<story><title>Dear Bureaucrat, my job wants me to lie</title><url>https://www.federaltimes.com/your-career/the-bureaucrat/2019/03/07/dear-bureaucrat-my-job-wants-me-to-lie/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>gradys</author><text>IANAL, but I took a commerical law class in college. I feel like I remember there being a doctrine that if there&amp;#x27;s a written contract, agreements outside of the contract don&amp;#x27;t matter. (Which is not to say that verbal contracts aren&amp;#x27;t real contracts, but that if there&amp;#x27;s also a written contract, they overrule any unwritten agreements.)</text></item><item><author>thrpythrwaway33</author><text>All of this conversation was over their secure internet chat system, so it was logged that way.</text></item><item><author>papln</author><text>&amp;gt; So I said, if you&amp;#x27;re comfortable with the clause meaning the interpretation earlier in chat, that it just means to follow directions about alcohol interactions with meds, then I&amp;#x27;ll sign, and he agreed.&lt;p&gt;Did you document that modification in in writing or recording?</text></item><item><author>thrpythrwaway33</author><text>Similar horror story.  When I went to get therapy for depression, they gave me a contract to read and sign for therapy agreement. I got to page 11 which said that I will not consume alcoholic beverages while under treatment at all.&lt;p&gt;It seemed to be a rather overbroad ask for what I was coming for, so I objected (over their secure PM system). They tried to object that &amp;quot;well, you need to follow your doctor&amp;#x27;s directions because there can be interactions between the medicine and alcohol.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;I said &amp;quot;The clause doesn&amp;#x27;t say &amp;#x27;I will follow the psychiatrist&amp;#x27;s direction about drug interactions.&amp;#x27; It says I will unconditionally refrain from all alcohol.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Then the main doctor entered the thread and really blew my mind.  He said, basically, a) no one in 5 years has objected to that clause, and b) it&amp;#x27;s common to have a clinic policy like and it&amp;#x27;s like an EULA.&lt;p&gt;b) was weird because EULA&amp;#x27;s are known for being notoriously abusive. a) was weird because he seems to genuinely think it&amp;#x27;s no big deal that either 1) no one is reading that clause, or 2) all of his patients are apparently teetotalers.&lt;p&gt;(I also felt it was particularly disturbing that he was exploiting the bandwagon effect to intimidate me into signing.)&lt;p&gt;So I said, if you&amp;#x27;re comfortable with the clause meaning the interpretation earlier in chat, that it just means to follow directions about alcohol interactions with meds, then I&amp;#x27;ll sign, and he agreed.</text></item><item><author>andrewla</author><text>I was recently at a medical office (this is in the US), and they had replaced their system, so I had to re-sign the variety of forms that they make you sign, HIPAA disclosure, etc.&lt;p&gt;They gave me an electronic signature pad and asked me to sign. I pointed out that I did not have a document in front of me, and they said that they would give me a copy of the signed form after I signed it. I once again attempted to point out that I was being asked to sign a form that I couldn&amp;#x27;t read, and they said, &amp;quot;oh, it&amp;#x27;s just a privacy disclosure&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;A superviser (who was overseeing the migration to the new system) came by and asked what the issue was, and I said I was being asked to sign a form without seeing what I was signing. They very patiently explained to me that it was a HIPAA disclosure, and I said that if I could sign their description, I would be happy to, but I&amp;#x27;m not going to sign a more formal document having only been given a summary of it. They further explained that if I wanted, they could print out a copy of the form after I signed it for my records.&lt;p&gt;Nobody at the office seemed to understand here what my objection was. I overheard other patients saying things like &amp;quot;I&amp;#x27;m not signing something I haven&amp;#x27;t seen&amp;quot;, so I know that I wasn&amp;#x27;t crazy.  Eventually I convinced the person I was working with to turn their monitor around so that I could read the documents before signing them.&lt;p&gt;The thing is that everyone knows that these forms are completely meaningless anyway. I probably would have been better off just signing the forms so that if they ever came up in a court case I could just honestly say that I had never seen the form before.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Guvante</author><text>&amp;gt; if there&amp;#x27;s also a written contract, they overrule any unwritten agreements&lt;p&gt;That typically only applies in situations where the agreement is otherwise ambiguous. The most common example being &amp;quot;A: We verbally agreed to $1 and I signed. B: But what you signed say $1.10&amp;quot; often in these situations the written contract win.&lt;p&gt;However in this case they are in a written format explicitly clarifying the contents of the contract which you are allowed to do as long as the interpretation you agree to doesn&amp;#x27;t meaningfully diverge from what was written in a way that doesn&amp;#x27;t follow standard practice. As the doctor said it is common practice to avoid consuming alcohol with medicine that has known interactions with it. Even if the original contract is unambiguous no one is going to side against OP on the topic of &amp;quot;we both agreed that it meant when taking certain medicines&amp;quot; since the original verbiage didn&amp;#x27;t follow standard practice by the clarified verbiage did.</text></comment>
