{"id":3488,"date":"2014-09-20T01:46:27","date_gmt":"2014-09-20T01:46:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bobwiseman.ca\/?p=3488"},"modified":"2014-09-20T01:46:27","modified_gmt":"2014-09-20T01:46:27","slug":"believe-in-sanity-clause","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bobwiseman.ca\/?p=3488","title":{"rendered":"Believe In Sanity Clause?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"chris<\/a><\/p>\n

Many contracts are made up of language that is harder to understand than an announcement on a TTC subway platform.\u00a0Bob Snider once told me his manager, Shelly, was his shark in the waters – and that’s what a great lawyer should be, your shark in the waters.\u00a0A good lawyer is a big deal, I had one for a few years and he looked like this guy, his name was Chris (as in Chris Tasmanian Hammerhead).<\/p>\n

To the best of my understanding, the contracts are about what the entity hiring expects of you and what means of punishment will ensue if you screw up in any way.\u00a0Here is a real example<\/a> provided to the public 80 years ago by two knowledgeable complainants.<\/p>\n

\"groucho\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The magic word is “indemnify”.<\/p>\n

There is always a clause that says something like (composer) will indemnify (TV or film production company) if he screws up.\u00a0What brilliant Chris did, in the early contracts that came my way to compose music,\u00a0was enter new clauses that put the onus on the people hiring me to also assume responsibility if they screwed up.<\/p>\n

Let’s say the indemnification clause was\u00a0item 7, well then Chris would add Item 7b and it would say (TV or film production company) will indemnify (composer) if they screw up.<\/p>\n

The companies\u00a0would raise their eyebrows\u00a0but there was no good reason they could not sign. After all they were asking me to get on my knees and absorb their expenses if I didn’t deliver\u00a0so why can’t I ask the same back if they don’t deliver? It was magic when they read back his notes. Ruffled all the right feathers and made the relationships decent.\u00a0I still use contracts he rewrote as templates for contracts I currently receive. That’s also because I can’t afford him anymore.<\/p>\n

When a great lawyer becomes a big shot it costs more than a flight to China to just ask them a question on\u00a0the telephone so catch them when they’re young.<\/p>\n

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Many contracts are made up of language that is harder to understand than an announcement on a TTC subway platform.\u00a0Bob Snider once told me his manager, Shelly, was his shark […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"Layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[253,119],"tags":[],"class_list":["entry","author-rockbob","post-3488","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-composing","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bobwiseman.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3488","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bobwiseman.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bobwiseman.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bobwiseman.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bobwiseman.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3488"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bobwiseman.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3488\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bobwiseman.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bobwiseman.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bobwiseman.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}