Waiver of liability: can I be required to waive an institution from liability from its negligence? A certain University in New Jersey is holding a conference and organising an afternoon of excursions and leisure activities. It requires that participants sign a waiver containing the clause (emphasis mine): In exchange for {UNIVERSITY}’s grant of permission for Participant to participate as a registered Conference Participant in an excursion or activity, for himself or herself, his or her parents, guardians, heirs, assigns, agents, and all those in privity with Participant, do hereby release, waive, discharge, and covenant not to sue {UNIVERSITY}, its trustees, officers, employees, and agents from liability from any and all claims, including negligence, personal injury, accidents, assaults, kidnappings, or illnesses (including death) and property or economic loss related to or arising from, but not limited to, participation in the Seminar[sic]. and also: I have read this waiver of liability and assumption of risk agreement, fully understand its terms, and understand that I am giving up substantial rights, including releasing the University from all liability related to or arising out of the Conference excursion or activity. I acknowledge that I was provided this document with sufficient time to consider its provisions, ask questions and to seek review of it counsel[sic]. I am signing the agreement fully and voluntarily, and intend by my signature to be a complete and unconditional release of all liability to the greatest extent allowed by law. It isn't realistic for me to seek professional legal advice on a waiver for an afternoon's excursion. To what extent does NJ law allow an institution to demand a waiver from the negligence of itself or its agents?
The University is probably entitled to put a term like this in its contract. In general, one can waive in advance, liability for negligence, but not gross negligence, willful and wanton misconduct, reckless conduct, or intentional conduct, from the person seeking the waiver. The New Jersey Supreme Court upheld the validity of these clauses in the case of Gina Stelluti v. Casapenn Enterprises LLC (August 5, 2010), which involved a negligence waiver in a contract with a private gym. Also, since this is conditions on an afternoon of fun activities, rather than something mandatory or necessary, this waiver does not appear to be conditioned on giving up a substantial thing to which you are otherwise entitled. If the waiver were conditions upon something which you had an unconditional right to (e.g. a public high school education), it might not be valid because it would not be supported by valid consideration. In contrast, here, you get the right to participate in something fun, which you did not have an unconditional right to have, in exchange for the liability waiver.
There is, in general, a rule that all matters connected with a single transaction or event should be included in a single legal case. Different jurisdictions apply this diffidently, and I haven't yet researched this in Maryland specifically. Also, if you agree to pay a part of what the landlord claims, you will quite likely be asked to sign a settlement agreement as part of the transaction. This is likely to include a release of all claims connected with your tenancy at the apartment. If it does, and you sign the agreement, you will be giving up any claim you might otherwise have because of the failure to properly notify you. You may want to consult a lawyer about this. A one-time consultation might not be very expensive. If you sued the landlord, you could do so in small claims court, where legal costs are significantly lower than in other courts.
You could bring a motion to compel for failing to respond substantively to a motion to admit which is objected to, just as you could for an interrogatory. The process is the same. Normally, a request to admit would not be deemed admitted if a substantive objection was filed by the deadline, even if there was no express admission or denial. Only if the objection were completely and utterly meritless would a judge be likely to order that the request to admit would be deemed admitted in that case since the response was a de facto non-answer and the objection was a mere sham. @Iñaki Viggers states in his answer: the purpose of a request for admissions is [to attempt] to stipulate --rather than to discover-- the facts on which plaintiff and defendant agree. This is not really true. A request to admit is a discovery tool to prevent you from having to prove up what should be non-controversial facts that might nonetheless take time or documentation to prove at trial and to gather evidence for in advance of trial. The questions in a request to admit are typically ones that the other side would not willingly stipulate to (for example, because they'd like to be able to offer testimony to explain a seemingly unfavorable fact) but may not be able to deny. If a party denies a request to admit and then offers nothing to support the denial in discovery practice or at trial, that party risks court sanctions for the groundless denial. Good litigation practice is also always to include some requests to admit that are effectively outcome determinative to give the opposing party a chance to screw up and essentially default the case by not responding on time.
Because the law of negligence has developed to include a duty of care between physicians and patients and the standard of care encompasses the things you describe. The common law conceives of the doctor and patient in such a close relationship of neighbor-ness that it makes sense to impose such a duty. The harm that flows from breach of that duty is often reasonably foreseeable. Another distinction is that you come to a physician with an illness and expect care and they purport to deliver it. Their care and advice is often not a product/service that you might have the option of not buying. There is no competing legal duty that pulls the physician in any other direction than to meet the standard of care. There is no corresponding duty of care between an instructor and student to instruct any particular syllabus content. It would be a novel addition to the common law if this were to be recongized. There is no standard of care dictating the content of the syllabus. Any obligation to deliver a particular syllabus would be placed on the professor by the university (perhaps further dicated by professional accrediting bodies). I do not foresee the common law developing to include such a duty of care between professor and student. The value of academic freedom weighs against the law imposing a strict duty on syllabus content and the kind of harm that might flow from presenting out-of-date information is vague and not often reasonably foreseeable. Such a duty could give rise to a spectre of of indeterminate liability. And it isn't clear that the interest in presenting the latest and current theories always outweighs the interest in presenting a historical perspective. These are all reasons why I highly doubt the common law would ever evolve to recognize the duty you're proposing.
I like easy questions: you can’t. You can limit but not eliminate liability with people you have a contract with. You can’t limit liability with third parties. You need to consult a lawyer and buy insurance.
If I may paraphrase the scenario: The customer has a contract with the insurer The customer is contemplating undergoing a certain procedure and is unsure if it is covered under the contract The customer calls the insurer to ask this specific question The insurer says "yes" The customer undergoes the procedure The insurer refuses to pay on the ground that it is not covered under the contract. Let's put aside issues of evidence and what can be proved and assume these facts are not in dispute. There is no question that the contract has been renegotiated; it hasn't. This avoids the necessity of considering if the insurer's employee has the authority to do this or it the customer can rely that they do even if they don't. There are two possibilities: The procedure is covered and the insurer must pay under contract The procedure isn't covered and the insurer must pay under the tort of negligent misstatement. The insurer is vicariously liable for the actions of its employee. The insurer owes a duty of care to a customer who asks such a question to answer it correctly. It is foreseeable that the customer would act on the insurer's advice and incur costs that they may have avoided if the correct advice had been given. Nothing is ever certain in the law but this is as close as you can get.
No, you are not obligated to provide the requested information. You're out of trial court and into the court of appeals, where the civil discovery rules have basically no effect. If the case gets kicked back to the trial court, you would likely be required to respond truthfully. To cover your bases and look responsible, the most proper thing to do would probably be to respond to the discovery requests, but answer with nothing but an objection to the requests on the basis that the Rules of Civil Procedure do not apply after the case has been dismissed. At that point, the burden is on the other party to make a motion to compel, which he probably won't do. And if he does, I'd expect the court to deny it summarily based on the dismissal.
Probably Not In general, the law gives a school significant discretion on how to run its courses and grade its exams. And it is unlikely that getting into a lawsuit over a grade will be a good way to proceed. You could explain more fully to your instructor why you feel unfairly treated, and if not satisfied by the response, go to the department chair or other higher authority as the structure of the school may provide. I would suppose that the instructor had permission to require the 3rd party software, or that school policy gives an instructor that option. It might be worth confirming that, however. For future tests you might be able to shutdown or suspend all popups to avoid the problem happening again. A &quot;game mode&quot; sometimes will do that.