I took this from a tram, so it isn’t very sharp.

Here’s a translation I saw recently:

Weitere Ansprüche bestehen – unbeschadet Ziffer 4 – nicht.

Notwithstanding Section 4, no further claims shall be allowed.

(§ 4 permits some claims)

I probably would have written:

Subject to number 4 below, there shall be no other claims.

I always write ‘below’ or ‘above’ when citing from the same document – it’s normal English-language legal practice. I am not sure about ‘section’ for a contract, but suppose it’s OK. I think ‘allowed’ is a bit free for ‘bestehen’.

Unbeschadet is given in Dietl as follows:

without prejudice to; notwithstanding

Note the semi-colon: these really are two different meanings. To me, notwithstanding would mean ‘No matter what rubbish number 4 says, just ignore it: there are no other claims’, whereas subject to means ‘There are no other claims, but this statement doesn’t affect number 4: the claims in number 4 do exist’.

Romain has: notwithstanding, irrespective of, without affecting, without prejudice to, not in derogation of, saving

von Beseler/Jacobs-Wüstefeld has: without prejudice/detriment to; without affecting; [einer Forderung, etc.] apart from; irrespective of; regardless of; notwithstanding, [Lat] non obstante; saving; [einer Bestimmung] subject to

Lister/Veth has: without prejudice to; regardless of; notwithstanding

This came up in ProZ once. I think the asker was right to choose ‘without prejudice to any claim for damages’.

Or am I splitting hairs?

The new Small Business Act (Gesetz zur Förderung von Kleinunternehmen, Kleinunternehmerförderungsgesetz, KFG): here, the Federal Finance Ministry lays down the form for the statement on excess of receipts over expenses that has to be submitted by professionals /freelances and small businesses that do not have to submit a balance sheet. (That was a mouthful!) There are PDF files containing the form.

Gesetz zur Förderung von Kleinunternehmen: das Bundesfinanzministerium hat genaue Richtlinien für die Form der Einnahme-Überschuss-Rechnung festgelegt für Freiberufler und nicht bilanzierungspflichtige Kleinunternehmen. PDF-Dateien enthalten das Formular.

From Handakte WebLAWg via AdvobLAWg.

From Doug Simpson’s Unintended Consequences:

bq. Crawford Kilian, a writer and teacher at Capilano College in Vancouver, uses a public weblog to coach and support his students. His weblog, Legal Technicalities, supports his course for legal secretaries.

The subject is mainly spelling and vocabulary. There are links to language and legal writing sites, and to Kilian’s seven! other blogs.

What shall I do with this weblog? I’ve long since reached the point where Movable Type won’t post fully. I get a 500 error screen, then I have to rebuild the index, and everything looks OK. I don’t know if I have a defective table in MySQL, or if it’s just a bandwidth problem.

My provider is domainfactory, and I’m happy with them. They temporarily gave me 20 MB transfer space instead of 10, but it didn’t help. However, the recommended U.S. site Blogomania gives from 13,000 to 18,000 MB transfer bandwidth, and this is a big difference. I think, however, that domainfactory is normal for German standards.

Alternatives: I am probably going to switch providers and take my domain name with me, thus leaving all links in place. Wurchblog did this successfully to a small provider specializing in weblogs. (Wurch is a great name for a blogger, and it even appears to be genuine). Mind you, he’s on a Mac, so he could try Tinderbox, which isn’t out for Windows yet.

I could get my own server, but I haven’t yet reached the point where I want to do that.

Here’s a list of weblog software.

Considerations:

Movable Type problems: I am dependent on the server. I managed to install it OK but it will be a pain to move. I certainly won’t move servers a second time, but start a new weblog with different software – but I suppose I haven’t really got time to do that now. If I want a question answered, I may be lucky – there’s a volunteer-run forum and even a Wiki now. Commercial users should get more help (I haven’t succeeded in getting that). People who’ve been through the same thing post once and then disappear into the ether. I don’t know enough about scripts and my questions are probably irritating to long-term users.

Typepad: easier to use, but would involve having a new blog with different links, if I left the old one in place. Or maybe I could import my entries, but I think the links would still change. Typepad has superb features, but only the Pro version would allow me to change ‘About me’ into the ‘Impressum’ required by German law. See the site of Ernie the Attorney. He runs a serious law blog. See the ‘About me’ at the top left, including biography. It is too inflexible. Typepad is obviously catering to those who like to put private diaries online, as in LiveJournal, with ‘What I’m reading’ and so on. – I couldn’t run my other website on the same server as Typepad, but I could use domain mapping so they appeared to run on the same site. Still, I would need two providers.

pMachine looks good, but it needs learning and it may well have the same posting problems as Movable Type.

I toyed with the idea of joining the Austrian / German twoday community. This has two problems for me: firstly, I get the impression that the standard format irritates me visually. Secondly, if I used comments, I think you have to log in, and it’s a German-language community, whereas a lot of my readers speak English – I suppose in theory they should speak German too, of course.

Most interesting to me is Radio Userland. That would run on my computer and could easily be moved to another provider. Still, when I read about it, it has the same problems as MT, that it’s hard to get help. It looks easy out of the box, but if you want to do something more advanced, the materials are said to be hard to understand. These things are all relative, but without trying it out it’s impossible to say.

Probably I will change provider now and keep the alternative up my sleeve if I ever get in this position again.

I don’t want to run down Movable Type, which is a wonderful program to use, but of course it’s only when you use these things that you realize what problems you have with them.

Californian marketing company fined $2m for sending unsolicited emails.

The German American Law Journal blog cites a report from Tagesschau.de (newsfeed available) and is worried that German readers may get the wrong impression. They might think there is a law and precedent for the whole of the USA, whereas this is just California and the jury’s verdict may be revised.

The Tagesschau report does say it was a California court and a California statute, so I wonder where the problem is. Perhaps it is the fact that ‘California’ is not mentioned in the first paragraph, which traditionally sums up the whole story.

The German American Law Journal blog says:
bq.
For instance, whenever juries deliver astounding verdicts, the German press points to them as examples of American excessiveness, without noting that such verdicts frequently suffer a remittitur. As a result, even 10 years later you hear Germans refer to that verdict as typifying the American legal system, without the benefit of knowing at least foggily what they are talking about and how wrong and embarrassing such statements are.

(Link to a definition for remittitur is given.

As the GALJ blog also points out, mistaken ideas about German law are also rife in the USA.