The BUSKLAW Newsletter

  Most lawyers draft contracts. That's what lawyers do. And they use perceived terms of art ("TOAs") because they want to be paragons of contract-drafting precision. But here is where the canker gnaws:  the words that lawyers insert in their contracts as TOAs are actually not, potentially causing problems in clarity and interpretation. And as I've said time and again, these problems lead to disputes, and disputes lead to litigation, which is always time-consuming and expensive for the parties involved.  Let's first define TOAs in the legal context. According to Professor Bryan Garner in his Dictionary of Legal Usage , TOAs have specific, precise meanings that are "locked tight" and based on legal precedent. But then there are the faux TOAs, "whose meanings are often unhinged." Expert contract drafters, Garner says, know that clear, simple drafting is less subject to misinterpretation than using TOAs that are nothing more than "mere jargon....

  (Author's aside: Why no post since May? Because things have been busy here at BUSKLAW HQ - practicing law for clients!) When both parties to a contract breach it, what's a court to do? This was the issue presented to Kent County Circuit Court Judge Christopher Yates in Zackary Electric, Inc. v Knoebel Construction, Inc.  The facts are straightforward. Defendant Knoebel Construction was hired as a general contractor to build out an Altar'd State clothing store in Woodland Mall in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Knoebel in turn hired Zackary Electric as its electrical subcontractor for the project, and Zackary started work in July 2018.  On August 12, 2018, Zackary sent an invoice to Knoebel for $47K, but Knoebel did not promptly pay Zackary because Knoebel hadn't yet received any payment from Altar'd State. Unhappy with not being paid, Zackary left the job site on August 31, 2018, and it sent a letter to Knoebel declaring it to be in breach of the subcontract between ...

  A recent decision out of the U.S. District Court (Judge David Hurd) for the Northern District of New York, Ford, et al v. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute , examines the consequences of an educational institution's pandemic-induced failure to honor its promises for in-person, campus-centered instruction. Plaintiffs are students of Rensselaer Polytechnic  of Troy, NY ("RPI"). RPI markets itself as providing a unique educational experience through intense campus-based instruction, mandating that all first and second-year students live on campus and even spend the summer between their second and third years on campus "to afford more meaningful interaction with RPI's professors." When the Covid pandemic caused RPI to replace on-campus instruction with on-line learning and shut down all campus activities, Plaintiffs sued RPI for damages resulting from the alleged lesser value of their remote education. RPI asked the Court to dismiss their claims. The resulting ...

As reported by MLive  and  ABC 12 News , famous interior designer Carleton Varney has sued the new owners of  Mackinac Island's famous Grand Hotel . ( Mackinac Island is also famous for its fudge , a guilty pleasure.) You would expect the lawsuit to be for breach of contract, i.e., the Grand Hotel's owners failed to pay Mr. Varney for his interior design services rendered. His relationship with the Hotel goes back about 43 years, and the Hotel was recently sold by its long-time family owners, the Mussers, to an international investment firm, KSL Capital Partners.    But there will be no pondering of any design contract's terms, no assessment of facts that may or may not constitute breach of contract, no rumination over contractual issues. Because Varney's lawsuit is for damages arising from first, age discrimination , and second, conversion of his personal property.  Although Varney's Complaint isn't available online (and a trip to the Washtenaw County Ci...

In my experience, trial lawyers have big egos. That's okay because a courtroom isn't a place for the faint of heart, and effective oral advocacy demands a strong personality. But a problem arises if a trial lawyer - in front of a judge - combines their big ego with stubbornness, especially when a point of law is on the table. Then, like a frozen turkey dropped into hot oil , the attorney's case can blow up. This is the scenario that played out in Kent County Judge Christopher Yates' decision in  Amira Medical Staffing v Rachel Richardson, Heather Martin, and Doria Coston.   Defendants Richardson, Martin, and Coston are described as "low-paid health care workers." Plaintiff Amira hired them to provide health services to a patient with a "traumatic brain injury." For some reason, the patient's mother decided to switch to another medical staffing agency, but these three nurses wanted to continue caring for their patient, so they left Amira an...

November is the month of Thanksgiving. And Thanksgiving for most folks means  time with family and friends (better yet, family who are friends),  an appropriate but modestly-priced wine ,  and  a turkey. Turkeys should live their brief sojourn on this earth in relative peace before winding up on our table. But that was not to be for the poor fowls in the recent Kent County (MI) Circuit Court case of  White Acres, LLC et al v. Shur Green Farms, LLC et al .  The case involves a plethora of parties (hence the "et al"), all of whom were in the distribution chain of a biofuel called Lascadoil. Unlike its parent product, Lasalocid, Lascadoil is not an appropriate turkey-feed additive. (Does anything with "oil" in its name sound fit for human or animal consumption?) So when a bunch of turkeys died after eating feed tainted with Lascadoil, the lawsuits started flying; each party was sued by its downstream buyer who in turn sued its upstream seller. And numero...