A federal court in Mississippi recently compelled arbitration of negligence claims against a defendant nursing home. Myers v. GGNSC Holdings, LLC, No. 2:11CV133-B-A (N.D. Miss. May 8, 2013) (Click here to see copy of opinion). The injured plaintiff’s son had signed the agreement, and the court reasoned that the plaintiff was a third party beneficiary of the arbitration agreement. As an alternative basis for finding the plaintiff bound by the arbitration agreement, the court also found that the plaintiff had executed a broad power of attorney authorizing the son to enter in such agreements.
The defendant nursing home responded to the lawsuit by asking the court to find the plaintiff’s claims were time-barred, and in the alternative, to enforce the arbitration agreement. The federal court considered, and ultimately rejected, the statute of limitations defense. In effect, by considering this issue, the court treated the defendant as engaging in a partial waiver of its arbitration agreement regarding this narrow statute of limitations issue. (Another court may have simply refused to hear the statute of limitations argument and compelled arbitration of the entire dispute. See this other recent case involving an analogous set of facts.)