More Hospital Arbitration...

Goldman v. Sunbridge Healthcare, LLC, No. C069970 (D3 Oct. 28, 2013)

This case is very similar to the Young case decided by District 6 on the same day. It involves whether wrongful death claims arising from the treatment of a nursing home patient can be compelled to arbitration based on the signature of his wife, who held a power of attorney under an advance medical directive. As in Young, the court here holds that a non-signatory cannot be compelled to arbitrate because the person who signed the agreement with the arbitration clause did not have authority to bind a wrongful death decedent. The advance directives that the defendants relied on did not come into effect until the patient becomes incompetent, and there was no evidence that that was the case. Nor was the fact that the signatory was the wife of the patient sufficient to create an agency. Nor did the wife, in signing the forms for her husband, agree to arbitrate her own personal capacity survivor claims against the defendants. 

Affirmed.