Very glad I'm not a pedantic extremist. Seems like a horrible life to live.
The hardest thing is picking which battles to fight. Fighting all the battles possible isn't an effective use of ones time.
My Doctor's Office Asked Me To Lie
131–140 of 245 posts
Re: My Doctor's Office Asked Me To Lie
#132Find a new doctor. I have never been to a doctor, dentist, etc., that did not have a copy of the privacy policy taped/laminated to the clipboard!!! Seriously, how hard can it be. She probably would have found the policy if Sallman had told her he was going to another doctor, and he was going to tell this doctor the reason why he left.
Re: My Doctor's Office Asked Me To Lie
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
Did you have a lawyer to represent you? That's their job... to make sure that the contract you're signing is OK. Actually reading a contract without knowledge of the law, case history, and background can get you into just as much trouble as not reading it at all. That's why you have lawyers review important contracts.
Having your lawyer read something is no excuse for not also reading it yourself.
If course we're supposed to read it but in some situations it's not realistic. Buying a house involves hundreds of pages. Unless you're a lawyer, the average person isn't going to recognize loopholes in the contracts. And I don't know many people who would back out on a house sale at that stage, so it's highly unlikely you'd refuse to sign. The only practical way to do that is to get an advance copy of everything.
In these cases you really do need a lawyer who you trust has read the documents and is protecting you.
Re: My Doctor's Office Asked Me To Lie
#1343000 pages (1500 two-sided pages) would require a ~7" thick binder. Never seen one, just saying.
Re: My Doctor's Office Asked Me To Lie
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
It must have gotten to the point by now that the mere length of a privacy policy, or EULA, is enough to convince the court that there effectively is no policy or no agreement, signed, seal broken or not.
Either way because it's a License and not a Contract, by default you have no rights to use the software.
You bought it, so you can do whatever you want with it.
If you buy a CD, it's copyrighted, but you can still do whatever you want with it (unless what is limited by law).
Re: My Doctor's Office Asked Me To Lie
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
In germany for certain contracts (such as buying a house or creating a LLC) it's required that a notary reads them aloud for you. That's quite a bit of fun if the contract contains annotations that make it fill a binder. There are some loopholes though: The contract may refer to another document that the notary may read to his assistant, so not everybody has to go through the whole ordeal.
Yeah we have that too in the Netherlands, at least for the important portions of the documents. The last time I closed on a house it took over two hours. All relevant documents had been e-mailed to us beforehand but you still cannot ask them to skip the reading. Being too careful can be annoying too.
I'd take annoying over being effed up anytime. You can't ever be too cautious in legal matters.
Re: My Doctor's Office Asked Me To Lie
#137I'm surprised the conversation hasn't turned towards "Terms and Conditions" of websites.
As webmasters, many of us act like stallman's doctor's office every single day. By asking clients to agree to (and making it oh so simple to skip, and oh so daunting to read) the terms of using our websites.
Re: My Doctor's Office Asked Me To Lie
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not an expert on contract law, but I'm fairly sure that one party modifying a contract without the other person's notice or consent does not make the modifications legally binding, which is why you do need to get the other party to initial changes you've made. A contract is a physical expression legal agreement which both parties are supposed to know about, it's not a magical piece of paper which enforces whateve…
So if I don't know what's on the paper because no one has made sure that I do then I still can be upheld on what I signed but if the guy who gave me paper to sign doesn't know what's on the paper because he didn't notice my changes then he can't be liable?
I'm still not an expert on contract law, but I would suggest that yes, that's the case. The law isn't necessarily perfectly symmetric between the original text of the contract and handwritten alterations put in at the time of signing.
Re: My Doctor's Office Asked Me To Lie
#139What's really the problem with this situation is that it's really hard to point a finger to a single culprit in the system thereby pointing to a way to solve the problem. That's why it's a wicked problem ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicked_problem ) * The doctors cannot be blamed because they want to protect themselves (e.g. see the insane amounts of insurance required to practice medicine in the US to guard agains…
> Nutella was sued and was fined $3.6M just because people couldn't read the clear nutritional sign
Did you even read the article? It clearly says that Nutella was sued because it had misleading advertising, saying/implying that it was healthy, when in reality it contains a lot of sugar.
I know that Coca-Cola is bad for your health (it's pretty obvious that any sweet drink is bad for your teeth and makes you fat and probably not any less thirsty). But I would still want the company fined if it advertised Coca-Cola drink as being healthy.
Re: My Doctor's Office Asked Me To Lie
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
Did you have a lawyer to represent you? That's their job... to make sure that the contract you're signing is OK. Actually reading a contract without knowledge of the law, case history, and background can get you into just as much trouble as not reading it at all. That's why you have lawyers review important contracts.
Having your lawyer read something is no excuse for not also reading it yourself.
This has to be one of the most exploited (mis?)conceptions of the 21st century. Doctors, employers, websites, software plugins, account agreements, almost everything with which one interacts in the normal course of a modern life has a massive privacy statement that, using the unnatural jargon of the law as a gate, makes unreasonable statements which destroy the rights of the consumer and create rights for the provider. I recall a recent trip to the eye doctor where the standard document made the statement that I pre-consent to any and all treatment that the doctor orders and pre-agree to be financially responsible for all such treatments in case my insurance does not pay. My guess is that most of us have inadvertently pre-consented our finances and other aspects of our lives to various companies via these statements buried within the haystack of legalese that must be "signed" in order to operate a 21st century life.