Can You Legally Sign Away Your Spouse’s Right to Sue a Kentucky Nursing Home for Abuse or Neglect?
Nursing homes in Kentucky often require residents to sign lengthy admissions contracts that include binding arbitration clauses. Essentially, these clauses take away a resident’s right to sue the nursing home if they are the victim of abuse or neglect while at the facility. Instead, any disputes are submitted to binding arbitration, where plaintiffs often have far fewer procedural and substantive rights than they would in a traditional personal injury lawsuit.
Even in cases where a resident dies as a result of nursing home abuse or neglect, the arbitration agreement can still be enforced against their estate in a wrongful death claim. Indeed, Kentucky courts have said that nursing home arbitration clauses are valid even when signed by someone acting under a power of attorney or court-appointed guardianship to act on a resident’s behalf. So long as the nursing home declares arbitration a “mandatory condition of admission,” the agent’s consent is binding on the resident.
Kentucky Supreme Court: Wife’s Signature on Arbitration Agreement Not a “Health Care Decision”
Recently, the Kentucky Supreme Court considered whether or not this same rule applied to a person making health care decisions for an incapacitated spouse. This particular case, Lexington Alzheimer’s Investors, LLC. v Norris, addressed the application of Kentucky’s Living Will Directive Act to a nursing home admission. The plaintiff is the widow of a man who suffered from Alzheimer’s disease and died while under the care of the nursing home defendants.
In 2019, a Tennessee court appointed the plaintiff as her husband’s conservator, which authorized her to make certain decisions on his behalf. But the plaintiff had not taken the necessary legal steps to transfer her conservatorship authority to Kentucky. Nor did the plaintiff’s husband sign an advance directive or power of attorney granting her the right to act for him with respect to medical decisions. So when the plaintiff signed the paperwork to admit her husband into the defendants’ Kentucky nursing home, she maintained she did so under the Living Will Directive Act.
The Act contemplates this exact situation: Someone needs to make “health care decisions” for an adult who “does not have decisional capacity” and has not executed an advance directive expressing their wishes. In the absence of a court-appointed guardian or agent under acting a power of attorney, that role falls to the adult’s spouse. The question before the Supreme Court was whether the plaintiff, acting in this limited capacity, had the authority to bind her husband to the nursing home’s arbitration agreement.
The Supreme Court held that she did not. The Act limits a spouse’s authority in this context to “consenting to, or withdrawing consent for, any medical procedure, treatment, or intervention.” And under these circumstances, the Court said that did not cover the wife’s actions in signing the nursing home’s arbitration agreement. As such, she could proceed with her wrongful death lawsuit.
Contact a Madisonville Nursing Home Abuse Lawyer
Nursing homes insist on arbitration clauses because they want to keep cases of abuse and neglect outside of the public court system. That is why, if your spouse or loved one has been the victim of substandard care, it is critical you speak with a qualified Madisonville nursing home abuse lawyer right away. Contact Whitfield Crosby & Flynn today to schedule a free consultation. We have offices in Madisonville, Kentucky; Chattanooga, Tennessee; and Indianapolis, Indiana.
Source:
scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=2565731488871982802
