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The motorboat Owaissa, hauled out of the water sometime prior to her service as the United States Navy patrol vessel. The notation "Katie" is a clerical error by someone who mistook the photograph for one of the motorboat Katie, which later served as the United States Navy patrol vessel
Rose Mary Woods demonstrating the " Rose Mary stretch" by which she claimed that she accidentally erased 18+1⁄2 minutes of the " Watergate tapes" during a phone call.

A clerical error is an error on the part of an office worker, often a secretary or personal assistant. The phrase may also be used as an excuse to deflect blame away from specific individuals, such as high-powered executives, and instead redirect it to the more anonymous clerical staff.

A clerical error in a legal document is called a scrivener's error.

In law

See also: Mistake (contract law)

There is a considerable body of case law concerning the proper treatment of a scrivener's error. [a] For example, where the parties to a contract make an oral agreement that, when reduced to a writing, is mistranscribed, the aggrieved party is entitled to reformation so that the writing corresponds to the oral agreement. [1]

A scrivener's error can be grounds for an appellate court to remand a decision back to the trial court. For example, in Ortiz v. State of Florida, [2] Ortiz had been convicted of possession of less than 20  g of marijuana, a misdemeanor. [3] However, Ortiz was mistakenly adjudicated guilty of a felony for the count of marijuana possession. The appellate court held that "we must remand the case to the trial court to correct a scrivener's error."

In some circumstances, courts can also correct scrivener's errors found in primary legislation. [4]

Examples

Over 18 minutes of the Watergate tapes were supposedly erased by Richard Nixon's secretary, Rose Mary Woods, in a claimed clerical error. Some writers have suggested that this may have changed the course of American history. [5] [6]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ See Barkelew v. Barkelew (1946, Cal App) 73 Cal App 2d 76, 166 P2d 57, for example.

References

  1. ^ Flemings Fundamentals of Law/Farhod Azarbaydjani
  2. ^ 600 So. 2d 530 (Fla. App. 3 DCA 1992)
  3. ^ 893.13(1)(g) Fla. Stat. (1989)
  4. ^ David M Sollors, "War on Error: The Scrivener's Error Doctrine and Textual Criticism: Confronting Errors in Statutes and Literary Texts", Santa Clara Law Review, 2009
  5. ^ Time, December 10, 1973
  6. ^ Sullivan, Patricia (January 24, 2005). "Rose Mary Woods Dies; Loyal Nixon Secretary". The Washington Post. Retrieved February 23, 2014.
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