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Glossary of Legal Terms Related To Asbestos, Asbestos Cancer, Mesothelioma, & Lung Cancer - Asbestos.net
If you're involved with an asbestos lawsuit and you're not already an attorney, chances are you've encountered some terms that have left you wondering if those in the legal profession speak English. The answer is, actually, not always, and the reasons go back a long way into history.
Had the Saxons prevailed at the Battle of Hastings in 1066, spoken English today would sound a great deal like Dutch, German and Danish.
Instead, Willy Bastard, Duke of Normandy, took the field that day--and French became the official language of England for the next three centuries.
Modern legal terminology in the Anglophone countries is based largely on Latin and medieval French. While its roots are firmly grounded in Standard English, there are some differences in terms of linguistic structure, morphology and punctuation.
The French legal system was imposed on the native English, whose legal system had been less formal and significantly different. The Norman French introduced a number of new legal concepts that had not existed in similar form previously, such as astat (estate), chattel, executeur, laissier (lease), propreté and tenaunt.
Legal records were also kept by the clergy. They were among the few at that time to receive formal education, which was invariably delivered in Latin. Legal terms such as ad hoc (for the purpose [at hand]), de facto (in fact), bona fide (good faith), and inter alia (between others) and ligitationem (litigation) became part of legal vocabulary.
Nonetheless, English remained the common vernacular. Because of this, medieval lawyers developed the practice of using word pairs in order to avoid ambiguity. Usually, each word of the pair was from a different language, but this was not always the case.
Terms such as braecan and entrer, fyt and propre, land and tenement are examples of English/French pairings still in use. Laetan and hyndrian (let and hindrance) as well as habban and healdan (have and hold) are two examples of English-only pairings; asaut and baterie is a French pairing. In many cases, one word of the pairing is Latin, as in wyllan and testamentum.
Such seeming redundancies are still a feature of what some refer to as "legalese." If the language used by lawyers seems mysterious and difficult to understand, it is because of the need for extreme precision. In any case, but especially in matters of contracts and litigation, lawyers for one side are always looking for an ambiguous term that can be the basis of a "loophole."
It is the job of your counsel to find such loopholes in the opposition's claims and/or documents, and make sure there is no room for such in your own.