It is relevant and important for you to understand the complexities of legal agreements, in particular the use of a subordination non-disturbance and attornment agreement (“SNDA”), and how they may intersect with the structuring of research facilities or scientific collaborations. This topic was brought to mind recently during a discussion with one of my clients regarding the facility lease of an institution looking to optimize its research activities. Therefore, the implications of how real estate is managed is similar to the development of a scientific discipline.
The academic audience of the general site is synonymous to those who read publications relevant to the fields of science including physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics, computer science and the law. The topic discussed is also of interest to practitioners who are concerned with the overall structuring of the legal relationships involving the research institutions. The idea that the academic audience has some insight to academic institutions not being focalized primarily on research is not a bad thing, but indeed is a positive trait. It is important to understand the legal framework that surrounds the activities particular to your field of interest; it would be similar to having an understanding in the field of biology without knowing the relevant intricacies of chemistry and physics involved. It is in essence the overarching idea of the human brain being a living computer capable of storing the processing of information of all fields.
Subordination, non-disturbance and attornment agreements are rental agreements between institutions and the landlords who lease the premises for research activities. Without going into the in-depth details of the definition and scope of what these agreements cover, the general understanding is that a SNDA dictates the legal relationship between the landlord and the tenants under the lease or sub-lease. For the academic audience of this site, it would be the legal enforcement of the “terms of service” (TS). Thus, we can take the law or the legal framework of a landlord / tenant relationship and transpose it with the relevant rules or terms of service for a scientific field.
On a practical note, your interest in the law or rather your knowledge of these underlying agreements and their implications may serve you well in investigative research facilities or other scientific environments. Having a good understanding of the legal framework involved may assist you in having a continuous and stabilized research environment without any surprises in the course of your investigations.
Now, there are a number of limitations to the practical utilization of these agreements including bluearch evidence and the limitative areas of academic institutions.
Is there a limitation or restriction on the use of such agreements for research institution? Yes an example could be in the research grant system or should I say the administrative involvement of grants and related grants management. Albeit, I will not elaborate on this point since I will be writing on research grants and the law in another post.
If you are asking yourself what does the implementation of a SNDA scheme look like in reality especially considering the limitative areas of academic institutions? Well, let’s say for example you are a researcher and you want to conduct some research on bone marrow for scientific purpose. However, the raw material is harvested from a third party human sourced, but in order to satisfy ethical concerns, you need to satisfy a number of requirements before you can proceed with the harvesting procedure or the sample collection. Without discussing the ethical considerations of academic research on human subjects or animals, you have to satisfy the institution’s ethics committee before you can acquire the material (i.e. you need a letter, an attestation, a certificate, etc.) confirming that the subject has given his or her consent for the collection of the biological material. In essence, the institutions needs to make sure that the ethical concerned have been satisfied. Without getting to deep into the ethics involved in this type of research and to avoid speculating, a SNDA can be enforced to secure some legal protection or assurance between the parties involved. In essence, if institution A carries agrees to supply institution B with the raw sample, but institution B wants to make sure that it does not have to put this agreement in writing or vice versa, the SNDA would serve the purpose of providing the legal assurance that regardless of the conditions or the facts, the entities involved would remain legally bound to their agreement unless formally terminated by either party. We could also look at it like an implied assignment or a potential assignment of lease.
For scholars and practitioners, clearly there are a number of barriers that need to be overcome if the SNDA is to be used as a legal framework to enforce any agreements between two or more parties participating in a collaborative scientific project. Further studies are required in order to better ascertain the potential limitations involved in the process, but on a general note, the above example serves to show how the relegated role of law can be utilized to further enhance the area of science including institutions that are often thought to have a limited legal framework.
As a final thought, I want to refer the general audience to the Wikipedia article for a more in-depth explanation and illustration of this topic.