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My Doctor's Office Asked Me To Lie

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Re: My Doctor's Office Asked Me To Lie

#151

Post by shasta »

scotty79 wrote: post #93
planetguy wrote: post #65

Earlier 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?

You have a duty to read before you sign a contract. In this case, they can claim you tricked them into thinking you'd signed the form contract, and that they relied on that agreement when they provided you care. IANAL, but I suspect you will lose this unless you can show that the staffer accepted your changes knowingly.

Re: My Doctor's Office Asked Me To Lie

#152

Post by mikeash »

shasta wrote: post #12

You should be careful just adding "not", because they can always claim they didn't notice you modified the agreement (I'm assuming no one on their staff signed or initialled your change).

Isn't the worst case that the contract is just invalid? If you made a change which they didn't see, then there's no meeting of the minds, and thus no contract. As long as you didn't need the contract anyway (it sounds like it's purely for their benefit), it's all the same.

Re: My Doctor's Office Asked Me To Lie

#153

Post by lgleason »

The problem is that some of these documents try to intimidate patients by adding statements that the patient cannot sue even-though they are un-enforceable. I have also seen cases where doctors have sued patients who leave bad comments about them on websites that allow you to rate a doctor. Bogus malpractice suits are bad, but suing a patient for leaving a bad review is unbelievable.

Re: My Doctor's Office Asked Me To Lie

#154

Post by steve-howard »

spolsky wrote: post #85
techdmn wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I the first time I closed on a house, realizing ten minutes in that either I was going to be signing contracts without reading them, or everyone was going to be sitting around watching me read for three hours. There's a lot of pressure in a situation like that, even though I try never to sign anything without reading it.

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.

How much would it cost to get a lawyer to go over some contracts with you and let you know what's in there that you don't want? I imagine it depends on the type of contract, but a guess would be helpful.

Re: My Doctor's Office Asked Me To Lie

#155

Post by Jun8 »

tomp wrote: post #139
Jun8 wrote: post #86

What'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…

All advertising is misleading in a sense, the question is where to draw the line: the legal complaint (http://www.courthousenews.com/2011/02/02/Nutella.pdf) states that the moms were duped because they saw TV commercials that showed moms feeding Nutella to their healthy families. Although I think the ""An example of a tasty yet balanced breakfast." label should be removed from Nuteall jars (which'll be done, http://commonlaw.findlaw.com/2012/05/nutella-lawsuit-company...) I don't the millions of dollars awarded (I misstated this, actually it was $3.06M) makes sense, but then I'm no lawyer.

BTW, you can go to this site (https://nutellaclassactionsettlement.com/FrequentlyAskedQues...) and claim up to $20 if you've bought Nutella, no receipts asked (until the allocated $2.5M runs out).

Re: My Doctor's Office Asked Me To Lie

#156

Post by Spoom »

Xylakant wrote: post #80
techdmn wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I the first time I closed on a house, realizing ten minutes in that either I was going to be signing contracts without reading them, or everyone was going to be sitting around watching me read for three hours. There's a lot of pressure in a situation like that, even though I try never to sign anything without reading it.

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.

I recently closed on a house in Ohio. At closing, the notary verbally summarized every contract we signed. I'm not sure if it was legally required (I believe he stated it was) but I also took the time to read them. Most of them were copies of contracts I had already signed with the realtor / mortgage company at offer / mortgage application, so nothing was particularly surprising.

Further, at offer time, the realtor read aloud every contract and answered questions we had about them. I don't feel that they tried to pull the wool over my eyes at any point. Perhaps it's different with other realtors?

Re: My Doctor's Office Asked Me To Lie

#157

Post by jlarocco »

mbreese wrote: post #130
spolsky wrote: post #85

Earlier 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.

I completely agree. When I bought a house (and later sold it), the day before, we had the title company forward all of the documents to our lawyer to review. When he gave his okay, I felt perfectly comfortable signing multiple documents that I never read. For something like that, it's important to have someone with some knowledge go over things first. Was I really going to be in a position to slowly read over documen…

It's better than not reading it, but you still don't really know what you're signing. Maybe there's some catch or you're on the hook for something and the lawyer doesn't say anything (or even notice) because it's relatively standard for that kind of contract?

Probably a better use of time and money is to have them forward the documents to you, read over them the day before and ask a lawyer if you have any questions.

Re: My Doctor's Office Asked Me To Lie

#158

Post by kayge »

jon_dahl wrote: post #142

"How about if I add 'not' to make it a true statement?" She accepted this. So I had my appointment. That is an elegant solution to the problem.

I was hoping he'd clarify whether he changed it to "... has not been provided to me..." or "... has !been provided to me..."

Re: My Doctor's Office Asked Me To Lie

#159

Post by MarlonPro »

Whatever happen to Social Contract? The worst thing that could ever happen in this country is if we start mistrusting established institutions.

Wait... as a geek, I enjoyed the story. If I was at the same establishment as Richard, I would be laughing my tail off!

Re: My Doctor's Office Asked Me To Lie

#160

Post by Tloewald »

vacri wrote: post #104
pessimizer wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, he said that he was told that it was 3000 pages long, but never saw it, which was the point.

I wish the downmod brigade would actually read what I wrote. I'm not calling Stallman a liar. I'm saying he may have made a mistake in telling the story. It happens. I also said that it was more likely that the receptionist made up the number to scare him off. If you read an article, the author is responsible for putting the words in it, whatever the original source is. The author can make mistakes, because authors a…

Yes but you specifically suggested Stallmsn was mistaken for saying something he didn't say. If you want to be pedantic, be correct.
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