Nursing Home Abuse
If you are admitting a loved one to a nursing home or you are being omitted yourself, this is an overwhelming process, and everyone deserves to be treated with respect and care when they are entering these facilities. however this does not always happen. One way this doesn’t always happen is when a nursing home may ask you to fill out a procedural form that is called a predispute arbitration agreement.
This agreement is going to take away all of your rights to hold the nursing home accountable for any and all potential negligence or wrongdoing that you experience while you are in this nursing home. So if you signed this you cannot hire a nursing home abuse lawyer such as the ones at Davis and Brusca LLC, because you have signed all of your rights away regarding anything that you might experience in this nursing home. This means you are never going to have the chance to determine whether you should or should not go to court.
You do not have to sign this agreement when you are entering a nursing home however, they might push you to sign this agreement because it does cover the nursing home in any case of abuse or negligence. It is also important to understand when you are going over this form what a dispute is, in a dispute is going to be any event in which you are harmed as a person.
Examples of some disputes are:
- Receiving the wrong medication
- Receiving the wrong dosage of medication
- If you develop bedsores
- If you develop ulcers
- If you suffer any injury that has been caused by neglect
- If you have any financial difficulties such as having your money or belongings stolen
- If you are physically abused or assaulted by a resident or staff member
- If you are sexually assaulted by a resident or staff member
These are all just the most common examples of what nursing homes are looking to cover up when asked to design a predispute arbitration agreement. Think of this like a blanket form where you are saying you can do whatever to me, and I can do nothing to right that wrong.
There are many reasons not to sign this agreement. Let’s going to go over some of them below, and you should always talk to a nursing home lawyer if you think that an arbitration agreement might apply to you, because your lawyer might see yes if it does and your lawyer might also say no.
Reasons Not Sign the Agreement
If you sign this agreement, you cannot hold the nursing facility responsible for wrongdoing, furthermore signing this agreement leaves any case that you try to bring forth in the hands of a private arbitrator to the judge and they will decide the outcome of the dispute, there will be no jury, arbitration does not follow the rules of evidence and they can introduce hearsay if it plays in their favor, decisions are going to be final and you cannot appeal decisions that you disagree with, and decisions are almost always confidential’s of the facilities record is going to be spotless when people look at.
Reach out to a nursing home abuse lawyer today.