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 mistake on a typographical error and said the figure should have been 2.4 million rand, according to court documents.
As is always the case when you have a contract dispute that originated in a drafting glitch, the question is, how could the drafter have avoided the problem?
Here’s a solution I wouldn’t recommend—using both words and digits to express a number. For my reasons, see this 2011 blog post.
Instead, I recommend that you proofread your freakin’ numbers!
