What’s Denied?

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.

What you want AAMCO to say is that they’ve heard everything and can fix everything, but all their ad claims is that there’s nothing they can’t fix that they also haven’t heard. There may still be plenty of problems they have heard and can’t fix. And their slogan would still be true, but worthless.

All their useless claim actually says is:

“We’ve never failed to fix a sound we haven’t heard.”