[Ads-l] bite at the apple

[Baker, John]

This is an extremely common legal term.  The concept is that a party is entitled to one opportunity to do something, but is not entitled to a second chance, and to give the party that second chance would be unfair.  (It doesn’t apply to everything; sometimes you are entitled to a second chance.)  I don’t see any examples earlier than Jon’s, but there are tens of thousands since then.

I’ve also heard “bite at the cherry” from British lawyers, which strikes me as more evocative.  It may be the older term.  A 1918 law journal article said, in a discussion of German court procedures: “This may, in part, be due to an early decision of the [German] Supreme Court in 1881 which held that a plaintiff could not in effect take “two
bites at the cherry”—if he had available an executory action (Leistungsklage) he could not first sue for a declaration of his right (Feststellungsklage) and then bring further actions for coercive relief. This would invite a multiplicity of suits.”  Edwin M. Borchard, The Declaratory Judgment – A Needed Procedural Reform, 28 Yale Law Journal 1, 19 (1918).  It isn’t clear to me whether “two bites at the cherry” is from the German decision.


John Baker


From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of Jonathan Lighter
Sent: Monday 22 July 2019 3:52 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: bite at the apple

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Not in OED:

'Opportunity to accomplish one's (often unfair) aim'

Prominent Tweeter today:

"Highly conflicted Robert Mueller should not be given another bite at the
apple."

1920 _Christian Science Monitor_ (March 31) 8: A Bite at the Apple While
fully appreciating the desire of the employers to take one bite at the
apple, to settle the vexed problem on a national basis and with a universal
standard ....

1963 _The [Baltimore] Sun_ (Apr. 25) 48: Mr. Sweeney argued that the
intent of the election laws is "to give a man only one bite at the apple,
and said a Kentucky decision held that to permit a defeated candidate to
become a nominee of a political party "is not consonant with good faith and
fair dealing."

Etc., etc.

JL
--
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

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