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Most written contracts have many moving parts. Sometimes at the end of negotiations, the parties agree on something that might vary from something else they previously agreed to. They drop the new provision into the document, and they want the provision to supersede anything else inconsistent in the document.
In these cases, lawyers often use a phrase like: "Notwithstanding anything to the contrary contained herein." Then they add whatever especially important provision needed a special buildup. This common writing technique invites trouble. It means that the contract might say two different and inconsistent things. The reader might read the wrong one and rely on it, believing that the parties really meant it. By not reading the entire document, the reader might miss whatever provision really governed and superseded the wrong one, the one the reader believed.
The "notwithstanding" phrase can also create a different sort of confusion, as demonstrated in Pronschinske Trust Dated March 21, 1995 v. Kaw Valley Co., 899 F.2d 470 (7th Cir. 2018). In 2012 a landowner signed a Mining Lease Agreement with a mining company, allowing but not requiring it to extract various sand, stone, and rock products....