At a first visit to an American doctor, the patient is handed a clipboard with forms. One asks the patient to sign that they have received the practice’s notice of privacy practices.
The HIPAA Privacy Rule requires a provider with a direct treatment relationship to “make a good faith effort to obtain written acknowledgments” from patients “that they have received the provider’s notice,” at first service delivery.
On June 30, 2000, at Congress Hall in Philadelphia, President Bill Clinton signed the Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act. He used a smart card to sign it. “With the swipe of a smart card and the click of a mouse, they will be able to finalize mortgages, sign insurance contracts, or open brokerage accounts.”
Under the law, a contract or signature “may not be denied legal effect, validity, or enforceability solely because it is in electronic form.” A consumer’s consent to electronic records cannot be assumed from silence.
In October 2023 Dr. Kanokporn Tangsuan died of a severe allergic reaction after eating at a restaurant at Disney Springs in Florida. Her husband, Jeffrey Piccolo, sued. Disney asked the court to send the case to arbitration. He had agreed to Disney’s terms when he signed up for a Disney+ trial in 2019, and again when he bought Epcot tickets online in 2023.
After public criticism, Disney reversed course in August 2024. “We’ve decided to waive our right to arbitration and have the matter proceed in court,” said Josh D’Amaro of Disney.
In October 2001, as the Enron investigation began, a lawyer at the accounting firm Arthur Andersen told employees to follow the firm’s “documentation and retention policy.” “Extensive shredding of documents and deletion of e-mail messages followed,” until November 9, the day after the SEC’s subpoena.
A jury found Andersen guilty of obstruction of justice on June 15, 2002. The firm surrendered its CPA license on August 31 and stopped operating in the United States. In 2005 the Supreme Court unanimously overturned the conviction because the jury instructions were too vague.
In Zubulake v. UBS Warburg, heard between 2003 and 2005, Judge Shira Scheindlin ruled that once a lawsuit is likely, a company must preserve its relevant records, including email. Lawyers must ensure this “by instituting a litigation hold on key data.”
UBS had failed to preserve relevant emails stored on backup tapes, although its duty to preserve began “at least as early as August 16, 2001.” The judge instructed the jury that it could infer the lost emails would have hurt UBS.
On June 8, 2017, the former FBI director James Comey testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee about his memos on his meetings with President Donald Trump. “I was honestly concerned that he might lie about the nature of our meeting, so I thought it really important to document.”
He said that the first meeting “led me to believe I’ve got to write it down in a very detailed way.” He added that he had never felt the need to document his conversations with Presidents Obama or Bush.
The U.S. Army has a standard document for putting a conversation in writing: the memorandum for record. Army Regulation 25-50 says: “Use the MFR to show the authority or basis for an action taken.”
It continues: “Also, use the MFR to document informal meetings or telephone conversations when official business was conducted.”
In The Verdict (1982), directed by Sidney Lumet, Paul Newman plays Frank Galvin, a lawyer suing a hospital for malpractice. Late in the trial, an admitting nurse testifies that her superiors forced her to change a number on the admitting form from “1” to “9.”
She had kept a photocopy of the original form because she “thought I might need it.” The judge excludes the copy: “We cannot accept a copy in preference to the original.” The jury finds for the plaintiffs anyway.
You had one job. — Said when the one thing that was required did not happen.
Close, but no cigar. — Nearly right is still not right.
Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. — In most things, a near miss earns nothing.
Nice try. — Often ironic. The effort is noted, and the result is still missing.
What have you done for me lately? — Past results do not count for long. The phrase is also the title of Janet Jackson’s 1986 single, which reached number four on the Billboard Hot 100.
In August 2010 the Los Angeles Times began publishing ratings of about 6,000 Los Angeles teachers by name. The ratings measured how much each teacher’s students gained on standardized tests, a method called value-added.
The reporter Jason Felch said that “individual teachers really matter.” Hundreds of teachers protested, and the union leader called for a boycott of the paper. The National Research Council had warned: “Too little is known about the accuracy of these methods to base high-stakes decisions on them right now.”