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                               CFJ 914

"If a Rule requires a Treasury to pay units of that currency to two
 or more players at once, it pays the players sequentially, in
 alphabetical order by Nickname."

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Judge:       Chuck

Judgement:   FALSE

Eligible:    Andre, Antimatter, Blob, Chuck, Crito, elJefe, favor,
             General Chaos, KoJen, Macross, Michael, Morendil, Murphy,
             Steve, Swann, Vanyel, Zefram

Not eligible:
Caller:      Harlequin
Barred:      -
On hold:     Oerjan

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History:
  Called by Harlequin, Mon, 17 Mar 1997 21:08:31 -0500 (EST)
  Assigned to Chuck, Mon, 24 Mar 1997 09:34:06 +0000
  Judged FALSE, Mon, 24 Mar 1997 20:01:27 -0600 (CST)
  Published, Wed, 26 Mar 1997 09:36:21 +0000

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Judgement: FALSE

Reasons and arguments:

There is nothing in the Rules which suggests that if a Rule requires
multiple payments "at once," then the payments do not actually happen
all "at once."  If a Rule requires multiple transfers at the same
time, the transfers all happen simultaneously.

Caller Harlequin writes:

> A treasury certainly can't pay all the players at once if it doesn't
> have sufficient funds to do so.

In fact, it can.  If a Rule requires more units of a currency to be
transfered away from a Treasury than the Treasury possesses, then the
Treasury goes negative.

The only time when a required transfer fails because it would cause
the Treasury to go negative is when the transfer is required, not by
the Rules, but by some other Entity to which the Rules grant the
authority to require transfers.  One might say that these too in a
sense are required by the Rules; however, this is inconsistent with
the use of "required" in Rules 1472 and 1596.  This CFJ mentions only
transfers required by the Rules.

I leave open the question of what happens when a non-Rule Entity,
granted authority by the Rules, requires multiple transfers from a
Treasury with insufficient funds at the same time.  Whether some of
them take place (and if so, which ones), or none of them, is left to a
future CFJ.  However, I would recommend to anyone composing such a CFJ
not to phrase the statement in terms of sequence, but simply in terms
of which transfers take place, if any.  For I would argue that those
transfers which *do* take place (if any) in such a case still take
place simultaneously.

Caller Harlequin may have been inspired by Rule 1527, which places an
order on multiple events in a single message by a player.  However,
there is nothing in the Rules, nor game custom, nor commonsense [sic],
nor past Judgements, nor the best interests of the game, which would
support expanding that concept into some sort of meta-game principle
by which all events which seem to take place simultaneously must
actually happen in a certain order.

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Evidence: (Rule 1472, Rule 1596, Rule 1527, Rule 217)

Rule 1472/3 (MI=1)
Transfer of Currencies

      Units of Currency are transferrable between Treasuries under the
      following conditions:

      a) The transfer shall be from exactly one Treasury to exactly
         one other Treasury.
      b) The transfer must be of a positive amount of exactly one
         Currency, and that amount must be an exact integral multiple
         of that Currency's MUQ.
      c) Some Rule must authorize the transfer, either by requiring it
         directly or by granting authority to require the transfer to
         some other entity.
      d) Some Rule must specify a Player whose duty it is to report
         the occurence of the transfer to the Recordkeepor of the
         Currency involved.

      This Rule takes precedence over any Rule which would permit or
      require a transfer prohibited by this Rule, and defers to any
      Rule which prohibits a transfer permitted by this Rule.

[CFJ 793: Notification may take place as part of an Official Report to
 the Public Forum.]

History:
Created by Proposal 1601, Jun. 19 1995
Amended(1) by Proposal 1649, Aug. 1 1995
Amended(2) by Proposal 1702, Sep. 1 1995
Amended(3) by Proposal 2493, Feb. 16 1996

Rule 1596/1 (MI=1)
Currency Transfers, generally

      The Rules have the power to require the transfer of Currencies;
      no other Entity also has this power unless explicitly granted it
      by the Rules, and then only to the extent granted by the Rules.

      No Entity other than the Rules themselves has the power to
      require any transfer which would result in the Treasury being
      transferred from containing a negative quantity of the Currency
      transferred.

      Whenever an Entity requires a transfer of Currencies to take
      place, the transfer takes place as required, provided that the
      Entity which is requiring the transfer is permitted by the Rules
      to require that transfer, and provided that the transfer is
      otherwise permitted by the Rules.

      Such a transfer takes place at the time specified by the Entity
      which requires the transfer, or, if no time is specified, at the
      time when the Entity first begins to require the transfer.

      This Rule takes precedence over any Rule which would permit or
      require a transfer prohibited by this Rule.  When another Rule
      would prohibit some transfer permitted by this Rule, this Rule
      defers to that Rule with respect to that transfer.

History:
Created by Proposal 2493, Feb. 16 1996
Amended(1) by Proposal 2626, Jun. 29 1996

Rule 1527/1 (MI=1)
Timing of Multiple Events in One Message

      Whenever a message contains more than one notification, report,
      or other communication in which the Rules place some legal
      significance, the communications in that message shall be taken
      to have been sent sequentially, separated by infinitesimal
      increments of time, in the order which they appear in the
      message.

      This Rule defers to all other Rules which do not contain this
      sentence.

History:
Created by Proposal 1750, Oct. 21 1995
Infected and Amended(1) by Rule 1454, Feb. 2 1997, substantial
  (unattributed)

Rule 217/3 (MI=1)
Judgements Must Accord with the Rules

      All Judgements must be in accordance with the Rules; however,
      if the Rules are silent, inconsistent, or unclear on the
      Statement to be Judged, then the Judge shall consider game
      custom, commonsense, past Judgements, and the best interests of
      the game before applying other standards.

[CFJ 684: An Injunction on the interpretation of a Rule is part of
 Game Custom.]

History:
Initial Mutable Rule 217, Jun. 30 1993
Amended(1) by Proposal 1635, Jul. 25 1995
Infected and amended(2) by Rule 1454, Aug. 7 1995
Amended(3) by Proposal 2507, Mar. 3 1996

Originator: Peter Suber
Authors: Peter Suber, ...

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(Caller's) Arguments:

A treasury certainly can't pay all the players at once if it doesn't
have sufficient funds to do so. So it must pay in some sort of
sequential fashion. Alphabetical by nickname seems the most likely and
easiest method of doing so.

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