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It isn’t always fraud or lying - you apply for insurance. Insurer asks you a million questions. One is “do you have a trampoline”? You honestly answer “No”. The

It isn’t always fraud or lying - you apply for insurance. Insurer asks you a million questions. One is “do you have a trampoline”? You honestly answer “No”. The fine print of the application form says you have to tell them if at any time your answers change. After a while, you forget it even asked you about a trampoline. Then, you get your kid a trampoline. Per insurance fine print, you are suppose to inform the insurer of this change in circumstances immediately, but you’ve forgotten that. Also, it depends on the jurisdiction, but while the insurer can try to void the whole contract, courts don’t always let them do it, especially if the policyholder convinces the court it was an innocent mistake or oversight rather than a deliberate lie.

tptacek 3y ago
This is not a good example of "fine print", because trampolines are notorious sources of injury. It's like if you added a pool to your property and didn't tell your insurer because you "forgot the fine print". You can plead that, but if I was your neighbor, I'd be rooting for the insurer. Knowing about the dangers of things you set up on your property is on you.
- skissane 3y ago
  We used to have a trampoline. We never once told our insurer about it. When I first applied for the insurance (at the same time we bought the house), I have no memory of being asked if we had one (we didn't at the time). I don't remember ever seeing that question from them, although I can't be completely certain it wasn't on some piece of paper and I didn't notice it. If they never ask, I'm under no obligation to tell them.
  - tptacek 3y ago
    Look, I hear you, but at some point this has to be on you. The CPSC has a thing dedicated to trampolines. The Mayo Clinic has articles about it. It is a huge cause of injuries of minors around the country. I'll grant that this is slightly more obscure an issue than swimming pools, but there are tons of swimming pool buyers who would make similar claims ("nobody told me swimming pools were that risky, this is just fine print mumbo jumbo"), and I don't think anyone here would entertain those.
    - skissane 3y ago
      Well, I'm not in America, and I'm wondering if this is an American thing? I just checked my insurance policy. The word "trampoline" never once occurs in it. I don't think my insurer cares about trampolines. If I think about it: given the absurdly large payouts for some injury lawsuits in the US, I understand why American insurers might be particularly sensitive to things that might induce injury, like trampolines. Given Australian courts tend to be much more modest in the damages they award, I can see why Australian insurers might not see them as something worth paying any special attention to. Also, even in the US: it might seem obvious to someone who grew up there, but for an immigrant from a country with a different insurance system, it wouldn’t be obvious
      - firesteelrain 3y ago
        It is an American thing and the WSJ is generally American articles so you are going to get a lot of American-related responses.
      - Eisenstein 3y ago
        To explain the lawsuit issue, here is a perfectly plausible scenario and how it could play out somewhere in the USA.: 1. A person is at a friend's house for dinner 2. Upon leaving to go home, they trip and fall trying to navigate an unlit path to their car 3. Their injury lands them in the hospital and requires a week or so of recovery time in which they could not work, and as they contract out they lose that money 4. The health insurance that fully covered their injury, looks at the medical records and finds that the injury occurred on another property and calls the people involved and finds out about the unlit path 5. They deny payment for the medical treatments and tell the injured person to sue the friend for medical payment because they are at fault and they have home owner's insurance 6. Forced to sue the friend or be out tens of thousands of dollars, the injured person adds to the claim for lost wages (hey, the friend isn't paying for it anyway, the insurance is) This is how you end up with such lawsuits that the USA is famous for -- people are forced to sue other people in order to not go bankrupt, and things get piled on that.
        3y ago
- BeFlatXIII 3y ago
  Glad you’re not my neighbor.
WalterBright 3y ago
Our economy runs on contracts. If one is able to avoid the terms of the contract by claiming one didn't read it, the whole system falls apart. (When I bought a house, the sales contract was maybe 50 pages. I went to the escrow company to sign. The escrow agent was visibly annoyed that I leaned back in the chair and set about reading every page. One of the pages that needed to be signed said nothing but "I have read and understood this contract.")
- skissane 3y ago
  > If one is able to avoid the terms of the contract by claiming one didn't read it, the whole system falls apart. Except, Courts have ruled that you can, at least sometimes, get out of the fine print of a contract by claiming you didn't read it. For example, see the notable 1962 Supreme Court of California case, Steven v. Fidelity Casualty Co [0]. In 1957, plaintiff purchased a life insurance policy covering plane crashes, from a vending machine in Los Angeles, with his wife as the beneficiary. His itinerary took him from LA to Chicago, and from there to Dayton, Ohio. On his return from Dayton to Chicago, he'd scheduled a one night stopover in Terre Haute, Indiana. In the morning, he went to the airport in Terre Haute, and was distressed to discover the flight had been cancelled due to technical issues, and he was going to miss his connection in Chicago. The airline agent referred him to a charter airline, who organised a charter flight for him and a handful of other passengers back to Chicago. Sadly, the charter flight crashed, and he died. His widow sought to claim on the life insurance policy. The insurer denied the claim, on the grounds that the fine print of the policy said that it only applied to scheduled air carriers, not charter flights, and hence the flight on which the insured died was excluded. His widow sued the insurance company in the name of her deceased husband. The trial court sided with the insurer, on the grounds that this clause was clearly stated in the fine print of the policy, which the policyholder was expected to have read, and he had signed to say that he had. However, on appeal, the Supreme Court of California overturned the judgement, and ruled for the widow. It held that, for consumer insurance contracts, any clause or exclusion which the policyholder could not have reasonably expected, must be pointed out prominently, not buried in the fine print. Since, it ruled, the policyholder had no particular reason to expect the exclusion of charter flights, and the insurer had not prominently stated that exclusion in the policy (e.g. by using a larger font), it was not legally binding. And, from what I understand, the rule established in this 1962 case is followed in California law to this day, and has also been adopted by the courts of several other US states [0] https://casetext.com/case/steven-v-fidelity-casualty-co https://casetext.com/case/steven-v-fidelity-casualty-co

tptacek 3y ago

This is not a good example of "fine print", because trampolines are notorious sources of injury. It's like if you added a pool to your property and didn't tell your insurer because you "forgot the fine print". You can plead that, but if I was your neighbor, I'd be rooting for the insurer. Knowing about the dangers of things you set up on your property is on you.

