On 08/26/2016 05:39 PM, Jed Rothwell wrote:
Actually, that is central to the legal questions. People on Planet Rossi have the peculiar notion that contracts are enforced based strictly on the words in them. If you can write a clever enough contract, you can force someone to pay you no matter what happens in the real world...
It all depends on the court and the jury; but certainly, if you can prove fraud, the case goes out the window. Otherwise, some courts respect strict interpretation, and don't draw assumptions about the intent of the contract. Many contracts are written for strict interpretation, and outside of fraud, there are good reasons to believe that this test was never intended by Rossi to 'prove' the thing worked. It looks to me like he intended it to be a performance test, and nothing more. Of course, if the apparent incompetence of Penon is legitimate, then I wouldn't rule for Rossi on this issue. But otherwise, don't put me on a jury and expect unwritten assumptions to be honored.
Craig
