Today’s Star Tribune has a front-page article focusing on the dangers of forced arbitration clauses contained in nursing home and assisted living admission agreements. The article features a Kosieradzki Smith Law Firm case and Joel Smith (left). Investigative reporter Chris Serres warns: “Over mounting objections from consumer groups and regulators, arbitration agreements…
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) released a new rule this past Wednesday that prohibits nursing homes from forcing binding arbitration on residents. For years, many nursing homes in Minnesota and throughout the country included clauses in their admission contracts that required patients and families to agree in…
Many nursing home admission contracts contain arbitration clauses whereby the resident gives up (usually unwittingly) the right to have legal disputes resolved in court. In many situations, it is not the resident himself or herself who signs the nursing home’s admissions papers, including any binding arbitration agreement contained therein. Rather,…
Many nursing homes and other care facilities are inserting terms into their admission contracts that protect them from being held accountable in a court of law. Buried in these multi-page documents are terms that consumers don’t see, gloss over, or fail to appreciate. The facility’s representative does little, if any,…
