[TriLUG] Re: [GoLugTech] legal question

[matusiak]

This has been one of the coolest threads I've seen in a while.  Great 
opinions and a lot of good advice!  Just goes to show the breadth of 
knowledge (beyond the purely technical) bestowed upon the TriLUG 
community.

Thanks to all for sharing.  You are helping the whole group with such 
info.
dave m.

On Mar 24, 2005, at 8:41 AM, Rick DeNatale wrote:

> Actually the particular proposal/practice I was commenting on was
> changing the contract and hope that the other party wouldn't notice
> before signing. My point is that this makes determination of whether
> the contract was actually accepted muddy, just as would evidence that
> a contract MIGHT have been altered after signing.
>
> If the contract ends up being litigated, and it is discovered that
> terms have been althered to the benefit of one party, and only that
> party has intialed the changes, the evidence of both parties having
> agreed to the altered terms is much weaker, and there is some question
> of the sequence of the signatures and the alterations. A court may
> well find that the one-sided alterations constitute an offier rather
> than a part of the contract.
>
> In contracts to which I've been a party, the process has always been
> to carefully annotate the acceptance of each part of the contract.
> This has meant that each page was numbered, and initialed by both
> parties, and each alteration was also intialed by both parties. This
> is in addition to both parties signing on the dotted line.
>
> You might (or even probably would) get away with such a tactic, but if
> the employer really wanted to push things in the future, you might
> also get a nasty surprise. If you really care about the changes, you
> are much better off  bringing them to the attention of the other party
> and getting agreement on paper.
>
> On Thu, 24 Mar 2005 00:19:29 -0500 (EST), William Sutton
> <william at trilug.org> wrote:
>> The proposal was not to change the verbage /AFTER/ the employer 
>> signed.
>> It was to change the verbage /BEFORE/ both parties sign.  If the 
>> employer
>> doesn't like the verbage, he can tell you so.  If he doesn't look 
>> over the
>> contract to make sure everything is to his satisfaction before 
>> signing it,
>> then he didn't do due diligence.
>>
>> Now if you have people altering contracts /AFTER/ signing, you have
>> problems.
>>
>> William
>>
>> On Wed, 23 Mar 2005, Rick DeNatale wrote:
>>
>>> On Wed, 23 Mar 2005 12:46:06 -0500, Christopher L Merrill
>>> <chris at webperformanceinc.com> wrote:
>>>> Marc M wrote:
>>>>> PROBLEM for them.  OTOH, striking a line through some things (with
>>>>> initials), is a nice user-friendly way to deal with them.  Most 
>>>>> people
>>>>> don't realize they have that right -- customizing the terms of the
>>>>> deal!
>>>>
>>>> I've done this with more than one employer.  I didn't mention it to 
>>>> the
>>>> HR person...I just did it and handed it back to them.  I'm not sure 
>>>> they
>>>> ever read it.  Probably just checked the back page to see if I 
>>>> signed.
>>>> If they did see my deletions, nobody mentioned it to me.
>>>
>>> IANAL but I have been involved in a few contracts and I've watched 
>>> all
>>> of the episodes of "The Paper Chase" several times.
>>>
>>> Contract modifications normally have to be intialed by BOTH parties 
>>> in
>>> order to be effective.  As Professor Kingsfield said a contract is a
>>> "meeting of minds."  If push came to shove, I'm not sure what the
>>> courts would make of it.
>>>
>>> Consider the shoe being on the other foot. If such uni-lateral 
>>> changes
>>> were kosher, what would stop your unscrupulous employer from making
>>> his own alterations after you read and/or signed the contract?