EDITOR'S NOTES | Issue 7-7
publication date: Feb 16, 2009
For years, English teachers have strived and struggled to teach students the fundamentals and importance of punctuation. Punctuation has the ability to dramatically alter the meaning of a sentence. To prove their point, English teachers love to write the following sentence on the board and ask students to punctuate it:
Woman without her man is nothing.
Typically, men write, “Woman, without her man, is nothing.” Women give a different version: “Woman: Without her, man is nothing.” Punctuation can make all the difference in the world. In this week’s first case, the Utah Supreme Court based its ruling on the placement of commas and parentheses associated with a termination for convenience clause on the state’s controversial Legacy Highway project.
In another roadway case, this time a bridge in California, a subcontractor sued for breach of contract after the prime contractor failed to utilize the subcontractor for the quantity of work estimated in the unit-price subcontract. Two courts agreed that the estimate did not guarantee the amount of work, and therefore rejected the subcontractor’s claim.
Construction Claims Advisor has covered many mechanic’s lien cases over the years (for a comprehensive list, type “mechanic’s lien” in the search engine on our website). The Montana Supreme Court has expanded the scope of a mechanic’s lien, presented in this week’s final case summary, by allowing a contractor to pursue a lien that involved something other than non-payment for completed work.
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