Month: June 2009

A Texas Court’s Take on Syntactic Ambiguity

Reader Patrick Grant told me about a ConstructionRisk.com newsletter describing a Texas case involving syntactic ambiguity. (Syntactic ambiguity derives from uncertainty over which part of a sentence a given word or phrase modifies.) The case in question was Consolidated Reinforcement v. Carothers Executive Homes, 271 S.W.3d 887 (Tex. App. 2008), a case before the Texas Court of Appeals, Third District. … Read More

Lame Definitions—Inviting Reader Submissions!

In an item posted today on the (new) legal writer, Ray Ward says the following: Right now I’m reading a long list of definitions in a bankruptcy plan of reorganization, and I just came across this one: “‘SpiritBank’ means SpiritBank.” As definitions go, that’s pretty lame. I’m sure you, dear reader, have seen other examples of definitions that are self-evident, … Read More