Health Care Facilities Continue To Generate Disputes About Enforceability Of Arbitration Provisions.
Sometimes you can predict the conclusion in a court opinion after reading the recitation of facts. Here, the evidence pointed to a 74 year old women, suffering from dementia, who entered a residential care facility between December 29, 2022, and January 1, 2023, and who alleged that she had been sexually assaulted in the care facility. She had signed an agreement that was 44 pages long, and included several appendices and other material. The agreement and arbitration clause were in 8 to 10 point font, and included multiple and confusing signature blocks. The trial judge credited the testimony in the declaration of Haydon's daughter that Haydon had been placed under considerable time pressure to sign, under pain of losing a discounted price. The agreement also contained a confidentiality clause providing not only that the proceedings would be confidential, but also that the existence, contents, and results of the arbitration would remain secret -- a troubling provision in an Elder Abuse situation, as it would be in the interest of subsequent residential care applicants to know if the facility was implicated in elder abuse. Additionally, there were restrictions on discovery, and plaintiff was required to bear her own fees and costs, despite the nature of the consumer arbitration and Elder Abuse case. Small surprise that the trial court found the arbitration agreement to be unconscionable, and the Court of Appeal affirmed. Haydon v. Elegance at Dublin, A168767 (1/3 12/19/23) (Petrou, Fujisaki, Rodriguez).
COMMENT: The opinion mentions that Haydon suffered from dementia. It does not, however, say that she was mentally incompetent. In a case where the record is developed and establishes incompetence, it should be unnecessary to address substantive and procedural unconscionability, for the issue would simply be whether a contract had been formed.
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