Get a load of the following:
10.16 Intervention by Parent. Now unto these presents comes Dynacq Healthcare, Inc., a Nevada corporation, which represents that it owns all of the membership interests of Seller.
“Now unto these presents”! It sounds like Shakespeare! “Now is the winter of our discontent …”
And how about this:
CERTIFICATE OF EXISTENCE
To Whom These Presents Come, Greeting:
I, TODD ROKITA, Secretary of State of Indiana, do hereby certify that I am, byvirtue of the laws of the State of Indiana, the custodian of the corporaterecords and the proper official to execute this certificate.
“To Whom These Presents Come, Greeting”! That sounds like something Klaatu would say. (Thanks to reader AWB for letting me know that such freakishness exists.)
Ken, it is just the kind of thing people said in Shakespeare’s day, as the phrase appears in Queen Elizabeth’s patent to Sir Walter Raleigh of 1584 granting him the right to colonize the Americas (http://www.luminarium.org/renlit/raleghcharter1584.htm) and seemingly in the Mayflower Compact of 1620 as well (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayflower_Compact).
Going back to the time of Richard III (into whose mouth Shakespeare put the words “Now is the Winter of our discontent…”), here is one of his Royal Charters (presumably written between 1483 and 1485) which uses the phrase: http://webcentre.co.nz/kk/crown.htm
The phrase probably goes back further in time – anyone want to fund a research project…?
What’s a present? They didn’t teach me that in law school. Even Wikipedia doesn’t seem to have an answer. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Present
You’re obviously on the naughty list: no presents for you!