I’m putting this in IMHO because I’m pretty sure that’s where legal questions go. I’ve already asked an attorney and am waiting to hear back from her, but I just wanted to hear what any legal folks here had to say.
My landlord and I got into a bit of a tussle recently, but the matter was settled and his attorney sent over a “stipulation of discontinuance” to finish the case; we were due back in court on January 20th before the matter was settled.
I was about to sign the stip when I noticed a misspelling on the document. Not a major one (such as a name); the attorney or her assistant had just used the term “bare witness” instead of “bear witness,” which is kinda funny actually.
My guess is that it doesn’t matter at all, but just to be on the safe side I’ve written the attorney to ask if there’s any problem here. I don’t want there to be some weird loophole later on and not show up in court on the 20th and somehow cause a default judgment for the landlord.
I’ve been so careful during this whole process despite acting pro se (and I basically “won” as I got what I wanted from the case) that I want to make sure everything is handled properly. If there’s some bizarre way that my landlord can cause further problems due to this not being a valid document, I want to know about it.
(Again, I really doubt it matters and I feel incredibly anal retentive for asking, but better safe than sorry.)
It’s called a “scrivener’s error” because lawyers need a longer term for “typo.” Back in the day legal documents were taken down from speech and copied by hand by people called “scriverners” (which is fancytalk for “scribe”), so errors could be introduced at times by the writer-downers/copyists.
As you have guessed, it’s not significant in this case. If you like you can cross it off and correct it, before signing. Just initial your change.
In some cases a scrivener’s error can be very significant so good on your for reading your docs carefully before signing.
Ooh, I love that term, scrivener’s error. Suddenly I’m thinking of Bleak House and Jarndyce v. Jarndyce.
Thanks so much, guys! Glad to hear it doesn’t matter.
The landlord’s attorney wrote back and confirmed what you guys said – her message was “leave it sign it and send it back.” Hmph! I hope she was embarrassed by the typo. (I delight in my petty victory, what can I say. Actually in fairness she was pretty amicable throughout the process, considering we were opponents.)
If it had been my name or apartment number or something significant like that, I’d’ve asked the attorney to fix the correction and send it back to me. Even if she’d told me it didn’t matter, I wouldn’t have felt comfortable signing a document like that.
For me this conjures up **Bartleby **as in the one from Herman Melville which was probably the only short story I remember liking from my 10th grade survey of American Lit. class.
In every contract worded in legalese I’ve seen so far, there’s a paragraph tacked onto the end, saying basically that “if any one of the above paragraphs / statements are later found to be in error, the validity of the whole contract shall be unimpaired by that.”
As HA notes, spelling or grammatical errors are not significant unless they actually change the meaning of the agreement. There should be no difficulty in establishing what everyone understands by “bare witness” - the joke posts in this thread notwithstanding.
Unless there is a different custom in Germany, that’s not really what that bit means. That’s a severability clause. It means that if courts find that such-and-such provision of a written agreement is not enforceable or against public policy or otherwise not kosher, it doesn’t automatically void the rest of the document.
Agree that there’s no way a typo such as this could cause a problem.
Many people think of a “contract” as a piece of paper with words on it that at least two parties sign. But really that piece of paper is “just” evidence of the meeting of the minds of the parties (with “just” in quotes because it is often the best or only evidence, so for all intents and purposes it can be thought of as the contract itself). But the actual contract for legal purposes is really that incorporeal agreement that was reduced to writing–it’s not the writing itself.
Typos can cause problems generally only where constitutional rights are concerned, such as a typo on an indictment making it fail to actually apprise the accused of the actual crime they are charged with, but even these cases are exceedingly rare.
We had to read Jerry Garcia’s will as part of our unit on equitable trusts in property law. There were a LOT of friggin’ typos in that document. And apparently, that held up in court. Of course, given the date it was drafted, I was a bit surprised a spellchecker inside a word processor didn’t just catch them…
I wouldn’t be too blithe about the negligible impact of scrivener’s errors.
Even if these cases are resolved in favor of giving the typo no effect, they still can give rise to a great deal of expensive litigation (the Rushmore suit is still ongoing, two and a half years later). Nor do I think that courts will be especially inclined to dismiss such cases too easily: the in terrorem effect of these lawsuits goes a long way to ensuring that very expensive lawyers take a very great deal of care when preparing their work product–an outcome that courts are fond of.
That said, the bear/bare typo is not going to have such a litigation-causing potential.
I’d just be thankful for the misspelling. Imagine going to court under the document as intended as they try to get the witness to answer where he hid the pic-i-nic baskets.
Speaking of typos on legal documents - years ago I read there was a typo on US legislation that cost the US many millions of dollars.
To paraphrase what I remember, it was regarding importing of “…all plants, flowers, fruit-trees, and vegetables…” were taxed at some rate. This was followed according to the letter of the law for some time until it was noticed it should have read, “…all plants, flowers, fruit, trees and vegetables…”
The difference from only taxing “fruit-trees”, to taxing all “fruit and trees”, was substantial.
I don’t remember where I read this, or the validity of the fact, but would often use this as an example of how important little grammar errors can be.
Misspellings usually are not grounds to argue the non validity of a document. The Rules of Civil Procedure, as well as criminal procedure, allow for what are known as either a “Harmless error” or a “Plain Error”. A misspelled name is known as a Misnomer.
You mention, bear and bare. Even skilled lexicographers get variants mixed up, such as there and thier. Many words also have variant spellings, grey/ gray, color/ colour etc.
Unless an error is Prejudicial to either side as to thier rights, it will not be arguable as a point of law to alter the terms.
Before I read your conclusion I thought you were refering to the NIX case (USSC, 1890’s?) where they had to decide if a tomato was a fruit or vegetable for taxation import purposes.
It’s called a “scrivener’s error” because lawyers need a longer term for “typo.” Back in the day legal documents were taken down from speech and copied by hand by people called “scriverners” (which is fancytalk for “scribe”), so errors could be introduced at times by the writer-downers/copyists.