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!
About the author
Ken Adams is the leading authority on how to say clearly whatever you want to say in a contract. He’s author of A Manual of Style for Contract Drafting, and he offers online and in-person training around the world. He’s also chief content officer of LegalSifter, Inc., a company that combines artificial intelligence and expertise to assist with review of contracts.
Surely consulting the French language version of the agreement would be the very place to start sorting through the muck to find true intent? Perhaps due to not being familiar with the saga nor Canadian law I fail to see how the Commission’s resolution can be classified as a nifty escape if in fact it used the very same hatch which your ‘sleeves up’ approach would have led to.
Otherwize a fan.
-Maarten.
Maarten: Rogers and Bell Aliant signed the English-language version of the contract. If the parties’ intent had been relevant, the commission would have been advised to limit itself to attempting to resolve the ambiguity.
But this was not a contract negotiated by the parties. Instead, the wording of the contract was imposed by the regulatory authorities. That’s why the commission felt entitled to instead rely on the French-language version, which provided for a different arrangement, namely the one I posited in my original post on this dispute. That made the commission’s task much more straightforward than it otherwise would have been.
That’s why I used the term “escape hatch” in referring to the commission’s invoking of the French-language version. Obviously, I would have done well to add a sentence to that effect. My apologies!
Ken