<story><title>Dear Bureaucrat, my job wants me to lie</title><url>https://www.federaltimes.com/your-career/the-bureaucrat/2019/03/07/dear-bureaucrat-my-job-wants-me-to-lie/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>gradys</author><text>IANAL, but I took a commerical law class in college. I feel like I remember there being a doctrine that if there&amp;#x27;s a written contract, agreements outside of the contract don&amp;#x27;t matter. (Which is not to say that verbal contracts aren&amp;#x27;t real contracts, but that if there&amp;#x27;s also a written contract, they overrule any unwritten agreements.)</text></item><item><author>thrpythrwaway33</author><text>All of this conversation was over their secure internet chat system, so it was logged that way.</text></item><item><author>papln</author><text>&amp;gt; So I said, if you&amp;#x27;re comfortable with the clause meaning the interpretation earlier in chat, that it just means to follow directions about alcohol interactions with meds, then I&amp;#x27;ll sign, and he agreed.&lt;p&gt;Did you document that modification in in writing or recording?</text></item><item><author>thrpythrwaway33</author><text>Similar horror story.  When I went to get therapy for depression, they gave me a contract to read and sign for therapy agreement. I got to page 11 which said that I will not consume alcoholic beverages while under treatment at all.&lt;p&gt;It seemed to be a rather overbroad ask for what I was coming for, so I objected (over their secure PM system). They tried to object that &amp;quot;well, you need to follow your doctor&amp;#x27;s directions because there can be interactions between the medicine and alcohol.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;I said &amp;quot;The clause doesn&amp;#x27;t say &amp;#x27;I will follow the psychiatrist&amp;#x27;s direction about drug interactions.&amp;#x27; It says I will unconditionally refrain from all alcohol.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Then the main doctor entered the thread and really blew my mind.  He said, basically, a) no one in 5 years has objected to that clause, and b) it&amp;#x27;s common to have a clinic policy like and it&amp;#x27;s like an EULA.&lt;p&gt;b) was weird because EULA&amp;#x27;s are known for being notoriously abusive. a) was weird because he seems to genuinely think it&amp;#x27;s no big deal that either 1) no one is reading that clause, or 2) all of his patients are apparently teetotalers.&lt;p&gt;(I also felt it was particularly disturbing that he was exploiting the bandwagon effect to intimidate me into signing.)&lt;p&gt;So I said, if you&amp;#x27;re comfortable with the clause meaning the interpretation earlier in chat, that it just means to follow directions about alcohol interactions with meds, then I&amp;#x27;ll sign, and he agreed.</text></item><item><author>andrewla</author><text>I was recently at a medical office (this is in the US), and they had replaced their system, so I had to re-sign the variety of forms that they make you sign, HIPAA disclosure, etc.&lt;p&gt;They gave me an electronic signature pad and asked me to sign. I pointed out that I did not have a document in front of me, and they said that they would give me a copy of the signed form after I signed it. I once again attempted to point out that I was being asked to sign a form that I couldn&amp;#x27;t read, and they said, &amp;quot;oh, it&amp;#x27;s just a privacy disclosure&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;A superviser (who was overseeing the migration to the new system) came by and asked what the issue was, and I said I was being asked to sign a form without seeing what I was signing. They very patiently explained to me that it was a HIPAA disclosure, and I said that if I could sign their description, I would be happy to, but I&amp;#x27;m not going to sign a more formal document having only been given a summary of it. They further explained that if I wanted, they could print out a copy of the form after I signed it for my records.&lt;p&gt;Nobody at the office seemed to understand here what my objection was. I overheard other patients saying things like &amp;quot;I&amp;#x27;m not signing something I haven&amp;#x27;t seen&amp;quot;, so I know that I wasn&amp;#x27;t crazy.  Eventually I convinced the person I was working with to turn their monitor around so that I could read the documents before signing them.&lt;p&gt;The thing is that everyone knows that these forms are completely meaningless anyway. I probably would have been better off just signing the forms so that if they ever came up in a court case I could just honestly say that I had never seen the form before.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>gnopgnip</author><text>Agreements over an electronic messaging system are written agreements, and satisfy the statute of frauds, and are not automatically superseeded.&lt;p&gt;Even if you have a written contract that has boilerplate language saying all future modifications need to be in writing, courts have enforced verbal modifications. A contract can always be modified, what matters is if both parties agree.</text></comment>