You can state numbers as numbers: We ate 25 pizzas! Or you can make numbers do specialized work by grafting on to them a symbol (or, if you insist, a word) so you can state an amount of money: The pizzas cost us $536! Or to the same effect, you can state a percentage: Laquana ate 45% more pizza than … Read More
I noticed that the recent opinion of the Delaware Chancery Court in Fetch InteractiveTelevision LLC v. Touchstream Technologies Inc. (here) featured the following snippet from the contract at issue: “[FetchIT] shall cure such default within fifteen (30) days or immediately if deemed to be incurable.” Yes, the number expressed using a word doesn’t match the number in parentheses. I’ve written … Read More
I’ve written several posts, most recently here, about why it’s a bad idea to use both words and digits to express a number. This post is about something else relating to numbers: the notion that you should use only digits to express all numbers. I’ve long recommend that you use words for numbers one through ten and digits for 11 … Read More
While in Seattle last week I had the opportunity to reconnect with Jessica Pearlman, a corporate partner in the Seattle office of K&L Gates. (We were on an ABA panel together many moons ago.) During our conversation, Jessica mentioned a recent case highlighting the perils of stating a number using words and digits. She later sent me a link to the case. It … Read More
Yesterday a reader sent me an extract from a contract, with the following note: I just received a sublease draft from my outside counsel. He was incorporating the default provisions from the Master Lease. It is nice to have a concrete example of how it provides two opportunities to get the number wrong! I figured out what he was trying to do. … Read More
