Appeals Court OK's Trial Judges' Order Nixing Nursing Home Arbitration Clause

The panel stopped short of ruling on the Cobb County judge's decision that the arbitration agreement was unconscionable.

By Greg Land

Bethany Schneider, Atlanta. (Photo: John Disney/ ALM)

The Georgia Court of Appeals ruled a nursing home’s mandatory arbitration agreement signed by the guardian of an elderly man raped at the facility is unenforceable because his guardian lacked authority to sign away his right to trial.

But the court on Tuesday did not rule upon the trial court’s determination that the agreement was unconscionably one-sided in favor of the nursing home, determining it needn’t reach that issue because it already declared the agreement void.

“As far as we can tell, this is an issue that’s never been addressed in Georgia: whether a guardian appointed by the probate court has the power of attorney to waive someone’s constitutional rights,” said Bethany Schneider of Schneider Injury Law, who represents the now-deceased man and the aunt who served as his guardian.

Schneider said that, while the court did not rule on the unconscionability of the arbitration agreement, such documents are commonplace in the nursing home industry.

“This decision shows that nursing homes usually think it’s automatic that any dispute is going to arbitration. This gives us more teeth on the trial level to fight those agreements,” said Schneider, whose co-counsel includes Katherine Hughes and Gretchen Holt of Wagner Hughes, and appellate lawyers Michael Terry and Jennifer Peterson of Bondurant, Mixson & Elmore.

The Clinch Healthcare Center in Homerville is represented by Kevin Quirk and Kellie Holt of Quirk & Quirk and Karen Smiley of Huff, Powell & Bailey. They did not reply to request for comment Wednesday.

According to Schneider and court filings, Leroy Wiggins, who died in December at 70, had been mentally incapacitated for many years when his aunt, Minnie Fountain, was appointed his guardian by the Clinch County Probate Court in 2006.

In 2014, Fountain sought to have Wiggins admitted to the nursing home, and she signed an arbitration agreement stipulating, among other things, that “any and all claims or controversies … whether arising out of State or Federal law, whether existing or arising in the future, whether for statutory, compensatory or punitive damages, and whether sounding in breach of contract, tort, or breach of statutory or regulatory duties (including, without limitation, any claim based on an alleged violation of the state bill of rights for residents of long-term care facilities or federal resident’s rights, any claim based on negligence, any claim for damages resulting from death or injury to any person arising out of care or service rendered by the Facility or by any officer, agent, or employee thereof acting within the scope of his or her employment, any claim based on any other departure from accepted standards of health care or safety, or any claim for unpaid nursing home charges), irrespective of the basis for the duty or of the legal theories upon which the claim is asserted, shall be submitted for arbitration.”

The agreement also said the resident “has the right to seek legal counsel concerning this Agreement; [t]he signing of the Agreement is not a precondition to admission … and this Agreement may be revoked by written notice to the Facility from the Resident within thirty (30) days of signature.”

Fountain, whom Schneider said is also about 70, would later sign an affidavit saying she had to “sign this large stack of paperwork to admit Leroy” and that she “must sign all of the documents in order for Leroy to be admitted.”

She also said she was not told she could consult a lawyer and never discussed the agreement with Wiggins or asked his permission to sign it.

Fountain was “not permitted to make any changes to any of the documents or cross anything out” or “negotiate any of the documents or the wording on any of the documents,” according to her appellate brief.

In 2017, another resident who had already been accused of sexually assaulting other residents over a period of two months raped Wiggins.

Schneider said the police were called but that nursing home staff denied the accused assailant had been on site that day, and no charges were ever filed.

Fountain sued Clinch Healthcare’s corporate parent, CL SNF LLC and several related entities for negligence and other claims in Cobb County State Court last year.

Clinch filed a motion to enforce the arbitration agreement and stay the case.

Judge Jane Manning denied the motion to compel, writing that the arbitration agreement was “decidedly one sided” in favor of the nursing home. But Manning also denied Fountain’s motion to declare that she had no authority to sign the agreement waiving his rights including those to a jury trial.

Both sides agreed that the issues should go before the Court of Appeals, and Manning granted a certificate for an interlocutory appeal.

The May 19 opinion authored by Judge Brian Rickman with the concurrence of Judges Stephen Dillard and E. Trenton Brown III agreed with Manning that the arbitration agreement was unenforceable but not necessarily because it was unconscionable.

