Today Ruminations’ blog posting, our 480th, will be different from all that have come before. We’re making it our readers’ blog posting.
Since March 11, we’ve seen only the supermarket (with our laundry-dry cleaning, and mail drop concessionaire), the same hardware store (twice), an outdoor herb nursery (once), and a warehouse store (once). We picked up an order from a fishmonger, giving us a glimpse (from outdoors) of its back office. That’s two months – five retailers at most. No take-out, though we admit to a lot of on-line shopping from a behemoth seller-selling platform.
So, we have no idea as to what is really happening on the “retail” ground. Reading about the retail marketplace is unhelpful. Some would say that press coverage is filtered through political pathways. That must be true, but we think the bigger filter is that for media outlets to survive, “news” has to be interesting. Certainly, adding a dose of “politics” can make it so, but far, far more often it is a lot simpler than that. “Dog bites man” isn’t very interesting. “Man bites dog,” now, that’s a story. Translated to today’s subject, media reports focus on the unusual, not the humdrum, ordinary. [Read more…]
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A few weeks ago, we wrote about the distinction between “rights” and “remedies,” but in somewhat theoretical or even esoteric terms. Today, we’ll present a situation that demonstrates a practical intersection of the two. Our story comes from an April 24, 2020 decision from the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of New York. [That’s New York’s name for its intermediate appellate court.]
A few weeks ago when COVID-19 kidnapped our blog postings, we wrote about recognizing the differences between individual catastrophes and community catastrophes. As further evidence that Ruminations has little if any influence on our industry, it seems to us that we stand almost alone in the way we are analyzing the current situation. While newspapers, other media, law firms, industry gurus, and general analysis sources are predicting the future from a global perspective – i.e., what will the “new normal” look like; will this coronavirus rear its head again, over and over; will it morph and be with us for a long time to come – the industry blog postings and law firm memorandums we are reading (by the hundreds) seem to focus on weaponization. Yes, how can one of the three: landlords, lenders, and tenants, defend or protect themselves against the others?
If blog postings, law firm memorandums, newspaper articles, televised pundits, and the like were effective medications for COVID-19 infections, this crisis would be over. Without even asking readers, we know that all of you are inundated with reliable [and less than reliable] information and guidance about this virus and how to deal with it. Unfortunately, more and more, it seems like we’re hearing Arthur “Guitar Boogie” Smith and Don Reno performing “Feudin’ Banjos” on their seminal 1955 recording. We don’t play the banjo. Therefore, we won’t be joining the COVID-19 legal advice band today.
Hubris (hu·bris), n. [Gr. Hybris].wanton insolence or arrogance resulting from excessive pride or from passion. That’s what it would be if we were to present today’s blog posting as if our subject matter was important in the current situation. It is also what all of us, unknowingly for sure, have demonstrated in thinking that our agreements could cover every possibility. If any reader had a COVAD-19 provision in their documents before January, we invite you to share it with the rest of us.
There are lessons to be learned by looking outside of our own field of interest. That was our thinking when we saw a decision out of a New Jersey appellate court last Tuesday. It involved how a document was drafted, an arbitration requirement, and more than questionable behavior by one party. Initially, when we saw that the heart of the case was overreaching by a nursing home, we set the decision aside. But, we were troubled. So, we resumed reading the decision and were rewarded with a tidbit of “wisdom.” What drew our attention was the following provision from the disputed agreement, especially its opening 229-word sentence: 
Often, we come across a court decision based on a narrow set of facts and, thus, limited in its effect. The court’s analysis and the case’s result is primarily of interest to the involved parties and a handful of others who might find themselves in the same situation. Sometimes, however, there is a larger lesson to be gleaned, one not even about the narrow subject matter discussed by the court. As we see it, at the very end of January, a Florida District Court of Appeal Court delivered such a decision.
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