On Mon, 21 Sep 2009, ais523 wrote: > The important point behind giving notice is that it allows someone to > react. The relevant point about the Points Party was that I planned to > change the contract; and the contract allows parties to respond to a > planned change by leaving the contract. The method by which I change the > contract is surely irrelevant in this. (Going back to your Buffalo band > example, suppose you'd said you were taking your wife, but instead > arrived without. As far as I can tell, that would have no effect > whatsoever on the city's duty to provide you with a brass band, just as > the mechanism of the change to the contract is completely irrelevant as > far as a warning that it might change is involved, whereas, for > instance, the text of the change /is/ relevant, and it would have failed > had I tried to change the contract to an entirely different text.)
I agree with everything you've said except "surely irrelevant". The issue is that there's no agreement on what information is in fact relevant. Since you use a generally common definition of notice (not a strict rules- specified one), what constitutes notice may rely on common expectations of a "typical" contest member in context. For that, it may be judged that a misleading message on the intended method is indeed relevant (that's the double-edged sword of using a common definition instead of a strict rules definition - it opens the door to more context). -G.