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 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 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 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 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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