Arbitration & Mediation

Florida Trial Court Holds Treating Doctor and ARNP Not Intended to be Included in Resident-Nursing Home Arbitration Agreement

By Christopher B. Hopkins, Esq.

Several years ago, some plaintiff lawyers developed an argument to avoid arbitration where they would agree that the defendant corporation was subject to arbitration but the plaintiff would then sue individual employees of the defendant corporation and claim those individuals were not signatories. This would create pressure on the defendant since its current/former employees would be sued in a separate case.

Along came the case of Alterra v. Linton (Graham) in 2007, which effectively ended the dispute with the common-sense analysis that the defendant corporation was nothing without its employee human beings and they, by implication, were within the scope of the arbitration agreement.

A Hillsborough County trial judge was recently confronted with a different twist on this dispute and was asked whether a resident's treating doctor and nurse practitioner could avail themselves of the resident-nursing home arbitration agreement. The trial court answered "no," reasoning that the doctor/ARNP were not employees nor agents of the defendant and were either (a) health care providers for the resident PRIOR to admission or (b) they were health care providers DURING the admission but not in a situation where the nursing home was reasonable for their actions in a respondeat superior situation. Moreover, the court disagreed that the doctor/nurse were intended third party beneficiaries.

Here is Judge Neil A. Roddenbery's trial order: Mary Laurine Umstead by and through Carol Donaldson v. Horizon Bay Management, LLC d/b/a Merrill Gardens at Lutz; Allison Foster, ARNP; and Pritesh & Tarak, P.A. d/b/a Sunmed Primary Care.

Full post as published by Florida Arbitration Law on December 23, 2009 (boomark / email).