On 5/17/06, John E Clifford <clifford-j@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
Contracts are, alas, rather cases of one of the
sort of thing I am pointing out, namely that you
cannot actually cover all the cases by a simple
description (or a complex one for that matter).
Consider a contract between a customer and a
dairy for the dairy to deliver two quarts of
milk to the customer's home every Thursday. One
Thursday a tiger escaped from a circus and was
roamin in the area of the customer's home and
attacking people. The dairy told its deliveryman
not to deliver the customer's milk that day. The
customer sued for breach of contract (Thursday
but no milk). The court ruled for the defendant,
saying that contract did not have to say "except
on tiger days" for this to be an exception; tiger
days just don't count as Thursdays for this
contract. The ruling was affirmed on appeal.
Here is as unambiguous a description as possible
and yet it too is relative to some interests,
which interests may not be dealt with beforehand.
Despite the unrealistic use of "tiger days", I'll reply on your terms.
The court is stating that the restriction given, "all tuesdays", was
not the one intended. It's saying that both parties screwed up in
writing the contract. This is a result of the ambiguity of "all". If
the word "ool" was defined as "every single one. Yes, those too. NO
EXCEPTIONS", and it was used in a contract, how do you think that this
hypothetical court would have ruled? Speakers of a language with a
word like "ool" would be well versed in the dangers of using it, and
would indeed be better contract writers - I'm sure that you've heard
of clauses like
"...on all tuesdays from [...] to [...]. The milk company reserves the
right to not serve milk on days that are unreasonable in the sole
judgement of the milk company."
in real contracts, yes?