Instead, Rickman wrote, Fountain’s letters of guardianship issued by the probate court bestowed “the general duty ‘to protect and maintain the person of the ward” and more specifically, ‘to see that [Wiggins] is adequately fed, clothed, sheltered and cared for, and that [Wiggins] receives all necessary medical attention.’

“In addition,” he wrote, “the Letters of Guardianship provide that Fountain’s ‘authority to act pursuant to these Letters is subject to applicable statutes and to any special orders entered in this case.’”

The “plain language” of the statute declaring the duties of a guardian “does not provide Fountain authority to sign the Arbitration Agreement,” Rickman said.

The law “empower[s] a guardian to establish a place of dwelling and provide any necessary consents or approvals for ‘medical or other professional care, counsel, treatment, or service.’”

There is no evidence that Fountain’s signing of the agreement was a decision made in Wiggins’ best interest, “because signing it was not a condition of admission to the facility and the claims that were bound to arbitration had not yet arisen, making it impossible for her to determine at that time whether waiving Wiggins’s right to a jury trial would be in his best interest,” Rickman said.

“Accordingly, the Arbitration Agreement is not enforceable against Wiggins, and the trial court properly denied the motion to compel arbitration,” the opinion said.

Hughes, who specializes in nursing home litigation, said such agreements are routinely presented to family members or guardians trying to admit a residency, and few realize that they may not have to sign them.

“Unfortunately, almost all Georgia nursing homes are presenting families with arbitration agreements to sign along with their admission paperwork and people do not realize or understand what they are signing or the significance of the agreement (that it takes away the right to a jury trial) and that the agreement is usually voluntary and not required for admission,” said Hughes via email.

“We need a public service announcement for families to stop signing these agreements,” she said. “There is no upside to the families to signing these agreements.”

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Appeals Court OK's Trial Judges' Order Nixing Nursing Home Arbitration Clause

Seniors should not have to leave their constitutional rights at the nursing home door

Editorial: Signing an arbitration agreement when entering a nursing home means forfeiting your right to judicial recourse if you're harmed

Iowans in nursing homes are frequently not able to advocate for themselves. They may be confused. They may be too sick to report abuse. Family may not be nearby to help out.

The rest of us have an obligation to do everything we can to protect them. That includes not only working to prevent abuse, but providing recourse if it happens and sending a message to nursing homes they will be held accountable.  

Sen. Chuck Grassley prides himself on being an advocate of seniors. He held a hearing this year on abuse and neglect in nursing homes. He was the lead author of an abuse prevention bill signed into law by former President Obama. 

Now he should devote his attention to protecting the constitutional rights of people in care facilities. He can do this by advocating for legislation banning homes from requiring residents to resolve disputes through arbitration. 

Bear with us while we explain what’s at stake.

When you enter a nursing home or assisted living center, there is a stack of paperwork to sign. It likely includes an arbitration agreement requiring you to take any grievance with the home to an arbitrator instead of the courts.

If you don’t sign it, you may not be admitted. If you do sign it, you may forfeit legal recourse if you’re abused, neglected, not fed, dropped, stolen from, not given medication or encounter other problems.

Iowans entering nursing homes are fragile and will typically sign anything put in front of them, said West Des Moines attorney Tom Slater, whose firm represents people injured in long-term care facilities.  

“Whether or not the nursing home admission personnel explains the documents, the explanation is colored in favor of the nursing home, and the resident is encouraged to sign the document believing that the home has their best interest at heart,” he said.

Giving up your constitutional right to judicial recourse is not in anyone’s best interest. 

Former President Obama knew this. He knew homes entrusted with the care of seniors, frequently for-profit businesses, should not be sheltered from public accountability before a judge and jury. His administration finalized a federal rule prohibiting homes paid by Medicare or Medicaid from requiring that incoming tenants sign these agreements. 

The nursing home industry sued to stop the rule from going into effect. Donald Trump was elected. The Trump administration is crafting a new rule opposed by senior advocates, including Dean Lerner, the former director of the Iowa Department of Inspections and Appeals, which oversees nursing homes. 

