Best efforts

The JC’s guide to writing nice.™ →Go uptown Index: Click ᐅ to expand: Plain English Drafting Tell me more Sign up for our newsletter — or just get in touch: for ½ a weekly 🍺 you get to consult JC. Ask about it here.

For pompouser types, “best endeavours” Rhodia International Holdings Ltd v Huntsmann International [2007] EWHC 292 (Comm) held that “reasonable endeavours” requires the person on the Clapham omnibus only endeavour down a single avenue of reasonableness. That having resulted in a dead end, there is no further cause to wander up and down thoroughfares, however reasonable they may in the abstract be, to discharge ones obligation.

A “best endeavours” obligation requires the bus to go down every one of those avenues, and exhaust the lot of them. “All reasonable endeavours” on this scheme, is the same as “best endeavours”. It requires money down in the pursuit of real and active, reasonable, effort.

See also

• Best reasonable endeavours
• Worst reasonable endeavours