"collateral attack" is a valid phrase used in written English.
It is typically used to describe a legal strategy in which a defendant attempts to challenge a conviction by attacking some aspect of the proceedings leading to the verdict rather than the verdict itself. For example: "The defendant argued that their conviction should be overturned due to a collateral attack on the way their evidence was presented during their trial."
Thus, a corporation may adopt such a clause, but decide, if a serious litigation threat surfaces in Delaware, to waive the clause's application and permit an action to be settled elsewhere for "a peppercorn and an attorney's fee". To be sure, this is self-interested, and the settlement might be collaterally attacked, but a collateral attack is a very uphill battle.
It was formerly the rule in this country that judgments were so impervious to collateral attack that a defendant could not collaterally attack his conviction even after the Government had admitted his innocence.
Collateral Attack on Criminal Judgments, 38 U.Chi.L.Rev.
924 Appendix, Florida has provided a means of collateral attack.
The policy underlying that rule is as pertinent to the collateral attack of military judgments as it is to collateral attack of judgments rendered in state courts.
* * * The policy underlying tha rule is as pertinent to the collateral attack of military judgments as it is to collateral attack of judgment rendered in state courts.
Collateral attack of a judgment of a court-martial was early entertained.
1577, 36 L.Ed.2d 219731973), governing relief on collateral attack following procedural default at trial.
822, 9 L.Ed.2d 837 (1963), is that the Act of 1867 allows such collateral attack.
The commission rejected that argument today, calling it a "collateral attack" on past rulings.
We disagree, however, about whether the same form of harmless-error analysis should apply in a collateral attack as on a direct appeal, and, if not, what the collateral attack standard should be for an error of this kind.