Numerous U.S. senators supported Obama's rule. A 2017 letter to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) signed by 31 of them urged it not to reverse the prohibition on arbitration agreements that “stack the deck against residents and their families who face a wide range of potential harms, including physical abuse and neglect, sexual assault, and even wrongful death at the hands of those working in and managing long-term care facilities.”

But instead of letting the years-long labyrinth process of rule making play out, Congress can address this issue now. The Des Moines Register editorial board asked Grassley his thoughts on legislative action.   

He said it’s worth Congress having more information on how agreements are used, and there are “pros and cons” to arbitration. He also raised questions about the impact of the cost of lawsuits on nursing home care. “And does that increased cost just mean more money in lawyers’ pockets, instead of victims?”

Of course, nursing homes are less likely to be sued if residents are not hurt. The fear of public lawsuits may encourage hiring adequate and trained staff.

Lawyers are not the problem. They help deliver justice for victims when no one else — including the government — stands up for vulnerable Americans.

Grassley can work across the aisle with other lawmakers already crafting legislation related to arbitration in care facilities. This is a bipartisan issue. Both Democrats and Republicans find themselves at the mercy of a nursing home.

This reminds us of the ruling in the landmark 1969 Tinker v. Des Moines schools case before the U.S. Supreme Court, which held that students do not “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.” 

No Iowans should have to leave their constitutional rights at a nursing home's door. 

Arbitration agreements strip Iowans of right to sue for wrongdoing

West Des Moines attorney Tom Slater knows firsthand how arbitration agreements can rob people of their rights: His firm represents clients injured by nursing home neglect. 

He told a Register editorial writer about a woman who was left alone, fell and sustained serious injuries that required several months in the hospital. 

“When she sought an attorney to file a case in court, she could not do so because buried in the volumes of admission papers that she was required to sign was a 'pre-dispute arbitration' clause,” he said. The arbitrator awarded “a pittance of the medical expenses she incurred" and little for her anguish. The award could not be appealed. 

“At some point in a person’s life, whether they are in the lowest valley or on the highest mountain, they will likely enter a nursing home and will suffer an injury. This would include our legislators and their loved ones," Slater said. "They should ponder this when considering legislation to prohibit pre-dispute arbitration clauses in nursing home admission agreements.”

This editorial is the opinion of the Des Moines Register’s editorial board: Carol Hunter, executive editor; Kathie Obradovich, opinion editor; Andie Dominick, editorial writer, and Richard Doak and Rox Laird, editorial board members.

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Seniors should not have to leave their constitutional rights at the nursing home door

Families Fight To Bring Nursing Home Lawsuits Out From Behind Closed Doors

CREDIT: AP PHOTO/CARLOS OSORIO

Piri Balazs didn’t intend to stay at Cambria Care Center, a nursing home in central Pennsylvania, for more than a week or two. The otherwise healthy 91-year-old woman had fallen and fractured her hip while gardening — which required surgery — and was directed to Cambria for a brief rehab stay. “No more than ten days,” her doctor had said.

Instead, Piri was taken out of Cambria by her sons three months later in drastically worse shape than she was when she entered.

    “My mother was a very proud woman. She was a charming and happy person. It was immediately obvious something had changed.”

A clear case of neglect, Piri’s sons decided to sue Cambria, in what they thought would be a cut-and-dry case. But, thanks to a growing trend among nursing homes to push lawsuits behind closed doors, instead of to a juried, public court trial, they quickly discovered it wouldn’t be so simple.

Their mother’s case illustrates the dangers of the status quo — one that, despite serious pushback from advocates and lawmakers, continues to go unchecked while hundreds of mistreated and abused nursing home patients are left without justice.

Piri’s sons, Joe and Csaba, were shocked by how quickly their mother’s health deteriorated under Cambria’s “care.”

With two spine fractures from serious falls, a large, infected ulcer on her heel that prevented her from walking, incontinence from not being able to get to the bathroom, receding gums from poor hygiene assistance, and a dramatic weigh loss from not being given her dentures, Piri had become a “changed individual.”

“My mother was a very proud woman,” said Joe. “She was a charming and happy person. It was immediately obvious something had changed.”

Joe and his brother had pulled their mother out of Cambria after weeks of demanding change from staff and administrators. Instead, staff changed her records to cover up this neglect. Only after the Department of Health inspected the facility — altered to the problems by the Balazs brothers — did they realize nothing was going to improve.

