Legal Definitions - inadvertence

Inadvertence refers to an unintentional oversight or a mistake that occurs due to a lack of careful attention. It describes an action or omission that was not planned or deliberate but happened because someone simply wasn't paying close enough attention or forgot something.

Here are some examples to illustrate this concept:

• Imagine a paralegal who is responsible for filing a legal document with the court by a specific deadline. Due to a momentary lapse in concentration, they mistakenly note the deadline on their calendar for the following day. As a result, the document is filed one day late.

  This situation demonstrates inadvertence because the late filing was not intentional. It was an oversight resulting from a careless error in recording the deadline, rather than a deliberate decision to miss it.

• Consider a small business owner who is reviewing a lengthy lease agreement for a new office space. In their haste to finalize the deal, they quickly skim through the document and fail to notice a clause that significantly increases the rent after the first year. They sign the lease without understanding this crucial detail.

  This is an example of inadvertence because the owner's failure to identify the important clause was an accidental oversight, stemming from a lack of careful attention during the review process, not a deliberate acceptance of the higher rent.

• During the legal discovery process, a company's legal team is tasked with producing thousands of relevant emails to the opposing side. Despite their best efforts, they accidentally omit a few pertinent emails from the vast collection. They had intended to include all relevant documents but simply overlooked these specific ones during the extensive review.

  This demonstrates inadvertence because the omission of the emails was an unintentional mistake, a result of carelessness or oversight during a complex and voluminous task, rather than a deliberate attempt to conceal evidence.