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This is not the first time and will certainly not be the last time such companies do this. I have seen a documentary where insurance people bluntly asked relati

This is not the first time and will certainly not be the last time such companies do this. I have seen a documentary where insurance people bluntly asked relatives how much their beloved husband/wife/kid was worth. I think it's very strange people can actually sign their rights away. That should be illegal worldwide.

wahern 7y ago
You walk into a store, grab a beer, pay the clerk, and walk home. The moment you finish drinking it you get a knock at the door--it's the store owner demanding his beer back. Version 2: a knock at the door--it's the original brewer demanding his beer back. The abstract notion of "contracting" your rights away isn't bad on its face. In situations as with the crash victims, the real issue here is informational asymmetry, and specifically that the insurers are abusing this asymmetry in a particularly reprehensible manner. The asymmetry is that the families know very little about how much compensation the insurer is capable of paying while the defendant probably knows rather well the economic circumstances of the family. And the families might be incapable--i.e. time limited, because they lost their head of household--of expending the resources to discover this information. By contrast, the beer example is unobjectionable because these factors didn't exist, at least not to the same extent. Various legal systems have mechanisms for dealing with these issues. Categorically banning the relinquishment of rights, however, means there would never be any finality to the exchange of goods and services, or to legal disputes.
- b3lvedere 7y ago
  Agreed. Of course i meant in regard to the news item. Products is a whole different kind of thing. I am well aware people/pets/other living things/who knows what more might be considered products in some kind of legal mumbo jumbo. In regard to the news item: The company bloody well knows how vurnable and unstable these people are. The company also knows it can actually legally persue this morally and ehtically bottom low tactic in order to pay as less as possible and maximise profit as much as possible. That is a well known process for many years. So, in order to protect these people from these processes it should be made illegal to sign away rights. Maybe a cool down period is more than enough, but there needs to be some form of protection from this process.

wahern 7y ago

You walk into a store, grab a beer, pay the clerk, and walk home. The moment you finish drinking it you get a knock at the door--it's the store owner demanding his beer back. Version 2: a knock at the door--it's the original brewer demanding his beer back. The abstract notion of "contracting" your rights away isn't bad on its face. In situations as with the crash victims, the real issue here is informational asymmetry, and specifically that the insurers are abusing this asymmetry in a particularly reprehensible manner. The asymmetry is that the families know very little about how much compensation the insurer is capable of paying while the defendant probably knows rather well the economic circumstances of the family. And the families might be incapable--i.e. time limited, because they lost their head of household--of expending the resources to discover this information. By contrast, the beer example is unobjectionable because these factors didn't exist, at least not to the same extent. Various legal systems have mechanisms for dealing with these issues. Categorically banning the relinquishment of rights, however, means there would never be any finality to the exchange of goods and services, or to legal disputes.

b3lvedere 7y ago
Agreed. Of course i meant in regard to the news item. Products is a whole different kind of thing. I am well aware people/pets/other living things/who knows what more might be considered products in some kind of legal mumbo jumbo. In regard to the news item: The company bloody well knows how vurnable and unstable these people are. The company also knows it can actually legally persue this morally and ehtically bottom low tactic in order to pay as less as possible and maximise profit as much as possible. That is a well known process for many years. So, in order to protect these people from these processes it should be made illegal to sign away rights. Maybe a cool down period is more than enough, but there needs to be some form of protection from this process.