Corporate & Securities Law

Referring to FedEx and its Competitors

By Ken Adams

A standard way of giving notice under a contract is by overnight delivery by FedEx or one of its competitors. To articulate this notion, many drafters use the word courier, with varying degrees of specificity. For example, the phrase nationally recognized overnight courier occurs in 204 contracts filed on Edgar last month as Exhibit 10 material contracts. Another word used, but much less frequently, is carrier?the phrase nationally recognized overnight carrier occurs in only 12 contracts filed on Edgar last month.

I’ve pondered the merits of courier and carrier.  The online dictionaries suggests that although courier does mean a person or company that delivers documents or small and valuable packages by hand, it also means a messenger who carrys diplomatic or other official documents, or a smuggler or spy carrying something secret or illicit. And the latter meanings are the ones that come to my mind first?when I think of courier, I think of Pheidippides and his ilk.

As for carrier, for our purposes it means a person or company that deals in the transport of passengers or goods. So it doesn’t convey any sense of urgency, but I suppose you’d get that with overnight. And it isn’t limited to goods.

So courier and carrier are OK, but they’re not great. I propose an alternative: overnight delivery by a nationally recognized express transportation company. I think it expresses only the intended meaning. And note that FedEx Express refers to itself as an express transportation company.

Full post as published by AdamsDrafting on August 27, 2009 (boomark / email).