[TriLUG] Re: [GoLugTech] legal question

[Rick DeNatale]

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?
> >
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