To be codified is to be defined or otherwise included in a legislative statute. It is sometimes used in a wider sense to refer to principles that can be found not just in statutes, but also in constitutions, administrative rules, and other non-judicial sources of law.
A cognovit, a type of confession of judgment, refers to an acknowledgment or confession made by a defendant that the plaintiff’s cause is legitimate. It permits judgment to be entered without a trial for the purpose of saving costs.
Collective mark is a mark used only by the members of an association, cooperative or other collective organization. A collective organization may include an association, union, cooperative, fraternal society or other organized groups.
Collusive bidding refers to an agreement among two or more competitors to change the bids they otherwise would have offered absent the agreement. Where collusive bidding is well established, prices can rise substantially, in some cases by as much as several hundred percent.
A collusive suit (also referred to as a friendly suit) is a lawsuit where the parties are not actually in disagreement but are cooperating to steer the court towards some agreed-upon conclusion. As seen in United States v. Johnson, collusive suits are not allowed in federal court because they are not adversarial.
Color, in a legal sense, refers to the appearance of a thing, as distinguished from the thing itself.
A colorable transaction is a transaction that appears bona fide legitimate, but upon further inspection reveals itself as fraudulent or otherwise invalid. Because the term is often used in hindsight when the transaction proves invalid, a colorable transaction often functions as a synonym for sham transaction.
Comfort letters are statements from an issuer’s auditor, who could be a Certified Public Accountant (CPA), that the auditor reviewed the issuer’s financial information and assures its accuracy, showing that no false or misleading information exists.
