Federal public policy favors arbitration and the broad interpretation and enforcement of arbitration agreements. So how can an arbitration agreement be held by a court to be void as against public policy? One answer from a state court (in circumstances where the Federal Arbitration Act did not apply) is that toying with a statutory arbitration scheme could do the trick.
In Hernandez v. Crespo, No. SC15-67, 2016 Fla. LEXIS 2718 (Fla. Dec. 22, 2016), the Supreme Court of Florida held that a physician-patient arbitration agreement that seemed to adopt the arbitration provisions of the state’s Medical Malpractice Act (“MMA”), Fla. Stat. Ann. § 766.207-212, was void as against public policy because it actually created a heavily imbalanced arbitration scheme by contracting around most of the patient-friendly statutory terms.
