As noted in this ABA Journal item, Chief Justice Roberts doesn’t find law reviews very useful. Neither do I. For purposes of this post, I’m taking “law review” to mean a scholarly journal that focuses on legal issues and is published by faculty or students at a law school or by a bar association. Every so often I glance at … Read More
My thanks—I think!—go to Heidi Anderson of ContractsProf Blog for helping, with this post, to spread the news of litigation over bison-themed sculptures commissioned by Kevin Costner. Of course, a contract is involved; go here for a PDF copy. (That’s the first time I’ve linked to celebrity website TMZ.) What caught my eye was use of the word agreeably in … Read More
Regarding Chancellor Strine’s discussion of MSCD (see this post), I’ve already said that I concur with the chancellor’s statement that “One can even share and in fact applaud Adams’ encouragement of clearer forms of contract drafting but find it not useful in interpreting a contract written in the form Adams wishes to abandon.” But that brought to mind a broader … Read More
In this post last month, I responded to this blog post by Kingsley Martin by considering the extent to which artificial-intelligence analysis of a set of precedent contracts can, by itself, allow you to create optimal contract language. I concluded that it cannot. I’m now going to continue gnawing on that bone; if you found my previous post a drag, … Read More
Greetings from Geneva! I’m here giving a series of seminars, but I received word that in his recent opinion in GRT, Inc. v. Marathon GTF Technology, Ltd., 2011 WL 2682898 (Del. Ch. July 11, 2011) (go here for a PDF copy), Chancellor Strine of the Delaware Court of Chancery discusses at modest length, in footnote 79, what A Manual of Style … Read More
In the court order I mentioned in the immediately preceding post, the following sentence caught my eye: “At the bottom of each page of the [product purchase agreement], there is a copyright notice that reserves all rights in the document to Nokia, indicating that Nokia was likely the drafter of the contract.” It’s rare that I encounter any mention of … Read More
Steven Sholk told me about a recent court order of the District Court for the Northern District of California in the litigation known as In re TFT-LCD (Flat Panel) Antitrust Litigation. (Go here for a PDF copy of the court order.) In this litigation, Nokia filed suit against numerous U.S. and other defendants for violations of state and federal antitrust … Read More
A reader alerted me to the First Circuit Court of Appeal’s recent opinion in In re Bank of New England Corporation. (Go here for a PDF copy.) At issue was whether the junior debt was subordinate to post-petition interest accrued on the senior debt. The answer to that question hinged on a reference to “interest due or to be come due” in … Read More
A law firm’s or law department’s template initiative might fail for any number of reasons: It doesn’t reflect state-of-the-art substance. It uses the dysfunctional language of mainstream contract drafting. It uses Word rather than document-assembly technology. The incentives are sufficiently skewed that no one wants to work on it. Not enough people want to use it. And so on. But … Read More
[Updated 7:30 a.m. EDT, July 6, 2011: I added the proposed contract language at the end.] I’ve come to value Venkat Balasubramani’s posts on Eric Goldman’s Technology & Marketing Law Blog. They’re a useful source of leads regarding novel contract-drafting issues. A case in point: this post by Venkat regarding the recent opinion of the Indiana Court of Appeals in Enhanced … Read More
