Thanks to a reader, I learned of the opinion of the Chancery Division of the High Court of Justice of England and Wales in Dooba Developments Ltd v McLagan Investments Ltd [2016] EWHC 2944 (Ch) (here). The Facts Dooba Developments Ltd and McLagan Investments Ltd (referred to as “Asda” in the proceedings) entered into a contract for purchase of land that was … Read More
In my recent article on sources of uncertain meaning in contracts (here) I discuss “contract-reference ambiguity.” That involves fights over the meaning of hereunder, herein, and the like. So it’s appropriate that thanks to this post by Larry P. Schiffer on the Insurance and Reinsurance Disputes Blog (my thanks to @zhadu for the tip), we have word of another dispute … Read More
It’s been a while since I’ve done a blog post about or. Well, the drought is now over, thanks to readers who alerted me to the opinion of the Court of Appeal for Ontario in Rooney v. ArcelorMittal S.A. (here). What was at issue was the language of a statute, not a contract. Specifically, section 131(1) of the Securities Act, which … Read More
Consider the following: … that the Employee conceived, developed, or made, either solely or jointly with others, (1) within the scope of the Employee’s duties … See the problem? It’s not clear whether either solely or jointly with others modifies just made or instead modifies conceived, developed, or made. In other words, this extract exhibits syntactic ambiguity. I’d rather not be … Read More
Reader Steven Sholk forwarded to me an email he had received from Scribes, the American Society of Legal Writers, with the subject line “Grammar Tip No. 79 — Punctuation As A Basis for Interpretation.” It dealt with a contract provision at issue in Plymouth Mutual Life Insurance Co. v. Illinois Mid-Continent Life Insurance Co., 378 F.2d 389, 390 (3d Cir. 1967) … Read More
Thanks to @legalwritinged, I learned about this post on Porter Wright’s blog Employment Law Reporter. It’s about the recent opinion of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio in Alloy Bellows & Precision Welding, Inc. v. Jason Cole, No. 1:15CV494, 2016 WL 1618108, at *1 (N.D. Ohio Apr. 22, 2016) (PDF here). The Opinion Cole worked for … Read More
Here we go again. You might recall that syntactic ambiguity involves uncertainty over what part of a sentence a phrase modifies, or what part of a phrase a word modifies. If you want a whole bunch of examples of syntactic ambiguity, just search for “syntactic” on this blog. Well, the most recent Supreme Court opinion, Lockhart v. U.S. (opinion PDF … Read More
We’ve had occasion to explore the risk you run when a contract refers to itself in confusing ways. See this post about herein; see this post about hereunder; see this post about except as provided below. Well, if a lesson is worth learning three times, it’s worth learning yet again. So thanks to relentless lead generator Steven Sholk, I present you, … Read More
If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you probably don’t need any further warnings about confusion caused by commas. Well, you’re getting one anyway. A reader told me about this post on the blog of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. It’s about last fall’s Ninth Circuit opinion in Hamdan. It involves the language of a statute, not a contract, but … Read More
In this May 2014 post I wrote about a potential fight over an “and” in an indenture of Caesars Entertainment. Well, we now have an actual fight. For a summary of the current state of play, see this post on Language Log.
