82,459
edits
For the avoidance of doubt: Difference between revisions
no edit summary
Amwelladmin (talk | contribs) No edit summary |
Amwelladmin (talk | contribs) No edit summary |
||
| Line 27: | Line 27: | ||
{{doubt evasion}} | {{doubt evasion}} | ||
===The case for doubt avoidance=== | ===The case for doubt avoidance=== | ||
Now as you know readers, we like to argue the toss about every little thing, with every little person, and every so often the [[JC]] finds himself getting in an argument with himself. This is one such occasion. For, however, odious this expression is; however mealy-mouthed; however ''derogative'' of an attorney’s basic professional calling, “for the avoidance of doubt” does | Now as you know readers, we like to argue the toss about every little thing, with every little person, and every so often the [[JC]] finds himself getting in an argument with himself. This is one such occasion. For, however, odious this expression is; however mealy-mouthed; however ''derogative'' of an attorney’s basic professional calling, “for the avoidance of doubt” does have a use, and a deliciously subversive one at that. | ||
It is a dead man’s code: a trail of breadcrumbs; a final message to the hereafter from a Tommy on the front in the perishing hope that, years later, someone might come across it, and his work will not have been in vain. | |||
Now parsing a legal text at any time is a fraught business. Things that ''look'' straightforward on normal daylight | This is Private Eagle’s last, mud-stained letter to his sweetheart back home, saying “don’t worry, my love, everything will be all right” the night before he was sent over the top. | ||
How so? Well, cast your mind forward five years. The contractual skirmish in which Private Eagle’s salve was fired is but a memory, as is Private Eagle. The documents bearing witness to it, once executed, were faxed, scanned, crushed, buried in peat, smudged, mislaid, sent by mistake to Colchester and eventually routed to their final resting place in an electronic document repository a server somewhere in Gdansk. They were sent there in the knowledge they would not be required again unless a catastrophe occurred. No one cares about them, no one looks at them, no one casts them a second thought. | |||
But then catastrophe does occur. Our client is in trouble. The credit team are running around with their hair on fire. Suddenly, everyone wants the documents, and they want to know what the documents mean, in forensic detail, and with utter [[certainty]]. The file is retrieved, packaged up and sent to some poor legal eagle who must do that analysis, faultlessly and at the double and categorically advise upper management that the contracts bequeath the necessary rights so the risk team can plunge the handle on their detonator. | |||
Now parsing a legal text at any time is a fraught business. Things that ''look'' straightforward on normal daylight rear up like hellish stallions when a client is in trouble. Words thrown carelessly into a draft take on a ghoulish aspect. Can they ''really'' have meant that? | |||
Of course these carelessly tossed-about words were a function of someone trying to show they they were reading the document, or making ''some'' input, but it is a curious fact of life that the more harmless an addition is, the more terrifying it will seem on the eve of war, ''because it seems to unnecessary.'' Why would anyone go to the bother of adding “... under this agreement or any other agreement, where applicable, as the case may be,” if it didn’t ''mean'' something? We assume our interlocutors had some nefarious intention; the passage of time and the paucity of the record makes it impossible to know for certain. And what a legal eagle doesn’t know for certain, however sensible, she must ''deny''. It is in her nature. | |||
For the avoidance of doubt dispels just that uncertainty. It says, “to whom it may concern: you may safely ignore what follows, because it goes without saying. It is only there because some pillock on the other side wouldn’t let it go, and our [[Sales|Salesperson]] was about to go into orbit. [[I’m not going to die in a ditch about it|I did not die in a ditch]]. We closed the deal.” | |||
This is an honourable use of the expression. | |||
{{sa}} | {{sa}} | ||
*{{tag|profound ontological uncertainty}} | *{{tag|profound ontological uncertainty}} | ||
{{ref}} | {{ref}} | ||