Except this has been tried before and they typically end in one of three outcomes:
1) It was a mistake and it doesn't go to court.
2) It was intentional and it doesn't go to court because the attorney, while still being a piece of shit, understands what option 3 is.
3) It was intentional, it goes to court, and you produce the email evidence showing the attorney agreed to changeset N then sent along changeset N-1, and the provisions are thrown out because they were executed in bad faith.
4) Contract gets unknowingly signed and shelved, OP moves jobs and his/her replacement assumes the signed contract is legitimate.
Rare, but I've seen it happen.
FWIW I completely agree with both you and OP - it's a totally boneheaded move, but you should never underestimate how boneheaded some people (lawyers in particular) can be.
Anecdote/Sample of 1: lawyer friend skipped paying the fine for picking up his kid from the kindergarten 30mins after the closing time. His excuse was "come on what is 30mins?". Kindergarten warned "strike 1" and promised that he either paid the $10 'penalty' (textbook Freakonomics case) or be so much closer to expulsion (Edit: added the Or to conclude the Either).
He didn't pay and promised to sue. His wife was then told that if he sues the kid is out the door. She paid. She never told him. He still thinks "he won". I know many people of all professions can be dicks, but it feels like Lawyers have a greater concentration.
In a twisted way, he “won”. The world adapts to his ways.
Don’t think about in terms of money, but protection of his fragile ego. In this case, he was enabled by his wife.
I can imagine similar things could have happened in his childhood, people raking for him behind the scenes. (Incredibly entitled behaviour, “rules don’t apply to me”)
Civil lawsuits come down to just one thing in this country: MONEY.
Not the law, not what is right or who has been virtuous. Just money. Or more specifically: who has the money.
If you are poor and you sue someone who is rich, they control that outcome. If you are rich and you sue someone who is poor, they (by default) control that outcome; there's nothing there. If you are both poor, a judge will often decide based who looks and sounds the less poor. If you are both rich, then (the equivalent of) actuaries decide the outcome.
Criminal lawsuits are similar. I do not care how much you fuck up in this country; The amount of time you spend in jail will be inversely proportional to the amount of money you can spend to fight it.
It is supposed to be an international forum, but in practice it is a local group for San Francisco Bay Area. Consider how often articles about housing issues in Bay Area make it to the front page, compared to Vancouver, London, and Tokyo. HN is international in the sense that anyone can access and participate in it. But in practice, mostly SF Bay Area residents do.
I see participatants from all over the world here all the time. They usually qualify things with phrases like "where I'm from" or "in [insert country here].
It's only the Americans that think they're the center of the world.
I used to watch this Japanese show "Why did you come to Japan?" where a camera crew hangs out at Narita Airport and ambushes unsuspecting foreigners with that question and try to tag along on the journey of people they think are there for an interesting reason. When everyone introduces themselves they say the country they are from, except Americans who always say which state they are from and never the country. I found that particularly interesting. So, I just assume it's a deeply ingrained cultural thing to treat "America as default".
As an American expatriate I'm always shocked or bemused by the US-centric comments I get from family.
I live in East Asia, which is by no measure a cultural or technological backwater, and was surprised to hear my mother say, two days ago, "you must get YouTube over there...".
For some more perspective, I'm the most successful member of my family (from a financial pov) and from the condo I live in to the car I drive, I have nicer things than my parents ever did. I'm the first in the family -- and this is something I only considered just now -- to sends his kids to a good / expensive private school.
Though I don't lord it over them, my life is way more advanced / cushy than theirs. But from their point of view I'm not in the US and therefore don't have access to what they consider the gold standard of civilization.
And this point of view has not changed even though my parents have experienced my life in Asia first hand. Truly bizarre blind spot.
When I first moved to China ~10 years ago, I mentioned to whomever I was on the phone with back home that I needed to go grab some cash and that I might lose the call when I got in the lift. They asked where I planned to get money in the middle of the night, and were surprised to learn that ATM technology had indeed made it to "the Orient."
These days most people just ask if I've eaten a dog.
I obviously wasn't around back then, but even today the pace of modernization in China is astounding; I can only imagine what it must've been like in Deng Xiaoping's later years.
I usually cut them slack unless they're jerks about it. A lot haven't even got a passport. That's usually fine as well: The USA is a big place. Not even talking just actual size. There are a lot of people with diverse ways of living and circumstances. But the place is so physically huge you could spend your entire life exploring it and still not run out of places to find new things and people to see and meet.
If it helps, think of every US state as if it was a european country. You might lazily think they are all the same but scratch the surface and there's a lot of difference.
So yeah, its fine for someone to say they're from California. You already know they're from the land of High Fructose Corn Syrup so why be nasty about it?
It really isn't so diverse though. Same language, same retail and restaurant chains, same cars, same TV channels, same currency, same political system, same sides in war back to 1800s (and even that is a large portion of remembered history).
Compare it to Europe, where a 3 hour drive gives you different food, language, holidays, religion, festivals, type of beer, different political system, different history going back 1000+ years... and another 3 hour drive does it all over again.
But still, I think it’s easy to cut murricans some slack. Their country IS one of the most interesting ones. If I weren’t living in my dream country I think I’d want to live in California.
For those downvoting this comment: this conclusion (that HN's reader base is predominantly based in the SF Bay Area) should be entirely unsurprising given that HN is itself the product of Y Combinator, an accelerator based in the SF Bay Area that (last I checked, and from what I recall back when I worked for a startup that applied) specifically requires its incubatees to relocate (if they're not already there) to the SF Bay Area during said incubation.
