All rules

A duty to act with no deadline (shall pay, shall return)

obligation-without-deadlineon by default (info)Japanese / English

A duty to pay, deliver, return or notify with no deadline, where others have one

Example

Flagged
1. The Supplier shall deliver each report by the fifth business day of the month. 2. The Customer shall pay each invoice within thirty days of receiving it. 3. On termination, the Supplier shall return all Confidential Information to the Customer.
What chaff prints
5:39 "return" is a duty with no deadline; a time makes it one that can be met or missed
Fixed
1. The Supplier shall deliver each report by the fifth business day of the month. 2. The Customer shall pay each invoice within thirty days of receiving it. 3. On termination, the Supplier shall return all Confidential Information to the Customer within ten days.
What chaff prints
no finding
chaff.yaml used for this example
genre: legal/contract

How to fix

State when the act is due: a start and a number of days ("within thirty days of termination") or a date ("by the fifth business day of each month").

Why it matters

A duty to pay, deliver, return or notify can be met or missed only once it has a time. "The Customer shall pay the fees" with no time is not breached by paying a year later. How to write limits is the drafter's choice, so chaff points only at the minority: in a document where more sentences state a limit (within seven days, by the fifth business day) than hold a duty with none, it points at those duties (each language's word list has the acts read).

What it does not flag

A document where sentences stating a limit are not more than those holding a duty with none is taken to write its duties that way on purpose, and is not reported. A sentence that states a limit (within seven days, by the fifth business day, immediately) is not reported; one with "promptly" alone is vague-deadline's. A sentence that grants a right (may) or states an amount (shall pay a monthly fee of $9,000, which sets the price; another clause says when) is not read. "by email" says how, not when, and is not a limit. Statutes, court decisions and patents are not read; the contract genre runs this rule. A duty whose article (else its list or paragraph) names the dated deadline of its act (the Due Date for a duty to pay, the Delivery Date for one to deliver) is timed by it, and is not reported.

Turning it off or relaxing it

Silence this one spot (in the document)
<!-- stet: obligation-without-deadline — reason -->
Relax it for the team (the reason is kept as a comment in chaff.yaml)
npx chaffjs relax obligation-without-deadline --why "reason"
Turn it off for the team (chaff.yaml)
rules: obligation-without-deadline: off
Technical details
Layer
L2
Status
stable
Severity
info
Languages
Japanese and English
Suited to
legal, docs, academic, literature, speech

Levels

Set a level for this rule under rules in chaff.yaml. With nothing set, it runs at the level its genre gives it (see By genre below).

strictwarning
normalinfo
relaxedinfo

This rule has no limit to count to. A level sets how a finding is marked: relaxed keeps the finding and marks it a step lower.

By genre

Runs by default in
legal/contract
Turned off by the genre in
legal/statute, legal/judgment, legal/patent, docs/manual, docs/faq, docs/glossary, academic/paper, literature/fiction, literature/essay, literature/poetry, literature/play, speech/address, speech/transcript
Not suited to, and not run in
technical/spec, technical/readme, blog/tech, blog/essay, blog/owned-media, business/proposal, business/report, business/email, business/press-release, business/meeting-notes

Genres

Message

"{word}" is a duty with no deadline; a time makes it one that can be met or missed

Rewrite depth (chaff fix-plan --depth): light — words and sentences; the structure and the voice stay

This page is built from the rule's definition file:packages/chaff/rules/obligation-without-deadline.yaml