Sometimes a Power of Attorney Just Isn't

Hutcheson v. Eskaton Fountainwood Lodge, No. C074846(D3 Nov. 28, 2017, on rehearing)

Nursing homes loooooove arbitration. So they put arbitration clauses in all of their admission contracts. Problem is, the admittee is often not in a capacity to contract or even in the physical condition to sign it. So a question that can come up is whether the person who does sign the contract has the power to bind the patient to arbitration as a principal or some other related doctrine that can bind non-signatories to an arbitration agreement.

Here, the signatory is the patient’s sister, who is acting on her behalf under a statutory power of attorney. Someone else, however, had been designated to make the patient’s medical decisions under a separate heath care power of attorney under Probate Code § 4671(a). The nursing home knew that to be the case. And, as the court finds here, the decision to put someone in a nursing home belongs to the attorney-in-fact for heath care, not the more general attorney in fact under the statutory POA. So under the circumstances, the signatory lacked authority to bind the now-dead patient to the agreement to arbitrate.

Affirmed.