Only after returning home, and receiving needed care from an in-house nurse, did Piri’s health finally improve. But, Joe said, she never was quite the same. She passed away within the year. And her sons sued.

The case was quickly forced into private arbitration from a judge, since Cambria had a document showing Joe’s sign-off of an arbitration deal (a document that he doesn’t recall). To a judge with a full docket, it was likely an easy decision. But to the Balazs’ attorney, Peter Giglione, the move meant all transparency was out the window.

“Private arbitration means no public court records, no accountability,” Giglione said. “It’s a way to keep the company’s public image clean.”

First, Cambria refused to share any medical records or documents Giglione requested prior to the arbitration — something that would be mandated by law in a normal court proceeding.

    “Private arbitration means no public court records, no accountability. It’s a way to keep the company’s public image clean.”

Then, there was the silence. Following the July 2015 arbitration, Giglione and the Balazs brothers were told they’d get a decision in “two to three” weeks. Despite numerous calls and emails, they have yet to hear a word back from the arbitrator.

“It’s been over a year now of me calling at least once a week,” Giglione said. “No response.” There’s no strict deadline to rule on a case in arbitration.

This isn’t the first time Giglione’s been strung along by residential care companies. Balazs’ case is the sixth lawsuit against a nursing home he’s arbitrated on. These kind of closed-door cases have quickly become commonplace under the federal law allowing them, a law that civil rights advocates say take advantage of the most vulnerable.

When a client is admitted to a nursing home, either they or a family member are given a stack of paperwork to sign off on. Buried in this stack is a contract about private arbitration, whose wording can easily convince a rushed reader that it’s a smart call. Like Joe, the clients usually discover this only after they sue.

“It is unreasonable to assume that residents or their loved ones are able to comprehend the likelihood of grievous harm or poor care occurring within a facility when these agreements are signed upon admission,” wrote a group of 39 health and aging advocates in a letter to Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) in October. “No one should be expected to anticipate or contemplate the occurrence of such tragedies.”

Those advocates — along with 34 senators, 16 state attorney generals, 32 House members, 19 consumer justice groups, and the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) — are pressing the federal government to update its nursing home standards to address this issue.

    “There’s no real reason for this rule to exist.”

The first “major update” in nursing home standards in 25 years could have finally banned private arbitration clauses in nursing home contracts. Instead, to advocates’ upset, it only proposed updated wording in the contract itself in an attempt to make it clearer.

This proposed update won’t help people like Sherry Turner-Frazier, who signed her admittance papers at a Kentucky nursing home despite having “severe dementia.” One of those papers was an arbitration agreement that was used against her when her family sued the hospital for neglect.

In early August, CMS sent the final text of the updated standards to the federal budget office, but it’s yet to be known if they took advocate’s comments into consideration.

If they didn’t, Giglione said, “they aren’t going to change anything.”

“The only real way to stop this is to get rid of arbitration all together.”

Full Article & Source:
Families Fight To Bring Nursing Home Lawsuits Out From Behind Closed Doors

Nursing Home Residents Still Vulnerable to Abuse

People entering nursing homes need to know that all reasonable safeguards are in place to ensure quality care. But federal rules to be finalized soon fail to hold nursing homes truly accountable to patients, their families or the law.

At issue are arbitration clauses in nursing home contracts that require consumers to settle any disputes that arise over products or services through private arbitration rather than through lawsuits. Corporations of all sorts love forced arbitration because it overwhelmingly tilts in their favor and shields them from liability. But in the process, it denies justice to consumers, investors, patients and others who find they have no legal recourse when wronged.

Forced arbitration is especially problematic in nursing home disputes, which are generally about care, not money. (Medicare andMedicaid pay many nursing home bills.) Typical claims involve neglect or abuse leading to broken limbs,dehydration and untreated pain.

The proposals, by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, should have banned pre-dispute arbitration clauses in nursing home contracts. Instead, they basically condone them as long as these homes take some legalistic steps to explain and disclose the clauses and do not make signing them a condition of admission. Those provisions skirt the real problem. Prospective patients do not have the necessary information to make a decision about signing the clauses. How could they before a dispute even arises? In essence, families are being asked to anticipate the likelihood of grievous harm and legal ramifications. A nursing home admission is stressful and confusing enough without your being asked to sign away your right to sue.

