full-disclosure - Re: Email Disclaimers...Legally Liable if breached?

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Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2007 12:31:36 +1300
From: Nick FitzGerald <nick@...us-l.demon.co.uk>
To: full-disclosure@...ts.grok.org.uk
Subject: Re: Email Disclaimers...Legally Liable if
	breached?

Kelly Robinson wrote:

> It is common these days for email messages to contain a disclosure notice,
> which may include statements such as:
> 
>    - You must read the notice
> 
>    - The views expressed in the accompanying email are not necessarily
>    those of the company
> 
>    - The email and any attachments should be checked for viruses.
> 
>  Do these notices carry any *legal* force?  Why or Why not?

Do we look like "Lawyers'R'Us" ???

In which country's, or countries', legal system(s) are you going to 
apply the advice you get?

In general though, the feeling here (from past discussions of such 
things) is that they seem unlikely to be at all enforceable if they try 
to enforce an action or liability _on the receiver_ (the typical "if 
you are not the intended recipient of this message, immediately inform 
us, delete all copies, etc, etc" type thing) _and_ there is not already 
some kind of relationship between sender and receiver that may make 
such terms in some sense "reasonable".  However, if they are simple 
disclaimers of the _sender's_ responsibility they may well be 
meaningful (your typical "nothing in this message should be construed 
as legal [or financial] advice..." thing from law [financial/banking] 
firms, possibly your second example above though note the following 
point, etc).

There are further issues surrounding wordings such as "may", "could 
possibly", etc conjoined with absolute conditions, that suggest most 
companies that include these kinds of "disclaimers", "terms enforcers", 
etc never bothered to run the idea and/or wording past their lawyers, 
or they did but ignored the advice they got, or they have grossly 
incompetent lawyers...

Oh, and need I say IANAL ???

Regards,

Nick FitzGerald

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