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Legalese
The purpose of a legal document is to set out the rights and responsibilities so that:
they can understand them,
a third party (e.g. a judge) can rule on them in the event of a dispute.
These two requirements are often in tension.
We have about 1,000 years of legal precedent where certain words and phrases (sometimes in Latin rather than English)...
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It depends on the jurisdiction and particular facts. The long history of not counting marriage as prostitution under law because of its social and religious legitimacy makes the transaction-related aspects of marriage fall outside the definition of prostitution in most cases that are not the explicit sale of a person for consideration, which is obviously ...
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Is an article licensed under an Open Access license equivalent to a public domain work? No.
Intellectual property practitioners and professors often describe copyright as "a bundle of sticks." This means that intellectual property laws grant the creator of a copyrightable work a large number of rights, and the creator can grant or deny others each of those ...
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Yes.
This is clearly kidnapping. It is probably not a terribly aggravated sub-type of kidnapping, but it is kidnapping nonetheless. It is probably a felony.
The fact that the victim does not press charges, or ratifies the conduct after the fact, does not change the fact that a crime was committed.
The police decision to arrest the ex-boyfriend was ...
5
Legalese is unnecessary. My first mortgage was from a bank that prided itself on not using it - the closing documents were about twenty pages, and the seller's attorney was amazed at how plainly written my bank's stuff was.
My favorite was the letter of confirmation they sent when we went into contract. It was one line that essentially said, "if the seller ...
5
In England and Wales, theft is defined by s1 Theft Act 1968:
A person is guilty of theft if he dishonestly appropriates property belonging to another with the intention of permanently depriving the other of it
It does not matter if the victim is not the rightful owner of the property, as the law only requires that the property belongs to another: the ...
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First degree kidnapping is abducting with various exploitative intents such as ransom, using as human shield, or messing with government function. Second degree kidnapping is any abduction, with an exception if
(1) The abduction is not coupled with intent to use or to threaten to
use deadly force,
(2) The actor is a relative of the person abducted, ...
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No
The term "sword and shield" is allegorical rather than legal and may be called up in any number of contexts. Such as ...
Waiver of privilege
In the particular instance, Anthem was claiming that the reports were privileged and hence protected from discovery, presumably because they were prepared in contemplation of litigation - this litigation, one ...
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A reasonable hypothetical example of where your clause "C" would be applied: A defendant is written a citation for "spitting on the sidewalk," in violation of a hypothetical Portland city ordinance. In presenting extenuating details, the defendant indicates that the expectoration occurred because she had taken a bite of vended food that was belatedly ...
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None of the things listed are statutes. They are all parts of or compilations of parts of statutes.
A 'statute' is a document issued by an official body, such as Congress, which contains a law or command.
'USC' refers to the United States Code, which is a compilation of statutory law. It is not the law. It is prima facie evidence of the law, but may be ...
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In most states or localities "loitering " has a specific statutory meaning. For example in Prince Georges County. MD Section 14-139.03 provides:
(a) In this Section, "loiter" means for a person to:
(1) Remain on a public street, sidewalk, or pathway, including one privately-owned but used by the public in general, so as to obstruct the free passage ...
3
Defamation per se (thus libel per se) pertains to the nature of the statement and the question of whether there was harm done to the person. For some accusatory statements, it must be proven that the statement actually caused damage to the person. If the statement falls into one of 4 categories, it can be defamation per se, meaning that by its nature it ...
3
An agreement via text is a written agreement.
An agreement via phone is an oral agreement. A recording of the call does not change the form of the agreement.
Irrespective of an agreement being oral or written, parties can argue about who said what and what they meant and all that. These arguments will available or unavailable under various legal ...
3
It's not clear whether you mean that the entire agreement is carried out by text message. If you have a paper or electronic document stating what the parties will do, that is the agreement, and signatures are a conventional form of proof that there is an agreement. A handshake or a verbal statement – or text mesage – could also serve as evidence of the ...
3
Costar Group Inc. v. Loopnet, Inc., 164 F.Supp.2d 688 (D. Md., 2001) touched on this.
The court distinguishes Playboy Ent. v. Russ Hardenburgh, Inc., 982 F.Supp. 503 (N.D.Oh.1997) which held that "contributory liability could attach where infringing performances enhance the attractiveness of the venue to potential customers." (internal quotes omitted) This ...
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Financial institutions in the US are subject to regulations that restrict what sorts of things non-licensed employees can talk about with clients and advice they can give about structuring accounts and payments in ways that might avoid triggering money laundering alarms.
I think this employee was being cautious about getting into a gray area and phrased ...
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The best definition I can find is that a question of fact is about
"what happened", while a question of law is about "applying subsequent
legal principles to those facts"...
Those are good, working definitions.
...but that definition doesn't make it clear to me how to determine
whether a specific example is a question of fact or law.
Because you (...
3
Most of your examples don't seem to be so much self-contradictory, as limited to a subset of the obvious meaning for purposes of a particular law. When a term has a specific meaning within a particular field or context, it is often called a "term of art". For example "Fair use" is a term of art in US Copyright law, and "Under color of law" is a term of art ...
3
There is such a thing as a "sword and shield" doctrine in U.S. law, and indeed there are several of them, but each of them is restricted to very particular kinds of situation. It is not a general doctrine that applies in circumstances as broad as you describe.
For example, there are a number of defenses to an action to quiet title (e.g. unclean hands on the ...
2
If this is a consumer transaction covered by Australian Consumer Law "I think" = "I know". Any other interpretation would mean that the vendor had engaged in deceptive and misleading conduct - that is, acting in a way where a reasonable person could be deceived.
For your examples:
You would be entitled to the 2nd fob.
Even in the second case, you would be ...
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I like this quote related by Peter Flom:
In ordinary communication, you expect that the people you are communicating with will attempt to understand what you are saying. But in the legal context, you have to expect that they will try to misunderstand what you are saying.
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I'm not a lawyer, but I'm going to say 'no'. This is based two reasons: 1) A number of conversations with lawyers that have ended with the lawyer asking me "well, how do you think a judge or jury would interpret that?" at which point my answer was "the obvious way, obviously." 2) While lawyers use stock phrases that are widely used and known among lawyers,...
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According to this website
Civil Code 1942 gives you the option of moving out... or fixing the
things yourself, and deducting the cost from your next rent.
This website states
A landlord can be held liable for damages resulting from a
mold-related illness if a violation of the building code of the source
of the problem. Examples may be:
...
2
Let and lease are variations of the same word; the former is more common in British English and the latter more common in American English.
Leasing is the verb form of lease.
Adding sub to any of them just moves the arrangement down from being between the owner and the tenant to being between a tenant and a (sub)tenant.
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A statute is a law that is passed by a legislative body, in contrast to common law made my judges. It can refer to any of the examples you have given.
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This is actually a very complicated question, about (1) the scope of "knowingly", (2) what kind of "intent" is required for conviction, (3) how does the jury understand and evaluate concepts of intent and (4) how does an attorney persuade the jury that the situation does or does not satisfy the particular intent requirement. One thing we can dispose of ...
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There isn't likely to be a single universal definition; a word can be defined in different ways for different laws.
It's entirely possible that these laws have no more specific definition of "food" than what you've found. In that case, a court interpreting the law would presumably follow the plain meaning rule, under which "ordinary words have their ...
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Yes, in both the U.K. and U.S. assault is a crime, though in many jurisdictions it is only a summary offence in its common form.
The key element of assault is the creation of an apprehension of immediate use of unlawful violence against the victim by the perpetrator.
So, for example, if an unarmed person on the other side of an insurmountable barricade ...
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