From the Form 8-K - in this case, a filing required of publicly-traded companies called "Safe Harbor For Forward-Looking Statements" - dated June 23, 2009 and filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission by Expeditors International of Washington, Inc., in response to a question asking the company to estimate future legal fees for an ongoing matter:
When you come from a frame of reference, as we do, where $0 spent on legal expense would be the most preferred alternative, having to predict anything beyond that, by its nature, would become inherently and incredibly biased towards our own wants, desires and expectations. To us, this is somewhat akin to being asked to predict how many minutes after being force fed a dead frog we would throw-up…and the operative word is “force,” as we’d never elect to do either on our own. In both cases (the legal fees or swallowing the dead frog) we’re certain we would eventually throw up. In neither case do we know exactly how much money or how much time would pass before we did. In both cases, however, our gut check, no pun intended, is not very much and not very long! It should go without saying that given our druthers, we’d rather not spend the legal fees or eat the dead frog in the first place. Sometimes you don’t get the luxury of deciding what you have to eat. When you do, and it’s unpalatable, it should be obvious that you would eat as little as possible. What we are certain of is that if we were talking about being force fed dead frogs and not incurring excessive legal fees, people would be content accepting at face value that it would be as little as possible. Please rest assured, however, that whatever our legal costs are during the next year, while they will be more than we want, they will be the least amount that we can spend to completely and competently comply with ongoing requests or requirements of the various government and/or civil authorities overseeing these various proceedings.
Further down the document, in response to a question about cost-cutting measures:
I like the fact that they made "Don't do anything stupid" a defined term - "D2AS". That's the kind of touch a lawyer appreciates.
(Via Ashby Jones at the WSJ Law Blog.)
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