Wrongful Death Nursing Home Suit
The Chicago Personal Injury Lawyer Blog has posted an article about a wrongful death lawsuit against a nursing home in Missouri.
In 2003, the resident, Dorothy Lawrence, began living at Beverly Manor Nursing Home in St. Joseph, Missouri. At the time Lawrence's daughter, Phyllis Skoglund, had power of attorney for her mother and signed the contract with the nursing home on behalf of the resident. This contract included an arbitration clause that stated that "any and all claims, disputes and controversies [regarding the nursing home's care and treatment of Lawrence] shall be resolved exclusively by binding arbitration.
However, Lawrence died shortly after entering the nursing home. Her daughter filed a wrongful death suit, claiming that being dropped by the nursing home staff attributed to her death. The trial court said that the case could proceed even in spite of the arbitration clause in the nursing home contract.
The Missouri Supreme Court found that the wrongful death claim was not derivative from any claims the resident might have had. Further, that the arbitration agreement cannot prevent parties from filing a wrongful death suit. The Supreme Court's reasoning for this was that “the only signature to the agreement is in her capacity as her mother’s agent”.The defendant nursing home had argued that because the resident and her daughter could only bring one wrongful death suit they were both bound by that contract. However, the Supreme Court disagreed with this line of reasoning because it "require[d] this court to find that by signing on behalf of her mother, Skoglund also is signing on her own behalf and on behalf of the wrongful death plaintiffs.” Yet the court felt that Skoglund was only signing in the capacity of her mother's power of attorney and not on her own behalf, or did she sign it as a representative of the potential wrongful death beneficiaries. Therefore, the wrongful death claim was not barred because of the signed contract.
