It’s pretty easy to find instances of a court offering a shaky analysis of ambiguity. I recently submitted to a periodical an article about a head-scratching instance of such misdiagnosis—let’s see if it’s accepted. In the interim, you might want to check out “Ambiguous Drafting and the 12-Pound Cat,” by Jeffrey S. Ammon, a member in the Grand Rapids, Michigan … Read More
As noted in this ABA Journal item, Chief Justice Roberts doesn’t find law reviews very useful. Neither do I. For purposes of this post, I’m taking “law review” to mean a scholarly journal that focuses on legal issues and is published by faculty or students at a law school or by a bar association. Every so often I glance at … Read More
My thanks—I think!—go to Heidi Anderson of ContractsProf Blog for helping, with this post, to spread the news of litigation over bison-themed sculptures commissioned by Kevin Costner. Of course, a contract is involved; go here for a PDF copy. (That’s the first time I’ve linked to celebrity website TMZ.) What caught my eye was use of the word agreeably in … Read More
Regarding Chancellor Strine’s discussion of MSCD (see this post), I’ve already said that I concur with the chancellor’s statement that “One can even share and in fact applaud Adams’ encouragement of clearer forms of contract drafting but find it not useful in interpreting a contract written in the form Adams wishes to abandon.” But that brought to mind a broader … Read More
In this post last month, I responded to this blog post by Kingsley Martin by considering the extent to which artificial-intelligence analysis of a set of precedent contracts can, by itself, allow you to create optimal contract language. I concluded that it cannot. I’m now going to continue gnawing on that bone; if you found my previous post a drag, … Read More
Greetings from Geneva! I’m here giving a series of seminars, but I received word that in his recent opinion in GRT, Inc. v. Marathon GTF Technology, Ltd., 2011 WL 2682898 (Del. Ch. July 11, 2011) (go here for a PDF copy), Chancellor Strine of the Delaware Court of Chancery discusses at modest length, in footnote 79, what A Manual of Style … Read More
In the court order I mentioned in the immediately preceding post, the following sentence caught my eye: “At the bottom of each page of the [product purchase agreement], there is a copyright notice that reserves all rights in the document to Nokia, indicating that Nokia was likely the drafter of the contract.” It’s rare that I encounter any mention of … Read More
Steven Sholk told me about a recent court order of the District Court for the Northern District of California in the litigation known as In re TFT-LCD (Flat Panel) Antitrust Litigation. (Go here for a PDF copy of the court order.) In this litigation, Nokia filed suit against numerous U.S. and other defendants for violations of state and federal antitrust … Read More
A reader alerted me to the First Circuit Court of Appeal’s recent opinion in In re Bank of New England Corporation. (Go here for a PDF copy.) At issue was whether the junior debt was subordinate to post-petition interest accrued on the senior debt. The answer to that question hinged on a reference to “interest due or to be come due” in … Read More
A law firm’s or law department’s template initiative might fail for any number of reasons: It doesn’t reflect state-of-the-art substance. It uses the dysfunctional language of mainstream contract drafting. It uses Word rather than document-assembly technology. The incentives are sufficiently skewed that no one wants to work on it. Not enough people want to use it. And so on. But … Read More
