Waiver by election

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A legal articulation of the truism, known to all except those in Her Majesty’s Government’s Government charged with negotiating an exit from the European Union, that you can’t have your cake and eat it too. Waiver by election enshrines the idea that if your contract grants you the option of exercising one of a defined universe of (incompatible) alternative rights — you could affirm a repudiated contract or rescind it, for example — then taking one of those avenues closes down for good all the others. If you choose Left, you can’t then have Right.

So, waiver by election is not something with which intelligent people — who are not arguing the toss with the European Commission, at any rate — generally struggle. We will have little more to say about it, therefore.

Waiver by estoppel, on the other hand, is every sainted attorney’s worst nightmare.

See also

• Waiver | Waiver by election | Waiver by estoppel
• Course of dealing under the Uniform Commercial Code
• Estoppel
• No waiver boilerplate clause
• Brexit means Brexit
• Chicken Licken