of Chancery case that offers an interesting instance of mistake.
The case involved a dispute over an acquisition earnout. AmerisourceBergen had agreed to acquire Bridge Medical Inc. for $27 million [...]
In February, the New York Law Journal published my article about the litigation between Cerberus and United Rentals. If you’re hungry for more on the subject, check out this article in the American Lawyer. I make a brief guest-appearance.
[Update March 24, 5:30PM EDT: Some people are suggesting that there's something fishy to the story of Wachtell's "mistakes." See, for example, this post at Dealbreaker, and this one on the Conglomerate Blog. On the other hand, Steven Davidoff's analysis, at DealBook, takes the story at face value. I'll let others who are closer to [...]
I can think of five issues relating to how you state amounts of money in a contract.
Words and Numerals
Drafters will often do the words-and-numerals thing when stating amounts of money: Acme shall pay Widgetco One Million Dollars ($1,000,000). The idea is that whereas numerals are easier to read than words, they’re more prone to typographic [...]
Today’s issue of the New York Law Journal contains my article on the recent litigation between Cerberus and United Rentals. Click here to go to a PDF copy. It’s also available at the NYLJ website if you’re a subscriber.
This might be of interest to anyone who has followed the litigation between United Rentals, Inc. and the RAM entities. (Click here for my previous post on the subject.)
A sideshow in the litigation was the expert report of Professor John C. Coates that the RAM entities submitted to the court and how Chancellor Chandler dealt [...]
A reference on Ideoblog to “sloppy drafting” lead me to take a closer look at the litigation between equipment-rental company United Rentals Inc. (“URI”) and the Cerberus Partners acquisition vehicles RAM Holdings, Inc. and RAM Acquisition Corp.
URI sued the RAM entities for having bailed on a $4 billion deal to acquire URI. The RAM entities claimed [...]
The Globe and Mail (the Canadian newspaper) has published my op-ed piece “>Behind the Scense of the Comma Dispute.” I hope you enjoy it!
Today’s case is Mary J. Baker Revocable Trust v. Cenex Harvest States, Coops., Inc., 2007 MT 159 (Mont. 2007). (Click here for a copy.)
In order to build a crude-oil pipeline in Montana, Cenex acquired easements from landowners by entering into right-of-way agreements with them. The agreements contained the following provision:
[Grantors] do hereby grant, sell and [...]
In litigation between author Clive Cussler and Crusader Entertainment over production of the movie (and box-office flop) “Sahara,” a jury recently ordered Cussler to pay Crusader $5 million in damages.
News accounts (including this one) noted that the jury foreman had said that the contract between the two sides played a big part in the deliberations. [...]
If you can’t get enough of the contract dispute between Rogers Communications Inc. and Aliant Inc.—the one about the comma—you should check out this article in today’s Globe and Mail. (And see here and here for my previous posts on the subject.)
This article notes that the dispute has “ignited an international debate over the importance [...]
In August I posted this item about the dispute between Rogers Communications Inc. and Aliant Inc. (now Bell Aliant Regional Communications) regarding the role of a comma in a contract provision.
I know that this dispute has received a lot of attention, but I was nevertheless surprised to see an article about it in today’s New [...]
I have a particular interest in the real-world implications of indifferent drafting, so I’ve been contemplating doing an occasional series on drafting screw-ups that make the news. I was prompted to inaugurate this series by Bryan Sims, who was kind enough to point out to me this article from today’s issue of the Canadian newspaper [...]
