So after our Copyeditor’s Desk client tried to faze an indemnity clause past us in our 2009 contract, I politely demurred. We couldn’t, said I, sign a contract in which we promised to pay their lawyer’s fees for any action they should take against us, regardless of whether we were in the wrong or the right. In Arizona, I observed, courts generally award lawyer’s and court fees to the complainant if the suit is found to have substance. And, I added, the proposed arrangement was not fair to us.
It worked. The client allowed as how this paragraph was a piece of boilerplate she’d lifted off the Web and thanked us for pointing out its unfairness. She asked that we simply cross out and initial the offending passage and said the company would accept the revised agreement.
What a relief! Naturally, I wasn’t happy about causing a stink over a contract with our bread-and-butter client. On the other hand, there’s no way we could have agreed to any such arrangement. Better to go hungry now than to be pauperized later by circumstances over which you have no control.
A$k, and ye shall re¢eive.
Hey Funny! I found you through Miss Thrifty’s post. I thought I’d say hi and introduce myself before commenting since I’m new to blogging and hadn’t commented before, so hi!
Anyway, I’m glad you were reading the fine print. It is so easy to just sign on the dotted line, and it is admirable to look into things more closely!
Since I started working for a woman with very particular views about what she does and does not sign, I’ve learned that this is true of most contracts and particularly true of contracts used by sales people.
Unless the contract is being handed to you by a lawyer who wrote it to specifically apply to your individual situation/agreement, it’s all just boilerplate. Heck, even if a lawyer is giving it to you there’s a 50/50 chance he or she just copied the boilerplate and changed the names.