Polygraph test used to out $2.8 million winner (cheat) of fishing tournament, can this by used in running?

Interesting. I hadn't heard of polygraphs being used on competition/contest winners before. I guess there's nothing that prevents you from sticking a polygraph requirement into a contract.

There is a federal law that generally bans employers from using polygraphs on job candidates or on their employees. Obviously that didn't apply here.

justthefacts wrote:

I guess you didn't read the article. The decision was not whether the polygraph test was valid, it was whether the promoters of the contest fulfilled their contract. They did, the fisherman did not. He agreed to the stipulation of having to pass the polygraph test and did not do so.

A deceptive contract provision can be thrown out by a court as "unconscionable." Certainly presenting a polygraph as a valid test is deceptive on the part of the promoters.

The word "unreliable" is misleading too, suggesting that there is some legitimate basis for polygraphs that sometimes goes wrong. They are in fact completely baseless. They function as an interrogation prop to try to bully or trick confessions out of people.

Tejas wrote:

Gwalkerruns wrote:

Why not put a go pro on each boat and give the competitor a number as the time starts. He must catch the fish and bring it in on camera while wearing the number....

I was thinking something like this. They can't just set up a live video feed on each boat?

There's got to be a better way than this lie detector test?

Yes, there is promising work being done with brain imaging that looks far more reliable. Also I wouldn't be surprised that with facial recognition software and A.I. that something very accurate will be developed out of that.

justthefacts wrote:

I guess you didn't read the article. The decision was not whether the polygraph test was valid, it was whether the promoters of the contest fulfilled their contract. They did, the fisherman did not. He agreed to the stipulation of having to pass the polygraph test and did not do so. Perhaps the fisherman will try and go back to court and get a ruling on the validity of the polygraph test, but I don't think he could win, since he agreed to taking it. Why make it more complicated than it is. The court ruled there was no bias on the part of the organization running the contest.

The only thing the polygraph measures is your excitement level. It measures heart rate, breathing, sweat. If they failed the question "what time do you start fishing?" all it means it that they got excited during that question. Could it be due to lying? Sure. Could they be telling the truth but got excited knowing that $2.8M was riding on this question? Yes, also a legitimate possibility.

Did the promoters fulfill the contract? Sounds like yes, but it was a bullsh*t contract. "Here's $2.8M but after the competition we get to administer a heart rate test and if you get excited once we start asking you questions, you lose the money." I'm not sure how that's a valid contract.

Polygraph? Please, this is faux science.

Don't screw up the sport even more with dumb stuff like this.

Well, with $2.8M at stake, you can bet they're looking at their legal options. Unconscionability is a high bar, though. Instead of requiring the winner to take a polygraph, they could have stipulated the winner had to balance a stack of dishes on his head while jumping on a trampoline. Equally dumb, but probably enforceable.

Not even Irish wrote:

Poly graphs are unreliable. I listened to a podcast on NPR that explains why it's now illegal to use them in most settings.

I heard that same show. TV shows make them look like they are invincible when we know from the moles in the FBI and CIA that they can be fooled.

My first thoughts exactly wrote:

The tournament cheated by using this excuse, to avoid paying the prize to them.

Tourney is going to pay the money out to somebody so unless they just didn't like the guys on this boat, they did not benefit by refusing to pay the prize to them.

A valid contract has nothing to do with the provisions. If both parties agree to it and it is executed properly, then it is valid.

Les wrote:

A valid contract has nothing to do with the provisions. If both parties agree to it and it is executed properly, then it is valid.

As the physicist Wolfgang Pauli used to say, this is so bad it isn't even wrong.

You might not like the doctrine of unconscionability; it certainly has its detractors. But there's no denying that it's part of the law of contract, and that it has been for hundreds of years. (Of course, some would argue that unconscionability goes to the question of whether parties agreed to the terms. An early English decision says unconscionable contracts are those "such as no man in his senses...would make...and no honest man would accept.")

And there are all kinds of contracts that will not be enforced b/c of their provisions, such as contracts for prostitution, heroin or murder.