You’re of course aware that in many contracts, the unnecessary defined term Party is defined using this sort of thing: individually a “Party” and collectively the “Parties”. It’s ridiculous—we know how singular and plural work, thanks.
Last year I did this post about how drafters use that formula for other defined terms, making it even more insane. Well, I can now add to the insanity. A couple of weeks ago I spotted the equivalent in an autonomous definition:
WTF! And if you’re doing it for Affiliate, you have no reason not to do it for every flippin common-noun defined term. So I did some more random searching on EDGAR. Was this treatment given to Subsidiary? Check:
Person? Check:
Plan? Check:
After hitting the first three I tried, I got the message: as harebrained as this is, it’s commonplace, in a random sort of way. It’s beyond explaining. You just have to write it off as another bizarro product of the legalistic mindset, as amplified by copy-and-pasting.