Absolute discretion
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Negotiation Anatomy™
 An absolute unit, yesterday.
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Also known as “discretion”, seeing as a discretion is not really the sort of thing that admits of degrees. You either have a discretion, or you don’t and, generally in a contract, as in life, you do, except where you have categorically agreed you do not. In none of these cases does the adjective “absolute” move the conversation on.
That said, as a percussive adjective, “absolute” does pleasingly punctuate a sentence, rather, in the same way it does when placed next to the word “twat”.
An “absolute” discretion is to be contrasted in theory, if not really in practice, with one that is bounded by an overriding obligation to act “in good faith, and in a commercially reasonable manner”. But, as we have sounded off elsewhere, any merchant that acts in bad faith, or in a commercially unreasonable manner, even if his contract permits it, should not expect to have clients for very long.
You will hear it specially plead that, for all its superficial appeal, a component of “reasonableness” in a discretion invites argument about its scope, precisely at the point where you might not want any. When, for example, you are exercising a reasonable discretion to demand more margin, or something like that.
But this argument has more mouth than trouser:
A discretion, by its nature, is a self-help remedy. Its exercise requires no permission; no appeal to the court, no arbitral award. One may just do it, at — well — at one’s discretion. Forensic examination of the propriety of the exercise of a reasonable discretion necessarily come after the fact. Yes; your counterparty might challenge it in court, but will come a lot later, and — honestly? — it will only do that if you were being manifestly unreasonable. The standard of reasonableness, as we have seen,[1] is subjective. The owner of the discretion gets the benefit of the doubt. It is hard for a third party to displace. Besides, you can control for this later eventuality by not being manifestly unreasonable in the first place. If you are being manifestly unreasonable you are beyond help and, frankly, sympathy.
But, for the time being, if you have a reasonable discretion, you can just box on.[2] Curiously, this might be a bad time to ask your legal eagles what to do, as they are short an option and prone to giving equivocal advice in times of need.
For if you are staring into the abyss — if your genuinely believe your client is corkscrewing into the side of a hill — and you hesitate to exercise a discretion because it might not turn out to have been reasonable, the problem is not with your legal documents. It is with you. Your coat is on the hook.
Look at it this way: requiring an absolute (cough) discretion, where a reasonable one would do, will cost you time, effort and aggravation on every negotiation. This effort — ostensibly to save the aggravation of being challenged in court by your client later where, by definition, your commercial relationship has failed and either you are at war, or one of you is in administration — is about as good an example of over-production as you could ask for. You only need airbags if you don’t steer straight.
See also
- Good faith
- Commercially reasonable manner
- Commercial imperative
- You only need airbags if you don’t steer straight
- ↑ Barclays v Unicredit
- ↑ Now, your counterparty could seek an injunction to stop you exercising your reasonable discretion. But the common law is hardly littered with injunctions against the exercise of reasonable discretion.