Legal Research

Qualifying ?Effort? In Commercial Contracts

By Simon Fodden

Ken Adams has a post up today over at his blog AdamsDrafting in which he explores a disagreement he has with a couple of Calgary lawyers about an aspect of how to draft a duty in a commercial agreement. At the core of the dispute are the meaning and utility of the phrase “best efforts,” and whether or not it imposes a higher obligation than “reasonable efforts.”

Jane Sidnell and Christopher Knight, of Fraser Milner Casgrain’s Calgary office opine in a newsletter [PDF] that “best efforts” is a more onerous standard, while Adams argues that notwithstanding some case law “any attempt to create a coherent distinction between various efforts standards is doomed to failure.”

It’s a civil disagreement and one that’s bound to interest any lawyer whose job it is to nail down as much of the future as possible using only a bunch of words. So make the effort ( — best, reasonable, professionally reasonable, supreme — ) to enjoy Ken’s post.

Full post as published by Slaw.ca on June 10, 2010 (boomark / email).