Sometimes a party has the right to withhold its consent when the other party requires that party’s consent. And, sometimes the right to deny consent is desired to be absolute and unconditional. In such cases, and for a very long time, Ruminations has been using a formulation saying that such consent “may be withheld for any reason or no reason at all.” We just read a June 28, 2019 Supreme Court of Texas decision possibly chastising us for wasting those words. After analyzing a contract provision stating simply that a party could not assign its rights “without the express written consent” of the other, that court wrote that the added words, “for any reason or no reason,” were surplusage. As that court wrote, consent-required provisions with or without the extra words have identical meaning. Accordingly, “the same can be said” as to a provision reading that consent “can be granted or withheld at [a party’s] sole discretion.”
Before every reader starts searching for an eraser to take to their form agreements, there is a caveat. This decision came out of the state of Texas. That’s not going to be the law in every jurisdiction. Also, it was based on the premise that a provision, in an oil and gas “farm-out” agreement saying that one a party could not assign its interest without the other’s consent, is “unambiguous.” [Viewing Wikipedia would tell you that “a farmout agreement is an agreement entered into by the owner of one or more mineral leases, called the ‘farmor,’ and another company who wishes to obtain a percentage of ownership of that lease or leases in exchange for providing services, called the ‘farmee.’”] When a court decides that an agreement’s provision is not ambiguous, it refuses to look outside of the agreement itself to aid in interpreting that provision. It accepts the “plain meaning” of the words. At most, it will refer to a dictionary of its own choice, sometimes, as Ruminations, has noted, one with a definition that supports an already decided conclusion. What a court won’t do is to look at prior discussions or negotiations to aid interpretation. [Read more…]
We’ve always been a little murky as to whether a successor landlord always becomes obligated to pay renewal commissions to the original broker responsible for the presence of an existing tenant. After all, there is no actual agreement between that later landlord and the broker whose original commission agreement calls for the payment of a renewal commission. The broker can’t point to where it and the successor landlord “shook hands.”
What is a “reasonable time” for something to happen or to get done? Do we ask this question of ourselves when we use that phraseology in our leases and other agreements? We can’t avoid using concepts such as “reasonable,” “material,” “promptly,” and the like, but are we being as careful as we should be when sprinkling them around?
Are waivers enforceable? It depends. How unsatisfying is that answer? Generally speaking, absent duress or coercion, parties can waive what would otherwise be their right. How does one know if there is (was) coercion? Well, some situations, such as an actual gun to the head, are easy to identify. Others are not so simple. When it comes to agreements between commercial parties, there is a presumption that they are grown-ups, able to protect their own interests. The “bigger” they are, the less likely a cry of “coercion” will rule the day. Representation by an attorney will dull a party’s claim that it was improperly forced to agree to a waiver (or other contract terms). When courts reject a party’s plea that it was coerced, you’ll often see the “deal” as having been between “sophisticated parties that negotiated at arm’s length with apparent care and specificity, and represented by competent counsel.” All of those factors concern themselves with the character of the parties and how they arrived at their agreement. 
Can you make a list of the institutions or people who employ “Make ‘em up as you go along” rules? To get the thinking process going, try bank tellers or low-level government employees. E.g.: Teller: “You need to include your middle name in the signature used to endorse that check. It’s a bank rule.” You: “But, that wouldn’t be my signature. I don’t sign my name that way. That’s my rule.” Who wins?
Today, we begin with a French lesson. The French word, “renvoi,” means “to return,” in the sense of “sending back.” In law, “Renvoi” is a doctrine, and what follows is why you’ll be pleased to know that.
After punishing loyal readers over the last two weeks with a two-part, 4,704-word exploration of rice, Oriental cuisine, and (yes) tenant exclusives, we will now retreat to a relatively simple, unconvoluted posting. It will be short. But, wise readers will want to look at a few sentences buried inside the boilerplate of their form agreements – leases, guarantees, and so forth.
Several Ruminations blog posts over the years have posited that many of us, this writer included, don’t listen very well to what the person on the other end of the deal is actually saying. We already know what we think we ought to know and, certainly, that person, a/k/a “our adversary,” is only seeking an advantage over us. We don’t even play a purely intellectual game by taking the other side’s “position” in our head and rolling it over (and over). We’ve even seen this, more than a handful of times, when that other person is really trying to help us avoid a mistake. An appropriate word for this might be “hubris.” That means excessive pride or excessive self-confidence. According to one source, in Greek tragedy it means “excessive pride toward or defiance of the gods, leading to nemesis.” That same source lists these synonyms: “arrogance, conceit, conceitedness, haughtiness, pride, vanity, self-importance, self-conceit, pomposity, superciliousness, feeling of superiority.” While we are at it, that still same source defines “nemesis” as: “the inescapable agent of someone’s or something’s downfall.” 
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