Arbitration & Mediation

Wife Verbally OK's Husband to Sign Papers Is Agency to Sign Arbitration Clause

By Christopher B. Hopkins, Esq.

In our last post, we discussed the Nebraska Supreme Court decision in Koricic / Baker v. Beverly Hallmark to find that a family member "agent" could be authorized to signed the "principal" into a nursing home but the court would later parse through the clauses to decide which terms might not be included.

Consider, on the other hand, a trial court order in Brenda Ann Christenson, by and through Stephen Christenson v. The Abbey Rehabilitation and Nursing Center, Senior Health Management - Gold Coast, LLC; Capital Source, Inc. et al. where a judge came to a different conclusion on familial agency.

In Christenson, the validity of an arbitration agreement was at issue when a wife was admitted to a nursing home and orally gave her husband an unambiguous, all inclusive general grant of authority to sign "a bunch of papers" on her behalf, without limitation, and created a situation where the people at the nursing home reasonably believed the husband had such authority.

The court considered the situation akin to recent Florida long term care cases examining the scope of a power of attorney and likened that extension of authority to general agency-principal situations. While powers of attorney are strictly construed (Estate of McKibbin), a sufficiently broad, unambiguous, general grant of authority is a factual question and, if answered affirmatively, will lead the agent to bind the principal as courts indicated in Jaylene v. Moots, Five Points v. Mallory, and Sovereign Health Care of Tampa v. Est. of Huerta.

Here, the trial court was the finder of fact and determined that such a broad granting had occurred -- relying on two 60+ year old Florida Supreme Court cases which noted that agency could exist even if both agent and principal later deny (we presume that was the case here, although we also question if the same agent-principal couple are the named plaintiffs).

Take a look at the conclusion in the Nebraska case and contrast with Aguesta v. Industrial Fire and Casualty Co., which was cited in paragraph 16 of the order.

Full post as published by Florida Arbitration Law on November 02, 2009 (boomark / email).