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Comment by Buttons840 | Hacker News Reader

I'm not a lawyer, and don't know how the first suggestion would work with contracts that say things like "this represents the entire contract, any additions or addendums are void".

If the main portion of the contract says "all additions are invalid", and an addition says "this addition overrides the main contract", which one wins?

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This is called an Integration Clause and is meant to basically remove extra outside agreements from being considered, such as an additional verbal agreement not reflected in the contract language itself. Riders are considered part of the contract bell and exist before signing the entire contract, and are covered by the integration clause as part of the whole contract.

> Riders are considered part of the contract bell

Bell?

Sorry looks like an autocorrect artifact that I now cannot edit. Please strike the word in your mind as you read the sentence. :)

Too late, the main corpus of a contract is now officially known as the contract bell.

I don't know why I found this so funny, but it gave me a real laugh this evening.

The Language Instinct, in one section, gives some examples of ways in which an English sentence can be ungrammatical that people nevertheless rarely think of when they think about grammatical mistakes.

One of my favorites was "This sentence has cabbage six words". It's accurate! It's... almost well-formed! You have to fix "This sentence has six words" somehow, right?

This sentence has cabbage and seven words.

> This is something up with which we will not put!

to quote the great Churchill, when someone suggested that one should not end a sentence with a preposition.

Probably not Churchill:

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Winston_Churchill#Disputed

They have to sign the rider as well. Have a signature block on it. Also, in the signature block on the main contract, hand write in something like "agreed, as modified by the rider." That way you've made it clear that you haven't agreed to the main contract alone.

You obviously can't do this if everything is electronic. You've got to reject electronic-only contracts outright.

> in the signature block on the main contract, hand write in something like "agreed, as modified by the rider

This seems excessive. Yes, incorporation is a thing. But if you’re getting a rider with a supremacy clause signed at the same time as the main contract, the company is going to have a hell of a time arguing the latter is moot.

Yeah, but "misplacing" the addendum happens.

Somewhat piggybacking on what someone else said: you should always have a fully executed copy of the entire contract itself, and in the worst case a copy that the employer had signed (which is often enough). “Misplacing” an addendum can be a serious grounds for sanctions, but ideally you have the addendum with your copy and if possible there is additional evidence that there was an addendum, like perhaps contemporaneous notes or emails talking about the addendum.

How so? The only relevant copy of the contract, to you, is your copy. The counterparty can do whatever they want to try to manipulate the situation.

Or go through the DocuSign process but don't sign and download the PDF then add the rider and reupload the modified PDF to your DocuSign for them or just email them.

Docusign lets their customers withhold the ability to download PDFs.

Oh, did not know that. Thank you

Pretty nasty for a regular contract but maybe there are cases where this is ethical...

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