SCOTUS Overturns Kentucky Supreme Court in Nursing Home Arbitration Case
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The Supreme Court of the United States has reversed the Kentucky Supreme Court’s decision in a nursing home arbitration dispute. Kindred Nursing Centers Limited Partnership v. Clark, No. 16-32, (May 15, 2017), initially consisted of three separate cases where a family member who held the power of attorney for an individual who was being admitted to a Kentucky nursing home signed a pre-dispute binding arbitration agreement as part of the admission documents. In each case, the family member later brought individual personal injury and wrongful death lawsuits against the nursing home where their loved one resided claiming the poor care that was provided by the facility directly resulted in the resident’s death. In response to the three lawsuits, each respective nursing home filed a motion to compel arbitration based on the various agreements that were signed by the family members upon the decedents’ admission to the skilled care facilities. In all three cases, the nursing home’s motion was denied.
The three lawsuits eventually made it to the Kentucky Supreme Court where they were consolidated into a single interlocutory appeal. With regard to two of the cases, the Kentucky Supreme Court ultimately held “the authority to enter into a pre-dispute arbitration agreement was not among the powers granted to respective attorney-in-fact and, therefore the arbitration agreements were not formed with the assent of the party to be bound thereby.”
The Kentucky high court continued:
Read original articleWe further conclude that without a clear and convincing manifestation of the principal’s intention to do so, we will not infer the delegation to an agent of the authority to waive a fundamental personal right so constitutionally revered as the “ancient mode of trial by jury.” Consequently, because none of the power-of-attorney instruments involved in these cases provide a manifestation of the principal’s intent to delegate that power to his agent, we conclude that the agent was not so authorized, and that the principal’s assent to the waiver was never validly obtained. Accordingly, we deny the motions for interlocutory relief. In so doing, we affirm the orders of the Court of Appeals.
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