Thanks to Steven Sholk, I learned of an article by Ira P. Robbins, professor at American University’s Washington College of Law. The article is entitled “And/Or” and the Proper Use of Legal Language, and it will be published in the Maryland Law Review. (The SSRN page for the article is here.) Professor Robbins’s view is a contrarian one—that we should … Read More
Go here for a clip run on WABE 90.1 FM, the Atlanta public radio station, and the related article. They’re about lines 37 and 38 of Georgia’s HB 280, a bill that would allow guns on campus at Georgia’s public colleges and universities. You hear me for a big ten seconds. Here’s the language at issue: Not apply to faculty, staff, … Read More
Yesterday I did this post about the recent First Circuit opinion in which lack of a serial (or Oxford) comma featured prominently. That opinion prompted no end of articles in the established media (including this article in the New York Times) and no end of chatter on social media. And many of my readers rushed to tell me about it. … Read More
In an opinion issued this week, O’Connor v. Oakhurst Dairy, No. 16-1901, 2017 WL 957195 (1st Cir. Mar. 13, 2017) (PDF here), the First Circuit considered the meaning of the following: The canning, processing, preserving, freezing, drying, marketing, storing, packing for shipment or distribution of: Did “packing for shipment or distribution” refer to two kinds of packing, or did it … Read More
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
