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Comment by nre | Hacker News Reader

> With "contracts" of adhesion proliferating, and how impossible it has become to exist in the modern world without acceding to them (something as simple as buying a new SSD involves agreeing to one), this problem is getting worse by the day.

The craziest example of this is how all these contracts are appearing in the physical world as well. There are stores that actually have a sign indicating that entering the store constitutes acceptance of contract terms (with a QR code that you presumably can scan with your phone to read the contract). I've also seen public parks with the same thing basically indicating that entry binds you to a legal agreement to not sue the park/follow posted rules/etc.

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There’s a dead reply to your post saying that this occurs because of the insanely litigious nature of the USA. I think it’s worth highlighting — business/property owners are essentially trying to use contract law to route around the fact that the US legal system is broken with regards to civil litigation and throwing out bogus cases. For example, having a private pool in your own back yard can make you liable for someone else’s child breaking in and injuring themselves in your pool because you not having enough barriers to stop them means you allowed the access.

> the US legal system is broken with regards to civil litigation

And the problem with that has a lot do with corporations. For instance, if you are a pedestrian and get hit by a car and end up in the hospital, in a lot of places in the USA your health insurance will not cover you at all -- you have to sue the driver and get compensated from their auto insurance. The logical method would be for your insurance to cover you and then the health insurance would recover costs through appropriate parties.

It is the same with ridiculous lawsuits like the aunt who sued her sister because the nephew jumped on her and threw out her back. In order to recoup medical costs she had to sue her sister since the sister had homeowner's insurance.

You can't entirely blame the legal system when the corporations are using it to perpetuate the problem for their own gains at the expense of everyone.

It's not either/or - the legal/legislative system is jointly at fault, for letting corporations run amok with generating endless complexity in the form of "terms" that nobody reads, understands, or actually agrees to. The big print of "health insurance" is that it covers medical expenses. From a basic legal perspective it should be impossible for any fine print to walk that back. From a consumer protection perspective, insurances sold to consumers should have to cover complete scopes that fulfill public policy goals.

I sometimes feel like insurance in general is one of the greater "hidden" evils in this world. They prey on your worries and fears, and then they try to do anything possible to weasel out of paying out when a fear becomes a reality.

Don't get me wrong, I think there is some good in it (mostly around risk calculations), but the entire industry feels scummy.

And the litigiousness is downstream of having freakish medical expenses and no universal safety net. An accident can incur costs your could work you whole life to pay off so of course there's a complex adversarial social system built around those consequences.

Note: if you think a dead reply is relevant, click on its timestamp and then on "vouch" to make it alive again.

Fortunately this is mostly done for defense. A company isn't going to sue you for violating a 12 page contract you walked by, but they might ask you to leave and not come back. They probably won't mention the contract until you sue them for illegal discrimination, at which point they will refer to the contract and argue they were only enforcing their own posted rules and not illegally discriminating.

Public parks saying that is kind of strange because the city or town could already set the rules by enacting an ordinance. Presumably they could also delegate that authority to the parks department. I suppose Parks might be doing it because the city council or mayor isn’t enacting the ordinances they want.

It is partly due to the crazy litigation in the US and the rewards people get for some coffee they spill on themselves just because the coffee was "too hot". There are two sides to this story and it is not only the business' owners who are the culprits here.

Look up that case. The victim suffered third-degree burns and required skin grafts. The myth that it’s a ridiculous, over-litigious case is just that: a myth. The coffee was absolutely too hot.

And it was caused by a profit-seeking behavior - an assumption that most, if not all people, would wait to drink the coffee until after they were out of the vehicle, which could be up to X minutes; as such they wouldn't want cold or lukewarm coffee. If most people equated mcdonalds coffee with "bad lukewarm coffee", less people would go to mcdonalds for anything, including coffee. I forget how hot they served the coffee, but it was up around 95C/200F. I know that you have to specifically request "extra hot" at places like SB and CB&TL, otherwise you get coffee hot enough to still be "hot coffee" after adding creamer, i venture 130F or so. AFAIK McDs doesn't offer "extra hot" coffee. Once bitten, and all.

I don't know about the changes made due to this lawsuit, but i reckon they changed their cups to keep ~120F coffee at that temperature longer.

edit: aside: I just realized why i prefer Fahrenheit even though i understand Centigrade. Stuff over 100F is "hotter than i am" It's intuitive in a way that merely remembering 37 is body temp (my dad was born in '37 so that's why i remember) and "anything over 40 is hot" doesn't really roll off the tongue, even though it's roughly as accurate as my ">100F is hot"

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