Nursing Home Arbitration Enforced

The South Carolina Supreme Court recently enforced a nursing home's arbitration agreement, in
Dean v. Heritage Healthcare of Ridgeway, LLC, __S.E.2d__, 2014 WL 2771300 (S.C. June 18, 2014).

As Liz Kramer explains:

the agreement said that “any arbitration proceeding that takes place under this [] Agreement shall follow the rules of the [AAA]“.  However, the AAA stopped accepting personal injury disputes based on pre-injury arbitration agreements in 2003.  The nursing home moved to compel arbitration and the trial court denied the motion.  It found that the language about the AAA rules meant that the dispute should be heard by the AAA and since the AAA was not available, the arbitration agreement was invalid.  The Supreme Court of South Carolina reversed.  But before the supremes could get to the merits, they had to overrule their own 1993 decision, which held that nursing home contracts did not involve interstate commerce.  After reviewing the intervening cases from SCOTUS, the court found the nursing home agreement does involve interstate commerce and is governed by the FAA.  On the merits, the court found that the availability of the AAA to administer the arbitration was not a material term and instead the parties’ agreement simply calls for the arbitration to be governed by the AAA rules, regardless of what entity administers the proceeding.