Thanks to Glenn West, I now offer you for your delectation Gwynt Y Môr Ofto Plc v. Gwynt Y Mor Offshore Wind Farm Ltd & Ors [2020] EWHC 850 (Comm) (08 April 2020) (here), a decision of the England and Wales High Court (Commercial Court). It involves scary confusion over verb structures. A contract for sale of a wind-farm off … Read More
Recently I posted on LinkedIn two comments (here and here) regarding the distinction between simplifying a contract and making it clearer. In those comments I say that simplification relates to what you say in a contract whereas clarity relates to how you say it. What you say falls on a spectrum between simple and complex; how you say it falls … Read More
Recently I noticed blog posts written by thoughtful people under the auspices of prominent names. One is The Evolution to Modern Legal, by Jason Barnwell; it’s on the Legal Evolution blog, which is edited by Bill Henderson. The other is is here; the other is We Need a Legal Revolution, Not Reformation, by Leigh Vickery; it’s a guest post on … Read More
If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you might recall that I’ve done two posts about what category of contract language to use to express issuance of invoices. There’s this January 2018 post and this July 2018 post. Well, thanks to my work as an advisor for LegalSifter, which leads me down all sorts of byways, I can add … Read More
On occasion, someone who doesn’t agree with me on a given issue will blurt out, “I’ve been doing this for 30 years, and ….” Or if they wish to be more low-key about it, they might simply observe that experienced drafters take a different approach. In some activities, being experienced is a suitable proxy for being good. If I were … Read More
In notices provisions in contracts, you say what’s required to give valid notice. Among other things, that involves specifying what one or more methods have to be used. The standard alternatives are giving notice by hand, by some form of mail, by FedEx or some equivalent, or by email. Recently I’ve considered providing for email as the only means of … Read More
Sometimes inspiration comes from unlikely sources. Here’s an exchange I saw on Twitter: “Upon information and belief” is how a great deal of attorneys begin interrogatory answers or open paragraphs in complaints or motions…this suggests to me that a lawyer crafted this tweet, which is frightening in itself… — Liz Homsy (@Lizzidi) April 1, 2020 I agree that on information … Read More
Recently I noticed Mark Anderson’s post entitled Why Do We Tolerate Bad Templates? Spoiler alert: Mark says it’s because people like what they’re used to and because they assume that if they haven’t encountered problems yet they won’t in the future. Bad I’ll now explore the assumption underlying Mark’s post—that many, or most, templates are bad. Is that the case? … Read More
A force majeure provision in a contract expresses that if something sufficiently bad happens that isn’t under a party’s control, it would be appropriate to suspend performance. Given the coronavirus pandemic, a handful of readers suggested that I write something about force majeure provisions. Initially I demurred—I thought I’d already had my say in previous blog posts. Also, I wasn’t … Read More
I noted with interest Casey Flaherty’s recent post entitled The Limits of Incremental Improvements. This sentence captures the gist of it: “[O]nce you cut something in half, there is nothing you can do, save eliminating it entirely, that will ever again deliver the same raw level of improvement.” This post is on LegalSifter’s blog. To read the rest of it, … Read More