Yes, not all of us are in the SF Bay Area, but it's pretty reasonable to assume that most readers are.
> requires its incubatees to relocate (if they're not already there) to the SF Bay Area during said incubation.
Not sure "relocate" is the best word. I've been freelancer for 8 years and one of my client is a YC startup that is and has always been in Paris, France.
If the founder (implicitly the leader or one of the top leaders) has to relocate, even for three months, then I fail to see how "relocate" is anything but the best word, especially when a company is still in a stage that would benefit from incubation.
It's a fair assumption that a lot of people on HN have SF viewpoint or views at least that partially align with them. Even those of us on the other side of the planet.
As for your downvoters: plenty of people believe they should downvote when they simply disagree. Others believe that downvoting without a comment is fine. These two groups make HN less interesting.
I actually want to know the reason why. Too many people hide behind a downvote and contribute nothing. Meanwhile they are making interesting posts disappear for no good reason. And other comments that are blatantly rubbish are not touched at all.
> It's a fair assumption that a lot of people on HN have SF viewpoint or views at least that partially align with them. Even those of us on the other side of the planet.
Totally agree with you ! But maybe some people misunderstood what you wrote.
I'd rather say that the crowd here is technically fit and policed enough to try to understand elaborate and forward-looking viewpoints, sometimes contrary to the doxa [0]. That makes comment so enjoyable to read. And it's also reassuring, that we can agree on some things on both sides of the planet .
edit : and some people who like to think of themselves as independent thinkers and live in SF by design or accident, will not like to see their opinions qualified as "SF" opinions. Works equally well for any part of the world.
> As for your downvoters
+1. This mechanism is a rather raw moderation system, people will abuse it to disqualify competing stances. There are options to refine it.
To clarify, I think this comes down to: can you afford your lawyer. Maybe you find a lawyer willing to work on contingency? Most of the time you won't (unless its a big case like a class-action - as far as I'm aware).
Could you perhaps explain how it works in your country or other countries, in such matters? I'm not necessarily knocking any non-US or non-UK judiciaries or jurisprudence(s); in fact if anything I find US or UK systems poisonous too - as you describe it - to a high degree in some cases.
But how does a modern, complex and non-homogeneous society aribiter cases without turning "poisonous" or odious to some members?
To my knowledge much of Europe, M.E., Asia and even S. America are composed of largely homogeneous populaces with a smattering of outsiders at best.
> But how does a modern, complex and non-homogeneous society aribiter cases without turning "poisonous" or odious to some members?
There is no perfect society in this regard. Just because it's hard doesn't mean that such societies shouldn't strive to reduce the odiousness, and maximize the fairness in the administration of justice, regardless of the subgroup that the contending parties may belong to. Fair and equal treatment under the eyes of the law is a cornerstone of human rights.
> To my knowledge much of Europe, M.E., Asia and even S. America are composed of largely homogeneous populaces with a smattering of outsiders at best.
You've listed regions that contain some of the most heterogenous countries on earth in ethnicity, language, and culture, like the UK, France, China, India, Iraq, Lebanon, Indonesia, Brazil.
Some of these countries have multiple, sometimes contradictory legal systems, some sanctioned by the state, others by religious power structures.
The country that is often referred to as among the most homogeneous societies in the world, Japan, has a pretty well acknowledged dual justice system for citizens versus visitors. All societies fail at this, but if anything, the very homogeneous societies fail the most at offering equal justice.
I'm talking about diverse, complex and modern as in a jurisprudence that takes into account many ethnicities and still manages to produce a letter of the law that multinational corporations find agreeable to do business in and yet at the same time subjects those corps to tough penalties with an enforcement mechanism to back it up.
Countries with a steady inflow of new migrants of all networths.
Countries that make real attempts to be fair to native born people and outsiders alike.
A country could speak 2 or 3 different languages and still a very largely monocultural way of doing things. Not to cherry pick but do you really think the Yighurs in China get a fair shake in a court? I really want to hear if you've read differently.
A country could have on paper very impressive law frameworks and yet in action be essentially meaningless since most of the population doesnt have access to fair representation.
Not mere grandiose legal frameworks with not an ounce of real world enforcement to back it up or go after bad actors in a legitimate way, without extra legal acts of justice or worse mob justice.
Pretty much any and every country you mentioned fails to meet atleast one or - in most cases - all of the criteria.
> Not to cherry pick but do you really think the Yighurs in China get a fair shake in a court? I really want to hear if you've read differently.
Definitely not. Multiethnicity is necessary, but insufficient condition
> Pretty much any and every country you mentioned fails to meet atleast one or - in most cases - all of the criteria.
That's obvious. I didn't say they were perfect, just far from homogeneous. And there's not much to learn from very homogeneous societies in this regard.
The question for the complex heterogeneous societies isn't whether they fail, but rather what direction they are moving in. Arguably both China and the US have moved backwards of late.
Some legal systems are less biased towards people with more money than others. I think the ones in northern Europe tend towards that, but I don't have specific examples and wouldn't expect them to be totally fair either.
Do those outcomes hold up if the innocent party caught the mistaken/bad-faith change before signing and knowingly proceeded to sign anyway?
Everything you said makes sense if it goes unnoticed until after signing, but I'm less sure about that scenario. Probably varies by jurisdiction, at least when both parties are well-resourced and sophisticated.
1) It was a mistake and it doesn't go to court.
2) It was intentional and it doesn't go to court because the attorney, while still being a piece of shit, understands what option 3 is.
3) It was intentional, it goes to court, and you produce the email evidence showing the attorney agreed to changeset N then sent along changeset N-1, and the provisions are thrown out because they were executed in bad faith.