Word: verbal
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Most intelligent laymen regard the jargon of lawyers as an obvious trade trick, a professional pig-Latin calculated to obscure otherwise simple matters and impress clients with the indispensability of their services. Fortunately, most of their pompous verbal mumbo-jumbo is harmless tautology. But at least one legal usage- "and/or"-is dangerous nonsense...
Last week lovers of verbal clarity placed the eldest of the Wisconsin Supreme Court's seven Justices on a pedestal beside Senator Glass. Up for decision had been a complex case involving an insurance company which insured "C. D. Brower, Jr. and/or the Sturgeon Bay Company," against liability for accidents except "to any employe of the assured. . . ." Brower was a trucker who had contracted to do a job for Sturgeon. When a Sturgeon employe was injured in a collision with a Brower employe the insurance company tried to wiggle out of paying Brower's damages by arguing that...
...decision was written by Justice Chester Almeron Fowler, a handsome, upstanding, straight-thinking gentleman who golfs, fishes, camps, walks 24-miles to his office every day and will probably celebrate his 73rd birthday this week by a brisk game of curling. Famed for his verbal vigor, old Justice Fowler growled in his insurance case decision...
...operation is to be performed, have the patient, or his guardian, give consent in writing, or verbal consent in the presence of a witness...
Perhaps it was the intuition of Adolf Hitler which let this windy provocation pass, and in Rome the intuition of Benito Mussolini was also working overtime, verbal postures of British electioneers, the pained uproar of Continental editors, and the general Homeric hubbub of last week were vastly flattering to the British voter, made him glow with a feeling that his Government, to create such a stir, must indeed deserve many a ballot. Electioneerings...