The proposed rule acknowledges “concerns” about forced arbitration and notes that regulators solicited comment on whether the clauses should be banned. A ban is needed — and if nursing home regulators won’t impose one, the White House Office of Management and Budget, which will review the rule before its scheduled release in September, needs to ask for a revision. If the industry wants to seek private arbitration it should be allowed to do so, but only after a dispute arises, not before.

Source:
Opinion:  Nursing Home Residents Still Vulnerable to Abuse

Protect nursing home patients and families

South Pasadena Convalescent Hospital was decertified by federal regulators in January

By Henry A. Waxman
Special to The Bee

Imagine your elderly mother had a stroke and upon discharge from the hospital she needs to go directly to a nursing home. As you’re admitting her, the nursing home makes you sign an agreement giving up all of your legal rights in the event of a future dispute.

You might not like it, but what choice do you have? If you refuse to sign, she’ll be left with nowhere to go for the care she needs.

Unfortunately, this is the harsh reality facing families in this stressful, often dire situation – and it’s one that will continue under regulations proposed by the federal Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

That’s why, as an original author of the Federal Nursing Home Reform Act that granted the center regulatory authority over nursing homes, I strongly urge it to ban forced arbitration because its sole function is to evade accountability.

Obviously, no one enters a nursing home expecting to be mistreated or a victim of malpractice. And most nursing homes provide high-quality care. But not all do, and not all of their problems are caught or corrected by regulators. In fact, more than one of every three patients admitted to a nursing facility has suffered a medical error, infection or other serious injury. So when patients are victims of negligence, wrongdoing or abuse, they must have the opportunity to pursue justice, not only as their right, but as an indispensable means of exposing poorly run facilities and forcing them to fix what’s wrong.

Predispute arbitration clauses deny patients and their families this fundamental right – an injustice made all the more egregious because they are almost always signed under duress.

And it gets worse: If your mother suffers abuse or neglect and you choose to do something about it, you will enter a kangaroo court in which the outcome is rigged against you. Not only does the nursing home choose the arbitrator (who then has a financial incentive to side with the home to obtain repeat business), but you have no right to appeal the decision of the arbitrator, who may have little or no legal training.

Plus, the proceedings are kept secret, so none of the problems that caused your mother harm will ever see the light of day. In fact, you are often under a gag order banning you from raising these issues with outsiders, including state inspectors.

Simply put, this makes a mockery of the law I helped write and of my decades of work in Congress to strengthen patient rights.

While the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services acknowledges this, and while its proposed rules purport to enhance residents’ quality of care, the specific criteria for binding arbitration agreements places a nearly insurmountable roadblock for families seeking justice.

None of the organizations opposing predispute forced arbitration oppose voluntary arbitration after a dispute. While some plaintiffs may want their day in court, others may choose arbitration as a means of reducing the cost and increasing the speed of a remedy. What matters is that this decision occurs after harm has been done, with both sides on equal footing, jointly determining ground rules and selecting an independent arbitrator.

No one should accept the denial of justice and evasion of accountability that would result from the proposed rule.

Henry A. Waxman, who represented California’s 33rd Congressional District from 1975 to 2015, is a past chairman of the House Energy and Commerce and Oversight and Government Reform committees and is now a consultant for the American Association for Justice, the advocacy group for trial lawyers. He can be contacted at henry@waxmanstrategies.com.

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Protect nursing home patients and families

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/opinion/op-ed/soapbox/article45254682.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/opinion/op-ed/soapbox/article45254682.html#storylink=cpy

MN to feds: Nursing homes shouldn’t ask families to sign away right to sue

Minnesota is among more than a dozen states whose top attorneys want the federal government to make it easier to sue a nursing home over allegations of neglect or wrongful death.

Lori Swanson joined attorneys general from 14 other states and the District of Columbia in urging Congress to ban nursing homes from asking families to sign a contract sending any claims to binding arbitration instead of a court.

Congress is considering a rule that would do that and asked states for input. (Read the states’ comments here.)

The attorneys say residents of long-term care facilities are hurt by “‘take it or leave it’ fine print contracts … in which consumers are required to waive their right to seek judicial resolution.”

At many nursing homes families must sign an agreement pledging not to sue if something goes wrong. That could change https://t.co/X3Iu0sHDe5

— WBEZ (@WBEZ) October 19, 2015

A report from National Public Radio uses a Minnesota case to illustrate why critics of the status quo are calling for change.

