Faster and More, Lip: Later, he added, Now were going after Dick Cheney. Lerach had turned his sights on Halliburton and its former CEO, the vice president of the United States. In Lerachs lawsuit against Halliburton, his thinly veiled assertion was that Cheney had fled the company just ahead of the stock collapse, finding refuge in the White House. The attorney had maneuvered himself into a position to subpoena and demand public testimony from the vice president, and he doubted that Cheney would be able to successfully hide behind a claim of executive privilege. Lerach was itching for the confrontation. Instead, on this late October day, William S. Lerach was traveling down Wilshire Boulevard, through Los Angeless corporate canyon, flanked by tall, glass-encased office towers -- Fraud Lane, he called it -- recalling lawsuits he had filed against its inhabitants and neighbors. There were so many, he had almost lost track. Each had contributed, though, through its own missteps, to Lerachs means to own vacation homes in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, and in Hawaii, as well as a 10,000-square-foot villa in Rancho Santa Fe, just outside San Diego, a manse complete with a 2,970-gallon saltwater aquarium -- not quite large enough for a shark, as he liked to joke, but large enough to host a menacing moray eel that was fond of him, especially at feeding time. His latest residence was a 16,000-square-foot Tuscan-style mansion filled like a museum with catalogued African art and other precious statues and relics on five and a half acres overlooking the Pacific Ocean on San Diego Countys Gold Coast. When he bought the place, Lerach had planned to entertain governors, senators, and presidents there. And he would have, too, except for this legal business that was taking him to the federal courthouse in Los Angeles this morning. https://youtube/watch?v=69sjB1h12yE Wed fire a shot, theyd fire a shot, he would later say. In his mind, he had been involved in a war of attrition with the federal government, the same kind of war he had so successfully waged against Corporate America. Reflecting on his own guilt and feeling his own fear, he had called John Keker. Hidden Information The Adhesion Contract Contract terms prepared by one party, to be signed or submitted to by another party (usually a consumer) - who enters with little or no choice about terms. Take It or Leave It Stated another way, it is a standard form contract (sometimes referred to as adhesive or boilerplate) between two parties where the terms and conditions of the contract are set by one of the parties, and the other party is placed in a take it or leave it position with little or no ability to negotiate terms more favorable to it. Special Scrutiny The concept of contract “obligation” and adhesion originated in French civil law; it was placed in the U.S. Constitution’s “obligation of contracts” clause. Little commentary was made on it until the Harvard Law Review published an influential article by Edwin W. Patterson in 1919. Thereafter, it was finally adopted by most American courts, especially after California’s “Grateful to Almighty God” Court endorsed adhesion analysis in 1962. For a contract to be treated as a contract of adhesion, it must be presented on a standard form on a take it or leave it basis, and give one party no ability to negotiate because of their unequal bargaining position. The special scrutiny given to contracts of adhesion can be performed in a number of ways: • If the term was outside the reasonable expectations of the person who did not write the contract, and if the parties were contracting on an unequal information basis, then it will not be enforceable. Against The Maker Contra proferentem (Latin: against the offeror), also known as interpretation against the draftsman, is a contract interpretation doctrine proving as follows: where a promise, agreement or term is ambiguous, the preferred meaning is one that works against the interests of the party who made or fixed up the wording or term. The doctrine is often applied to situations involving standardized contracts or where the parties are of unequal bargaining power, but is applicable to other cases. The Law of Illegal Contracts In Verizon v. Law Offices, just like in Goldfarb, referencing millennium old common law, the U.S. Supreme Court recently reminded federal citizens, “[T]he supreme economic evil is price economic or so called contract consideration collusion.
Posted on: Fri, 23 Jan 2015 02:12:37 +0000
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