A Reply to David Jones

During my years of practice in Maine, I had the pleasure of litigating most of the issues discussed in my book, Maine Debtor-Creditor Law, with many members of Maine's fine commercial and bankruptcy law bar. Among the lawyers with whom I litigated these questions is David Jones. In fact, one of the cases we litigated, a particularly thorny foreclosure action, was the impetus of an article that became portions of two of the chapters in my book. It is against this background that I was pleased to learn that one of my old adversaries from practice had agreed to review my book.

In the course of his review, which includes positive comments I very much appreciate, Mr. Jones advances several criticisms to which I would welcome a more extensive response than I am able to provide here. These fall into one of two categories: (1) a misreading, in one form or another, of what I have said; and (2) a criticism based on oversimplification of complex issues. Given the prescribed limits of this reply, I concentrate in what follows on the most interesting of Jones' oversimplifications.