skissane 3y ago
We used to have a trampoline. We never once told our insurer about it. When I first applied for the insurance (at the same time we bought the house), I have no memory of being asked if we had one (we didn't at the time). I don't remember ever seeing that question from them, although I can't be completely certain it wasn't on some piece of paper and I didn't notice it. If they never ask, I'm under no obligation to tell them.
- tptacek 3y ago
  Look, I hear you, but at some point this has to be on you. The CPSC has a thing dedicated to trampolines. The Mayo Clinic has articles about it. It is a huge cause of injuries of minors around the country. I'll grant that this is slightly more obscure an issue than swimming pools, but there are tons of swimming pool buyers who would make similar claims ("nobody told me swimming pools were that risky, this is just fine print mumbo jumbo"), and I don't think anyone here would entertain those.
  - skissane 3y ago
    Well, I'm not in America, and I'm wondering if this is an American thing? I just checked my insurance policy. The word "trampoline" never once occurs in it. I don't think my insurer cares about trampolines. If I think about it: given the absurdly large payouts for some injury lawsuits in the US, I understand why American insurers might be particularly sensitive to things that might induce injury, like trampolines. Given Australian courts tend to be much more modest in the damages they award, I can see why Australian insurers might not see them as something worth paying any special attention to. Also, even in the US: it might seem obvious to someone who grew up there, but for an immigrant from a country with a different insurance system, it wouldn’t be obvious
    - firesteelrain 3y ago
      It is an American thing and the WSJ is generally American articles so you are going to get a lot of American-related responses.
    - Eisenstein 3y ago
      To explain the lawsuit issue, here is a perfectly plausible scenario and how it could play out somewhere in the USA.: 1. A person is at a friend's house for dinner 2. Upon leaving to go home, they trip and fall trying to navigate an unlit path to their car 3. Their injury lands them in the hospital and requires a week or so of recovery time in which they could not work, and as they contract out they lose that money 4. The health insurance that fully covered their injury, looks at the medical records and finds that the injury occurred on another property and calls the people involved and finds out about the unlit path 5. They deny payment for the medical treatments and tell the injured person to sue the friend for medical payment because they are at fault and they have home owner's insurance 6. Forced to sue the friend or be out tens of thousands of dollars, the injured person adds to the claim for lost wages (hey, the friend isn't paying for it anyway, the insurance is) This is how you end up with such lawsuits that the USA is famous for -- people are forced to sue other people in order to not go bankrupt, and things get piled on that.
      - 3y ago
BeFlatXIII 3y ago
Glad you’re not my neighbor.

WalterBright 3y ago

Our economy runs on contracts. If one is able to avoid the terms of the contract by claiming one didn't read it, the whole system falls apart. (When I bought a house, the sales contract was maybe 50 pages. I went to the escrow company to sign. The escrow agent was visibly annoyed that I leaned back in the chair and set about reading every page. One of the pages that needed to be signed said nothing but "I have read and understood this contract.")

skissane 3y ago
> If one is able to avoid the terms of the contract by claiming one didn't read it, the whole system falls apart. Except, Courts have ruled that you can, at least sometimes, get out of the fine print of a contract by claiming you didn't read it. For example, see the notable 1962 Supreme Court of California case, Steven v. Fidelity Casualty Co [0]. In 1957, plaintiff purchased a life insurance policy covering plane crashes, from a vending machine in Los Angeles, with his wife as the beneficiary. His itinerary took him from LA to Chicago, and from there to Dayton, Ohio. On his return from Dayton to Chicago, he'd scheduled a one night stopover in Terre Haute, Indiana. In the morning, he went to the airport in Terre Haute, and was distressed to discover the flight had been cancelled due to technical issues, and he was going to miss his connection in Chicago. The airline agent referred him to a charter airline, who organised a charter flight for him and a handful of other passengers back to Chicago. Sadly, the charter flight crashed, and he died. His widow sought to claim on the life insurance policy. The insurer denied the claim, on the grounds that the fine print of the policy said that it only applied to scheduled air carriers, not charter flights, and hence the flight on which the insured died was excluded. His widow sued the insurance company in the name of her deceased husband. The trial court sided with the insurer, on the grounds that this clause was clearly stated in the fine print of the policy, which the policyholder was expected to have read, and he had signed to say that he had. However, on appeal, the Supreme Court of California overturned the judgement, and ruled for the widow. It held that, for consumer insurance contracts, any clause or exclusion which the policyholder could not have reasonably expected, must be pointed out prominently, not buried in the fine print. Since, it ruled, the policyholder had no particular reason to expect the exclusion of charter flights, and the insurer had not prominently stated that exclusion in the policy (e.g. by using a larger font), it was not legally binding. And, from what I understand, the rule established in this 1962 case is followed in California law to this day, and has also been adopted by the courts of several other US states [0] https://casetext.com/case/steven-v-fidelity-casualty-co https://casetext.com/case/steven-v-fidelity-casualty-co