Should I have encountered agrees with earlier than today? Perhaps. But today was the day, so allow me to consign agrees with to oblivion. Where does agrees with occur? Let me count the ways. First, it occurs in the lead-in. No thanks—I’ll stick with The parties therefore agree as follows. Second, it occurs as a redundant dual verb structure in … Read More
25+ years into this contract-language racket, I asked myself, What’s up with intends to? I intend to answer that question in this post. Let’s start with an example of intends to: PetVivo intends to utilize any proceeds from this offering promptly upon receipt from investors, regardless of the actual number of Units that are sold in this offering. A New … Read More
I’ve collected a handful of dual verb structures, all of which are bogus. Go here for those blog posts. Here, after a years-long gap, is another one: intend to X and shall X. Here’s an example: The Parties intend to report and, except to the extent otherwise required by Law, shall report, for federal income tax purposes, the Mergers as … Read More
Check out use of is conditioned upon in this example plucked fresh from EDGAR (emphasis added): Each Delta Stockholder hereby acknowledges and agrees that the consummation of the transactions contemplated by the Merger Agreement and the Wildlife Merger Agreement is conditioned upon, and predicated on, such Delta Stockholder making any filings required pursuant to the HSR Act in connection with … Read More
Consider the shall in this sentence from a public-company merger agreement: As soon as practicable after the First Effective Time, the Exchange Agent shall, on behalf of all such holders of fractional shares of Parent Common Stock, effect the sale of all such shares of Parent Common Stock that would otherwise have been issuable as part of the Merger Consideration … Read More
In this post, I explain why in contracts, instead of the conjunction once, I use if or I just delete once, depending on the context. I do that because when drafting a contract, you should aim to make all your choices be good ones, whether a lot is at stake or only a little. Or as we are prone to … Read More
In the post before this one, I consider, among other sentences, Acme is not prohibited from selling the Widgets. I’ve now changed my mind about how it should be treated. This story begins with my saying Nothing in this agreement prohibits Acme from selling the Widgets. Then, I added this to the fifth edition of MSCD: “Use is not prohibited … Read More
Consider this sentence from a contract between Acme and Widgetco: Acme may sell the Widgets. Does it mean that under the contract, Acme has the discretion to sell the widgets? Or is Acme asserting the fact that nothing in the world at large prevents Acme from selling the widgets? (I’m ignoring whether may is used in this sentence to mean … Read More
Gaining control over your contract verb structures requires that you be familiar with “throat-clearing.” What’s throat-clearing? It’s when a drafter sticks a redundant verb structure at the beginning of a sentence. As my gift to you, here’s part of the MSCD section on throat-clearing. The reason for this post is that recently I realized you can have throat-clearing that uses … Read More
Somehow, I now find myself articulating for the first time concepts I’ve relied on since forever. Today’s concept is “semantics hygiene”. That’s my term for getting in the habit of expressing yourself clearly in contracts, even if in a given context little or nothing is at stake. The term “semantics hygiene” is brand new. I first used it a couple … Read More
