In the recent Fourth Circuit case of Williams v. CDP, Inc. (copy here), the court considered the following section of a contract: Deferred Compensation; Death Benefit; and Payments for Restrictive Covenants. Commencing upon the Employee’s retirement from the Employer and the termination of his employment under the Employment Agreement and continuing for the remaining Term of this Agreement, the Employee … Read More
Via this post on the WSJ Law Blog, I learned about this Bloomberg article. Here’s the gist of it: Kai Herbert, a Switzerland-based currency trader, is suing JPMorgan for about 580,000 pounds ($920,000), his lawyers said at a trial in London this week. The original contract said Herbert’s annual pay would be 24 million rand ($3.1 million). JPMorgan blamed the … Read More
I’ve blogged about termination twice previously. In this 2007 post on the AdamsDrafting blog (and in MSCD) I explain why I prefer stating that a contract terminates on a given date rather than expires on that date. And in this post from January 2012 I discuss the implications of (1) termination of this agreement, (2) this agreement terminates, and (3) this … Read More
I recall how in the early days of word processing—when dinosaurs roamed the earth—you’d see articles in which a fiction writer would discuss word-processing technologies and techniques. But word processing long ago lost its essential mystery, except for those of us with particular needs. So fiction writers no longer offer tips on word processing. I think we’re going through something … Read More
Of the 22 participants in my Geneva seminars, 14 were women (and still are, I expect!) and 8 were men. Given the infinitesimally small sample size, I’d be bonkers to derive any conclusions from that. But I’ve noted, albeit unscientifically, that more often than not in my other public seminars the women have outnumbered the men. And in education generally, at … Read More
I just wrapped up my 2012 series of Geneva seminars. Some impressions: I’d be hard pressed to find a more congenial arrangement. I’m staying in Vieille Ville, the old part of Geneva, with my brother Charles and his family. (To the right is part of the view from Charles’s apartment.) To get to Akin Gump’s offices, where the seminars were … Read More
Today I’d like to advance a simple but ill-understood concept: A time of day isn’t a period of time. Instead, it’s a boundary between the period of time that comes before and the period of time that comes after. So if a contract states that a given deadline is midnight at the end of March 13, 2012, the deadline will … Read More
See this post on Language Log for how Judge Richard Posner did more than reach for the nearest dictionary in order to determine the meaning of “harboring.” Posner’s approach comes as a breath of fresh air, given the tendency of judges to rely unduly on dictionaries. That’s something I noted in this 2011 post, and it’s at the heart of … Read More
I currently find myself wrestling with what might seem interstitial stuff. It falls within “the part versus the whole”—my umbrella term for uncertainty over which members of a group you’re referring to. Consider the following: If Acme breaks a Widget [Is this conditional clause satisfied if Acme breaks more than one Widget? Presumably, so: if Acme breaks two Widgets, that … Read More
I’ve uploaded a new version of the confidentiality-agreement template. It reflects the following not-earth-shattering changes: @bradleybclark pointed out that in one bit of questionnaire guidance I had repeated a few words a few words. Thanks to another user, I learned that in one integrated definition the defined-term parenthetical was missing the closing quotation marks and closing parenthesis. (When you’re dealing … Read More
