Nursing Homes Battle to Retain Mandatory Arbitration Clauses

June 23, 2008

  • June 23, 2008 at 7:08 am
    Punkin says:
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    You people have no idea what you’re talking about unless you’ve had arbitration against you.You have no rights in your own state so you can’t go to court. You have to abide by the ABR judges & believe me it’s unfair!

  • June 23, 2008 at 9:52 am
    Mark says:
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    Pull out the phone book — look at the back cover. Guarentee it’s a plantiff attorney ad including elder abuse speciality. Arbitration, Tort Caps, all attempts to reign in the % of settlement fees received by trolling plantiff attorneys. BTW – court case: Where were the children of this woman who placed their mother in the facility (medicaid only?). Seems a periodic visit would have surfaced the issues — but now they want to be millionaires. We call it Granny Dumping.

  • June 23, 2008 at 10:00 am
    Pete says:
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    Why does the industry need the secrecy of arbitration? A trial judge who hears a case non-jury doesn’t charge any extra money – your tax dollars already pay his/her salary. The judge’s opinions are public and each side has the the right to appeal an adverse ruling. The judge’s rulings add to the body of case law on the particular issue involved and perpetuate an important corner stone of American law – stare decisis. Arbitration does the opposite. Finally – every arb organization has a means for aggrieved litigants to “blackball” arbitrators for what they contend are biased opinions. Given that the industry is the only repeating litigant, it sure doesn’t seem fair …

  • June 23, 2008 at 2:11 am
    Justice Boy says:
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    No forced arbitration! It decreases access to justice It is unjust and n-American. Lawyers in the service of the bigs corps. came up with it–what did we expect? Eactly what we have gotten.

  • June 23, 2008 at 3:40 am
    chad balaamaba says:
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    This is just about opening the can of worms so more trial lawyers can try class action items.

    Arbitration works; anyone who says it doesn’t hasn’t tried it. I’m putting a loved one into once of these centers; I noticed the arb language…no problem.

  • June 23, 2008 at 4:18 am
    Cindy says:
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    If arbitration is so good for consumers why do businesses make it mandatory and fight to keep it enforceable even when it’s a violation of people’s rights? I know a few things about arbitration in consumer contracts after having ESCAPED having to go thru it. I found a way out of arbitration and was able to settle my dispute for nearly all my damages without going to trial. Had I been forced to arbitrate, based on what they were offering me, I’d have had to accept their low ball offer or maybe even get less. I found out in time that the arbitrator the business chose had many ethics problems. I also found out that industries do repeat business with arbitrators, and there’s plenty of evidence now of bias and of circumvention of laws.

  • June 23, 2008 at 4:30 am
    Paul Bland says:
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    The person claiming to be named “chad balaamba” says that arbitration is a way to avoid class actions. ?? Does chad know what a class action is? Class actions are lawsuits filed where everyone was cheated in the same way, like a phone company charging everyone in a state a municipal sales tax when most of the people in the state don’t live in the municipality. Nursing home cases are nothing like that. I’ve never seen a nursing home case where someone sued and said “oh, a drunken orderly accidentally drowned 35 people on the second floor, this is a class action.” Cases against nursing homes involve medical malpractice, elder abuse, etc.; horrible mistreatment of vulnerable persons. They are classic individual cases. This issue has nothing to do with class actions. Chad’s generic tort reform remark suggests he just opposes any remedy for any injured person, without thinking about what their cases might be.

  • June 23, 2008 at 5:38 am
    Calif Ex Pat says:
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    You guys yell at each other all you want – I’ve handled 100’s of nursing home cases and arbitration is the best way I’ve found to keep the cost (to the assets of each resident for the needed care) at a reasonable level. Drop the Arb clause and the daily rate will increase about 25% or more across the board. The issue most critical to care is staffing – add more staff and daily care costs more. Keep staff to necessary levels and care is delivered at competitive cost. If the person needing care has sufficient assets to afford the resources of Samarkand in Santa Barbara, hooray – for most it is simply not feasible….and most nursing home residents are medicare all the way

  • June 23, 2008 at 5:43 am
    John Vail says:
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    Arbitration is secret. Nursing homes don’t want people to know about what happens in them. That’s the reason for mandatory arbitration. Judge for yourself. Here are verbatim excerpts from the Suprem COurt of Arkansas in Advocat, Inc. v. Sauer, 353 Ark. 29, 111 S.W.3d 346, (2003):

    Here, Mrs. Sauer died in the care of Rich Mountain from severe malnutrition and dehydration. There was evidence presented that she was found at times with dried feces under her fingernails from scratching herself while lying in her own excrement.

    Mrs. Sauer was often times found wet without being changed in four hours. She had pressure sores on her back, lower buttock, and arms on days she was found sitting in urine and excrement. A former staff member remembered seeing Mrs. Sauer at one time with a pressure sore the size of a softball, which was open. Her sores and blisters became infected.

    She was described as “always thirsty” and her nursing notes indicated that she was heard moaning and crying. At the time she was hospitalized prior to her death, she had a severe vaginal infection. When she was in the geriatric chair, she was not “let loose” every two hours, as required by law. Finally, Mrs. Sauer was found to suffer from poor oral hygiene with caked food and debris in her mouth.

    We hold that the jury verdicts were not based on passion or prejudice. There was ample testimony and evidence presented to demonstrate that Mrs. Sauer suffered considerably and was not properly cared for, that Rich Mountain was short-staffed, and that the appellants tried to cover this up by “false-charting” and by bringing in additional “employees” on state-inspection days. Mr. Hemingway testified that these deficiencies were due to a shift in corporate philosophy that placed profits over proper patient care.

  • June 24, 2008 at 7:28 am
    Jordan Fogal says:
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    There should never be a time when consumers have to give up their constitutional rights for services.

    There should never be a time when someone is not accountable.If someone takes your money you have paid for a service. You have given good money in good faith.

    Why is big business trying to give mimumum standards of care and pay low wages and knowingly not have expert help for our elderly parents. Greed… the bottom line.
    It is sick when you want an out before you even have a patient. It is CMA, so if something happens, it an’t my job, it an’t my fault, the patient died in my care… oops to bad. But everything is fine in my world. Your mother may have starved to death because we forgot to feed her but you can’t do anything about it because no one is accountable anymore.
    NOW there is arbitration and arbitration fixes it where big business can get away with premeditated murder. If they were planning on taking good care of your parents they wouldn’t need arbitration clause.If they were planning to act responsibly there would be no need to force you into a binding arbitration clause. And they wonder why consumer confidence is so low? It is because we have lost faith in the system to protect us and our families.



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