Nursing Home Cannot Compel Arbitration of Executrix’s Wrongful Death Claim
This post has been viewed 2,712 times.
The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a Kentucky district court’s refusal to compel arbitration of an executrix’s wrongful death claim against her decedent’s nursing home in Richmond Health Facilities-Kenwood, LP v. Nichols. No. 15-5062 (6th Cir. Jan. 15, 2016). The trial court’s order requiring the arbitration of other state law claims was not appealed, nor was its order staying litigation pending completion of the arbitration.
The Sixth Circuit found that its decision was controlled by an earlier ruling of the Kentucky Supreme Court in Ping v. Beverly Enterprises, Inc., 376 S.W. 3d 581 (Ky. 2012), cert. denied, 133 S. Ct. 1996 (2013). Ping had held that because an action for wrongful death is a claim of the decedent’s beneficiaries, not the decedent, the decedent’s consent to arbitration in a nursing home admissions agreement could not be relied upon to force the beneficiaries to arbitration. The Sixth Circuit rejected the nursing home’s multi-faceted argument that Ping was preempted by the FAA under Concepcion, finding that Ping did not categorically prohibit arbitration of wrongful death actions, and does not disfavor arbitration agreements. The Court summarily rejected the home’s argument that the splitting of the Executrix’s claims between arbitration and court would result in “res judicata complications, dual track discovery, waste and duplication”.
Nichols is in line with other post-Concepcion cases that take a hard look at the issue of consent. States that, unlike Kentucky, hold that wrongful death claims are derivative of the decedent’s claim, find that the wrongful death beneficiaries are bound by the decedent’s agreement to arbitrate.
Read original articleTags:
