Assertion
When several things are asserted, the author is presumed to have individually asserted each of them, not necessarily the sum total of them. For example:
The prosecutor asserts that the defendant, a Mr Sweeney Todd, born and raised in London, killed his victim with a razor while administering him a shave, dismembered him with an axe, and disposed of the victim’s body in various locations and by various methods including grinding and baking some parts into meat pies, all for the purpose of collecting a life insurance death benefit on the decedent’s life.
The dozen or so claims in the assertion are each either true or false, but the falseness of one doesn’t invalidate the entire assertion. The individual claims have what contract writers call severability. A false claim can be tolerated without invalidating the entire assertion.
Denial
A skillful denial, on the other hand, can appear to refute the entire assertion, even if only a detail is untrue. Mr Todd, for example, can honestly refute the assertion above even if he murdered and benefited from the death of the decedent (but not exactly in the way asserted). For example, if he sawed (not chopped) and ground the victim’s body parts before baking them into pies, he can honestly say this:
The defendant, Mr Sweeney Todd, born and raised in London, denies having killed the decedent with a razor while administering him a shave, then dismembering him with an axe and disposing of the victim’s body in various locations and by various methods including grinding and baking some parts into meat pies, for the purpose of collecting a life insurance death benefit on the decedent’s life.
On what other bases could Todd deny the assertion? Publish your answers as Replies below.
Real-life Example
AAMCO advertises on radio by playing troublesome car sounds, then diagnosing them as real problems or simple fixes. They close with this tag line:
“At AAMCO, there’s nothing we haven’t heard and can’t fix.”
Does this mean there’s nothing they haven’t heard? No.
Does this mean there’s nothing they can’t fix? No.
All it means is that there’s nothing they can’t fix that they also haven’t heard.
In other words, they can fix what they have not heard.
Obviously, this does no good for AAMCO’s customers who have problems. AAMCO can fix things until they hear about them. After that, all bets are off.
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Counterintuitive Spring 2024 
he could have used something other then a razor to kill the decedent
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Mr.Sweeney Todd can deny the whole claim because although most of the claims are true not ever single one of them matches up to the actual story, so although most of the story is correct the one part that is not makes the whole claim invalid.
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he could have not collected the life insurance of the victim
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If he didn’t make meat pies with the chopped meat, he made hamburgers instead.
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Maybe he killed him after the shave, not while.
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Or before
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He could have used the same method instead of various methods
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Mr. Todd killed the decedent while someone else was shaving the victim.
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If Sweeney Todd did not use a razor to kill the victim, instead using an axe, he can skillfully deny the claim in its entirety.
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He could have denied the assertion if his hands were broken at the time.
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He could of used a sword instead of an axe.
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If one detail such as “born and raised in London” is wrong and he wasn’t born there, he could deny the entire thing.
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Mr. Todd could deny the claim that the purpose of killing them was to collect a life insurance death benefit. He could deny that he is born and raised in London. He could even deny the methods used in which he hid the dead bodies.
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He might had disposed the body in a single location and not various.
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He could have put all the parts of the victims in one place using one method of disposal
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Not for the purpose of collecting the life insurance policy, but for the purpose of the fun of it.
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Mr. Sweeney the defendant, born and raised in London denies of killing while shaving him and chopped the victim with an axe (shot him) to disposed of the body in various locations and by making pies (burned the body.)
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