[nfbmi-talk] someone call an english teacher

[joe harcz Comcast]

Bankruptcy lawyers get a scolding from judge: Hey, write it in English By Nathan Bomey Detroit Free Press Business Writer Death to legalese. U.S. Bankruptcy

Judge Steven Rhodes today told a lawyer for the city of Detroit that the city needs to dramatically simplify the wording on a critical document it plans

to send to creditors. The document, which will notify creditors of their right to file a financial claim in the Chapter 9 bankruptcy case, was "written

by a lawyer," acknowledged Jeffrey Ellman, an attorney for city law firm Jones Day. Rhodes urged the city to convert the proposed claim notice into "plain

English. "I wish you had an eighth-grade teacher on staff to edit this for you," Rhodes said. His statement accentuated the obvious: Detroit's bankruptcy

case is swimming in legalese - and it can be hard to navigate the thicket without a law degree. The claim notice will be issued to more than 100,000 creditors

who are owed some $18 billion in debt and liabilities, according to the city's estimates. The deadline to file claims is expected to be Feb. 21. Rhodes

read the city's proposed notice and asked Jones Day to reformulate the document to appeal to the average citizen. "What I don't want to get and you don't

want to get are late-filed claims because people don't understand this document," Rhodes said. Ellman said the city was concerned that sophisticated creditors

would demand detailed information in the document. "This looks like what a lot of these notices look like," Ellman said. Rhodes said he couldn't order

the city to word the document in a certain way, but he wants the document's summary to be simple. "I'm concerned about minimizing confusion because we've

got a very broad cross-section of creditors who are going to get this," Rhodes said. "And the more understandable it is, the easier our jobs will be in

the future. Someone call an English teacher.