By RAY ADLER
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Lease is a confusing contranym. It’s a word that can have opposite meanings.
When one person leases an apartment, he is the landlord while another person who leases an apartment is the tenant. While the tenant may pay rent to lease the apartment from the landlord many Hoosiers say the landlord rented the apartment to the tenant or the tenant rented the apartment from the landlord. In legal speak, a lease is the agreement between landlord and tenant and rent is the amount tenant pays for the privilege.
A court may sanction a plaintiff’s request to bulldoze a house or may sanction the plaintiff for bulldozing the house.
A bill can be a $10 written note used for payment or an invoice for payment.
An attorney can consult with the client by offering advice or a client can consult with an attorney by requesting advice.
The court can continue your case by delaying it or continue the order by extending it.
The lawyer can enjoin the court to grant his request to enjoin the defendant from taking the action they want to do.
Lawyers can offer a variety of injunction types in an attempt to maintain a variety of injunction.
The prisoner bound for jail (moving) is often bound (restrained) with handcuffs.
When a husband leaves (goes) and goes away, he often leaves most of his clothes to (stay) where they are.
The court maintains supervising oversight (reviews everything) of personal representatives to prevent their oversight (failure to review) of needed actions.
Probationers often step behind a screen to him and their urine screening procedure which is used to reveal drug use.
Sometimes lawyers will throw out an idea for consideration only to have it thrown out by the court without any consideration at all.
The snack bar in the courthouse basement may garnish the salad by adding to it while the court upstairs takes away by garnishing wages.
Equity courts use many common customs to create a custom result.
The guardian must make an annual report every year about the annual flowers growing in the garden.
During back up argument to the court I had one occasion where the court asked my client to back him up because of his smell.
One prosecuting lawyer gave the reporting police officer a citation for the number of citations he had given to speeders.
More serious offenders are terminated when they are executed but the jailer begins when he starts to execute the process.
The original brief, being unchanged, had no original ideas.
The common people of Indiana, the Public, do not always understand the language of the government, found in public institutions.
Even a qualified lawyer sometimes has qualified success.
You can use this article to clear your thinking, or you can clear it entirely.
A contranym’s meaning is usually obvious from the context. But if communication is not clear, the meaning can be lost. Even a space or comma can be significant in communication. The contract called for the sale to be “with outbuildings” which were worth $1 million but it had been intended to read “without buildings.” A $1 million space! And a pretty penny.
Educational material and not legal advice, written by the team at Adler attorneys. Email andrea@noblesvilleattorney.com with questions or comments.