Plain-language Consumer Contracts
Plain-language Consumer Contracts

Author: Alberta. Alberta Consumer and Corporate Affairs

Publisher:

Published: 1991

Total Pages: 7

ISBN-13:

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Many problems occur because consumers do not read the contracts they sign, or if they do read them, they do not always understand them. This document provides a definition of a contract, and plain language. It also explains how plain language will benefit consumers and business, and specifies the cost to revise contracts.

Regulating Plain Language
Regulating Plain Language

Author: Michael Blasie

Publisher:

Published: 2023

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13:

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What one scholar coined a “quiet revolution” in consumer contracts has been a half century in the making. And the revolution extends well beyond consumer contracts. Legislatures and regulators passed over seven hundred plain language laws infusing plain language into consumer contracts, notices, disclosures, government reports, court forms, election ballots, and more. They did so with one goal in mind: make legal documents more understandable. This shared goal crosses doctrines and pierces the traditional private law-public law divide. Yet despite sharing a goal, lawmakers differ dramatically on how to achieve it. The result is a bizarre patchwork of constitutions, statutes, and regulations with massive variations. By examining these variations, this Article takes on the previously overlooked normative implications of plain language law design. Lawmakers must decide which documents to cover, what standard to apply, and what enforcement and penalties to allow, which necessarily involves classic policy-infused decisions like choosing between the free market or regulation, allocating burdens and costs, and line drawing. As a result, the Article contends the traditional view that document design is a lawyer skillset reducible to convenient lists of “best practices” is wrong. Lawmakers have replaced lawyer discretion. Their involvement, and the scale and complexity of their design choices, have converted plain language into a legal doctrine driven by quintessential public policies.More, the complexity of plain language laws extends beyond how to design the laws to the more fundamental question of who designs them. The complex patchwork of codified laws from legislatures and regulators sit alongside expansive common law plain language requirements unilaterally injected by courts. Predictably, with so many decisions made by different decisionmakers, discrepancies galore pervade the national landscape. Such discrepancies create separations of powers tension and inefficiencies as drafters struggle to find and comply with so many different requirements from different lawmakers. The Article argues for an expansion of plain language common law because courts are best equipped to create such a standard. It turns out plain language laws are anything but plain.

The Plain Language Requirement in Terms of Section 22 of the Consumer Protection Act 68 of 2008 as Applied to Consumer Contracts
The Plain Language Requirement in Terms of Section 22 of the Consumer Protection Act 68 of 2008 as Applied to Consumer Contracts

Author: Takatso Seifo Rachel Theledi

Publisher:

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13:

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The Consumer Protection aims to protect the rights of the consumers. Through the protection of the rights of the consumer, there is a balance being created between the supplier and consumer. The introduction of the plain language requirement by the Consumer Protection Act 68 of 2008 has brought about a new dimension in the relationship between consumers and suppliers when concluding consumer contracts. The plain language requirement places a duty on suppliers to ensure that the consumers understand the contents of the consumer contract clearly. Therefore, the plain language requirement requires the suppliers to ensure that the provisions of section 22 of the Consumer Protection Act 68 of 2008 are fulfilled. The purpose of this study is to investigate the provisions section 22 of the Consumer Protection 68 of 2008. The investigation involves the assessment of benefits and challenges of the plain language requirement to consumers and suppliers in consumer contracts. The investigation reveals that the satisfaction of the plain language requirement as applied to consumer contracts poses a burden on suppliers. The outcomes of this study reveal there is need to have guidelines in place for suppliers. These guidelines will enable the suppliers to determine whether they have satisfied the plain language requirement when concluding consumer contracts with consumers.

Legal Writing in Plain English
Legal Writing in Plain English

Author: Bryan A. Garner

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2013-08-26

Total Pages: 285

ISBN-13: 022603139X

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“This easy-to-follow guide is useful both as a general course of instruction and as a targeted aid in solving particular legal writing problems.” —Harvard Law Review Clear, concise, down-to-earth, and powerful—all too often, legal writing embodies none of these qualities. Its reputation for obscurity and needless legalese is widespread. For more than twenty years, Bryan A. Garner’s Legal Writing in Plain English has helped address this problem by providing lawyers, judges, paralegals, law students, and legal scholars with sound advice and practical tools for improving their written work. The leading guide to clear writing in the field, this indispensable volume encourages legal writers to challenge conventions and offers valuable insights into the writing process that will appeal to other professionals: how to organize ideas, create and refine prose, and improve editing skills. Accessible and witty, Legal Writing in Plain English draws on real-life writing samples that Garner has gathered through decades of teaching. Trenchant advice covers all types of legal materials, from analytical and persuasive writing to legal drafting, and the book’s principles are reinforced by sets of basic, intermediate, and advanced exercises in each section. In this new edition, Garner preserves the successful structure of the original while adjusting the content to make it even more classroom-friendly. He includes case examples from the past decade and addresses the widespread use of legal documents in electronic formats. His book remains the standard guide for producing the jargon-free language that clients demand and courts reward. “Those who are willing to approach the book systematically and to complete the exercises will see dramatic improvements in their writing.” —Law Library Journal

Unpacking the Right to Plain and Understandable Language in the Consumer Protection Act 68 of 2008
Unpacking the Right to Plain and Understandable Language in the Consumer Protection Act 68 of 2008

Author: Philip N. Stoop

Publisher:

Published: 2014

Total Pages: 40

ISBN-13:

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The Consumer Protection Act 68 of 2008 came into effect on 1 April 2011. The purpose of this Act is, among other things, to promote fairness, openness and respectable business practice between the suppliers of goods or services and the consumers of such good and services. In consumer protection legislation fairness is usually approached from two directions, namely substantive and procedural fairness. Measures aimed at procedural fairness address conduct during the bargaining process and generally aim at ensuring transparency. Transparency in relation to the terms of a contract relates to whether the terms of the contract terms accessible, in clear language, well-structured, and cross-referenced, with prominence being given to terms that are detrimental to the consumer or because they grant important rights. One measure in the Act aimed at addressing procedural fairness is the right to plain and understandable language. The consumer's right to being given information in plain and understandable language, as it is expressed in section 22, is embedded under the umbrella right of information and disclosure in the Act. Section 22 requires that notices, documents or visual representations that are required in terms of the Act or other law are to be provided in plain and understandable language as well as in the prescribed form, where such a prescription exists. In the analysis of the concept “plain and understandable language” the following aspects are considered in this article: the development of plain language measures in Australia and the United Kingdom; the structure and purpose of section 22; the documents that must be in plain language; the definition of plain language; the use of official languages in consumer contracts; and plain language guidelines (based on the law of the states of Pennsylvania and Connecticut in the United States of America).