Once Again — Why Do Lawyers Need Editors?
I ran across this E-Alert which began with this:
In a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court of California in Dore v. Arnold Worldwide, Inc. (August 3, 2006) held that the term “at will” in an employment contract means “at any time without cause.”
It occurred to me that an editor should have reviewed this E-Alert before it was published. A court wouldn’t say that “at will” means “at any time without cause” because that’s certainly not what it means. And, even if a court did say that, a lawyer wouldn’t intentionally repeat the mistake.
What did the court say? I read the decision to see. It turns out the Supreme Court of California didn’t say that “at will” means “at any time without cause.” The closest it got to saying that was this:
Thus, even though AWI’s letter defined “at will” as meaning “at any time,” without specifying it also meant without cause or for any or no reason, the letter’s meaning was clear.
Did AWI’s letter to Dore say that “at will” meant “at any time?” Here’s all the letter said about it:
“Brook, please know that as with all of our company employees, your employment with Arnold Communications, Inc. is at will. This simply means that Arnold Communications has the right to terminate your employment at any time just as you have the right to terminate your employment with Arnold Communications at any time.”
So, the letter didn’t define “at will” as “at any time” either.
Most likely, the error in the first line of the E-Alert is the outcome of something all too common: a lawyer working late at night after a long day. He submits his copy to marketing the next morning without first asking an associate to review it. Nobody in marketing looks at it either because, and this is all too common, lawyers don’t trust the people in marketing to review their work.
That lack of trust has great potential to make the lawyer (the author), as well as the firm (the publisher), look bad.
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Perhaps the lawyer was looking at the appeals court’s decision in this case when he wrote the first line of the E-Alert. In its decision, the appeals court wrote:
These two provisions taken together, along with the rule any ambiguities in the terms of a contract are to be construed against the party who drafted it, convince us the term “at will,” as used in Dore’s contract did not mean “at any time for any reason” but only “at any time.”
Even if the lawyer was writing about the appeals court’s decision, that court’s error should not have been repeated, because people would, most likely, attribute the error to the author of the E-Alert, rather than the court.
