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.
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 "well, you need to follow your doctor's directions because there can be interactions between the medicine and alcohol."
I said "The clause doesn't say 'I will follow the psychiatrist's direction about drug interactions.' It says I will unconditionally refrain from all alcohol."
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's common to have a clinic policy like and it's like an EULA.
b) was weird because EULA's are known for being notoriously abusive. a) was weird because he seems to genuinely think it's no big deal that either 1) no one is reading that clause, or 2) all of his patients are apparently teetotalers.
(I also felt it was particularly disturbing that he was exploiting the bandwagon effect to intimidate me into signing.)
So I said, if you'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'll sign, and he agreed.
> So I said, if you'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'll sign, and he agreed.
Did you document that modification in in writing or recording?
IANAL, but I took a commerical law class in college. I feel like I remember there being a doctrine that if there's a written contract, agreements outside of the contract don't matter. (Which is not to say that verbal contracts aren't real contracts, but that if there's also a written contract, they overrule any unwritten agreements.)
> if there's also a written contract, they overrule any unwritten agreements
That typically only applies in situations where the agreement is otherwise ambiguous. The most common example being "A: We verbally agreed to $1 and I signed. B: But what you signed say $1.10" often in these situations the written contract win.
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't meaningfully diverge from what was written in a way that doesn'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 "we both agreed that it meant when taking certain medicines" since the original verbiage didn't follow standard practice by the clarified verbiage did.
Agreements over an electronic messaging system are written agreements, and satisfy the statute of frauds, and are not automatically superseeded.
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.
Yes, but most of the things people are talking about here are not contracts, I think, so I don't think the doctrine you're referring to would be applicable. Compare these two situations:
Situation 1. There is a single document with the title "CONTRACT" signed by both parties. It starts with a list of definitions and continues with a list of things that each party promises to do.
Situation 2. There is a whole pile of documents to be signed by just one of the parties, the word "contract" is not mentioned, and most of the sentences in the documents give information (warning, disclaimer, whatever) rather than express some kind of obligation.
Some kind of (implicit) contract may be created in situation 2, and the documents may have some bearing on it, but the documents are clearly not "the contract".
It's more like signing to receive a parcel than signing a contract.
... What are you basing that on? In Canada at least that would absolutely be a contract.
We must be very careful not to confuse "common sense" or "obvious" or "that's what it intuitively means to me" with "law". Lots of people do that and lots of them pay the price :-(
You'll need a personal copy of that conversation if this were to come up. We don't know what their retention policy is, or if they'll mysteriously be unable to find it in a court case.
The only court case I could imagine this coming up in is for malpractice, where op suffered serious consequences for drinking alcohol and sued bc he wasn't told not to drink. I don't think the above message chain would help him win his case.
Yeah I figured there was relatively little legal risk here. I just wanted to point out that if your legal defense is the party at fault keeping support chat logs then you might want to rethink your legal defense :P
I was in medical trial that had the same...
I just did not drink a day before they took my blood. Also I am pretty sure toxicology test was not performed.
It also required me to not have kids. It made sense but still sounds extreame.
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 "well, you need to follow your doctor's directions because there can be interactions between the medicine and alcohol."
I said "The clause doesn't say 'I will follow the psychiatrist's direction about drug interactions.' It says I will unconditionally refrain from all alcohol."
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's common to have a clinic policy like and it's like an EULA.
b) was weird because EULA's are known for being notoriously abusive. a) was weird because he seems to genuinely think it's no big deal that either 1) no one is reading that clause, or 2) all of his patients are apparently teetotalers.
(I also felt it was particularly disturbing that he was exploiting the bandwagon effect to intimidate me into signing.)
So I said, if you'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'll sign, and he agreed.