The network relates the case of Virginia Cole, whose husband went into a coma two weeks after he moved into a nursing home. The family’s lawyer says Dean Cole was found to have become dehydrated at the nursing home and died within a month.

Three private arbitrators upheld the family’s wrongful death claim. But those arbitrators – and attorneys and expert witnesses – charge for their services. After paying those costs, NPR says, the Cole family was left with less then $20,000 from their winning case.

Separate contracts in Minnesota

The CEO and president of Care Providers of Minnesota, Patti Cullen, tells Forum News Service that in Minnesota arbitration agreements are not part of admission to a nursing home, but are presented as a separate contract.

Cullen tells Forum News her group has urged Congress to leave the rules as they are, saying “It is a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist.”

But Swanson says even though the agreement is presented separately, she hears from many consumers who don’t realize they’ve signed away their right to sue.

Noting that family members admitting a loved one to long-term care are often going through a trauma, Swanson told MPR News: “It’s not the type of situation where people are in a great capacity to say, ‘Gee, I noticed here on page 32 this clause.'”

Full Article & Source:
MN to feds: Nursing homes shouldn’t ask families to sign away right to sue

Binding Arbitration Unhelpful in Elder Care Dispute

When Karen Fritz retired from a career at Rosauers Supermarkets nine years ago, she began taking care of her aging mother.

Soon, it became apparent her mom, Alice Newton, could no longer look out for herself. Her vision was failing. She was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. Fritz moved in with her. It was a challenge, but it was also a joy, Fritz said. They planted a garden together. Fritz would put her mom in her wheelchair and take her out shopping.

“We had a lot of fun,” said Fritz, who is now 71.

But in 2009, Newton stopped sleeping well. She wouldn’t stay in her bed at night. Fritz, exhausted, turned to a new facility in Spokane Valley for help. Fritz put her mom in the center for a few days of respite care, so she could get some badly needed rest.

What happened at the Pine Ridge Alzheimer’s Special Care Center over the next six days is a matter of sharp dispute, and of a legal process that’s done virtually nothing to clarify that dispute. Fritz says her mother returned home with unexplained bruises and rug burns, complaining in consistent and specific ways about abuse and threats from caregivers at the center.

The center denies that it abused or neglected Newton and says the ailing woman made many accusations that were, on their face, untrue. A state inspector was coincidentally at the center during Newton’s stay and investigated her claims, finding that the center had improperly turned off her bed alarm and not investigated her claims quickly enough, but issued no abuse or neglect citations, said Gerald Kobluk, the attorney who represented Pine Ridge and its owner, JEA Senior Living.

“JEA Senior Living is one of the good guys out there,” Kobluk said. “They have an exceptional reputation and a spotless record.”

The case exemplifies many of the legal and personal challenges that surround an aging population, including the highly uncertain way that many claims against elder care facilities are resolved. When she put her mother into Pine Ridge, Fritz agreed to resolve almost all disputes through binding arbitration. An arbitrator awarded her $150,000 in December based on her claim of negligence but ruled in favor of the center on Fritz’s claims of neglect and abuse.

Under state law, negligence is a “failure to exercise ordinary care.” Under the Vulnerable Adult Protection Act, neglect is a “pattern of conduct or inaction” that causes harm by someone with a duty to care for a vulnerable adult.

Fritz’s attorney, Doug Spruance, calls it “an impossible ruling,” and an example of the way that binding-arbitration agreements limit a plaintiff’s ability to seek justice. He sees the finding as contradictory, the kind of thing that should be tested on appeal.

“You can’t have no neglect and have negligence,” he said. “I’ve won losers and I’ve lost winners throughout my career. I’ve never seen something that I feel so strongly would be reversed on appeal.”
The use of binding-arbitration agreements is increasing as long-term-care facilities try to hold down their liability expenses, which are steadily rising. Critics of the agreements say that many people – like Fritz – enter them unknowingly or thoughtlessly, and are signing away their rights to a jury trial or appeal.

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Shawn Vestal:  Binding Arbitration Unhelpful in Elder Care Dispute

Don't Sign Arbitration Agreements in Nursing Homes

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Don't Sign Arbitration Agreements in Nursing Homes