In a recent case, a healthcare and rehabilitation center appealed a trial court’s order denying its motion to dismiss and compel arbitration. The case arose out of a case in which a wife admitted her husband to the rehabilitation center’s nursing facility in accord with a durable power of attorney he had signed. He lived there for two years. Days after he was discharged, the husband died.
The wife sued as personal representative of his state for violating his nursing home residents’ rights, negligence and wrongful death. The nursing facility moved to compel arbitration. The wife had signed an arbitration agreement when her husband was admitted. Signing the arbitration agreement was a condition of being admitted into the nursing home.
The trial court, however, denied the nursing facility’s motion to compel arbitration. It found that the durable power of attorney did not give the wife authority to sign the arbitration agreement on behalf of her husband. It also found the agreement was substantively unconscionable because the estate didn’t have the ability to pay arbitration costs, and that is was procedurally unconscionable in the way the agreement was presented to the wife.