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Yes. If you get sued as a company for e.g. negligence, and it's pretty clear you're not going to win by attacking the point directly, the two go-to arguments are: 1. I did not know, and whilst I have a duty to know, in this case I was intentionally misled by others and couldn't have possibly known: I _did_ do my DD on asking for this information, however, I was lied to. 2. Okay, you got me, you win your case. Now I go sue the seller for having failed to disclose and making them pay me the same amount as I have to pay you. Both of which are severely hampered by not reading the DD. At best you could say that by not doing the DD at all, you insta-lose on the first point (you have a duty to ask, if you can't show that you asked, you lose immediately). However, given that you now received it, it seems like a significant misunderstanding of the situation if you then don't get some intern to read it and highlight dubious lines and cross check a few things. It's possible this is just the same shit moneyball is about: Lawyers putting a lot of stock in looking around and seeing what the rest of the lawyer clan does, and not using the brain whatsoever, trusting _entirely_ on the gut instinct of 'yes, this feels familiar and it is what we all always do, therefore, surely it must be fine'. Case in point: Email footers claiming 'if you aren't the intended recipient, you must delete it; all this stuff is confidential' are fucking retarded. Obviously it's not legally binding (if it was, I can wrap a note 'you indemnify me by receiving this object' around a brick and throw it through your window!), it looks stupid if it's at the bottom of e.g. a press release you mailed to a newspaper, 'not the intended recipient' is not something you could possibly prove (hey, you mailed it to me, therefore I am the intended recipient), and by not suing those in evident breach of your clause, you establish that you don't enforce it. If you then attempt to sue somebody for disclosing actually private information that was clearly under NDA or whatnot, they can make a plausible defense in court that you never sue anybody for it and that therefore this is just picking and choosing, which has some legal legs. And yet _every lawyer office and almost all businesses with a legal team_ does this, as do many companies with nothing like it (presumably, those'd be cargo culting, the legal companies / companies with legal teams are actively lemmings jumping off the cliff to follow their pals). Possibly they do it because they know others expect them to, but I find it dubious that it's a good idea to actively do stupid shit just because people _think_ it's smart. It's not like having a footer makes you stand out these days. On the contrary. ) Yes, disney movie, lemmings don't actually do that. Which makes these companies even dumber, no? |
Obvious to you, but not quite factually correct. This is, of course, not an attempt to form a contract or NDA (which would be ridiculous) but instead, an attempt to put a certain kind of recipient in notice.
Lawyers operate under ethical rules which differ slightly state-to-state but are largely based on the ABA model rules of professional conduct. Check out Rule 4.4:
“A lawyer who receives a document… and knows or reasonably should know that the document… was inadvertently sent shall promptly notify the sender.”
The standard footer is part of making sure the recipient “reasonably should know” that a document not intended for him is not intended for him.
Now, obviously, this warning is not binding on you in any significant way, but it likely has some effect on your lawyer, assuming he is licensed in a state that puts such a responsibility on him.
Your conclusion about the legal effect of the brick thrown through a window is probably correct, however.