Nursing home arbitration agreements have proliferated in recent years as they are slipped into admission contracts and agreed to with little thought or notice by residents and their families. In Massachusetts, one man has been at the center of the fight against the harsh enforcement of the agreements by arguing that an individual signing on behalf of another does not bind the resident. In this case, the man’s mother, just after her 100th birthday, was suffocated by her dementia addled roommate. When sued, the nursing home forced the case to arbitration, with an arbitrator who had handled hundreds of cases for the home’s lawyers, and prevailed without opinion or comment by the arbitrator. Currently, the case is before an appeals court that is considering an argument that has found success in other states which states that an arbitration agreement is not binding except when signed by the resident but not a power of attorney holder.
See Michael Corkery & Jessica Silver-Greenberg, Pivotal Nursing Home Suit Raises a Simple Question: Who Signed the Contract?, The New York Times, February 21, 2016.
Special thanks to Lewis Saret & Riley Branch for bringing this article to my attention.
