Opinion
C084416
05-24-2018
CLYDE HENDRIX, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. ALOE HOLDINGS, LLC, Defendant and Appellant.
NOT TO BE PUBLISHED California Rules of Court, rule 8.1115(a), prohibits courts and parties from citing or relying on opinions not certified for publication or ordered published, except as specified by rule 8.1115(b). This opinion has not been certified for publication or ordered published for purposes of rule 8.1115. (Super. Ct. No. SCV0038122)
Plaintiff Clyde Hendrix, born in 1934, brought this action in July 2016 for elder abuse and negligent infliction of emotional distress against defendant Aloe Holdings, LLC (Aloe), which operates the Auburn Oaks Care Center (Auburn Oaks), and other defendants who are not parties to this appeal. In an exchange of letters soon afterward, the parties disputed whether the matter was subject to arbitration.
After the superior court set a trial date of August 2017, Aloe filed a petition to compel arbitration in December 2016. A commissioner of the trial court concluded that Aloe had failed to establish that Hendrix was a party to arbitration agreements, which his wife had executed in connection with her husband's admission to Auburn Oaks. Two months later, Aloe filed its notice of appeal in March 2017. The trial court thus vacated the trial date and stayed the matter pending appeal. We granted calendar preference. Briefing was completed in November 2017.
On appeal, Aloe challenges the trial court's conclusion that Hendrix's wife was not acting as his agent in executing arbitration agreements. We shall affirm.
FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND
We draw our facts from the evidence submitted in connection with Aloe's petition. Where there are conflicting facts or inferences, we accept those in favor of the trial court's ruling. (Young v. Horizon West, Inc. (2013) 220 Cal.App.4th 1122, 1129 (Young); Robertson v. Health Net of California, Inc. (2005) 132 Cal.App.4th 1419, 1425 [where order based on factual resolution, review is for substantial evidence].) Given the nature of the trial court's ruling, we are not concerned with the full allegations of the complaint or the provisions of the arbitration agreements.
At the time of his admission to Auburn Oaks in July 2015, Hendrix was then 80 years old, still working as a musician in venues around the country, and was fully competent to act in his own behalf (for which reason he had never executed a power of attorney in favor of his wife). As the result of a fall, he broke his femur and underwent surgery, which required subsequent short-term rehabilitative services from Auburn Oaks.
The staff at Auburn Oaks only informed Hendrix and his wife that it was necessary for one of them to sign admission documents. No one at Auburn Oaks ever told him that two arbitration agreements (one for malpractice claims, one for non-malpractice claims) would be presented with the admission documents. He never saw either agreement or was otherwise made aware of their existence.
At the time of Hendrix's admission to Auburn Oaks, his wife was employed with Placer County. She did not meet with any of the staff in her husband's room to discuss the admissions process. She made a lunchtime appointment a few days after his admission, accompanied by a friend and her son, at which time she was presented with a stack of papers that were flagged to indicate where her signature was necessary. No discussion of the contents of the papers took place, beyond identifying them as being necessary for admission. She thus believed they were all necessary for the admission process. She never would have signed an arbitration agreement identified as such.
While staying at Auburn Oaks, Hendrix developed a pressure sore on his foot, at which point he transferred to a different facility. This other facility separately presented arbitration agreements and identified them as optional, as required under Health and Safety Code section 1599.81; Hendrix's wife did not sign them. Ultimately the pressure sore required the amputation of a portion of Hendrix's foot.
The admissions coordinator for Auburn Oaks offered a contradictory account of events, which therefore is without any import in this appeal. We simply note (since Aloe keeps adverting to these facts incorrectly as "undisputed") that the coordinator asserted he had met with Hendrix and his wife in Hendrix's room to discuss the need to complete the admissions paperwork. Hendrix said he was tired and did not have his glasses and his wife could " 'handle all that stuff.' " The coordinator took the wife to his office, where he presented the arbitration agreements separately and explained they were not a condition of admission, at which point the wife signed them. He did not present a stack of papers with flagged signature pages.
The failure to acknowledge the substantial evidence standard of review and summarize the facts accordingly in its briefing would warrant our deeming Aloe to have forfeited its arguments. (Sonic Manufacturing Technologies, Inc. v. AAE Systems, Inc. (2011) 196 Cal.App.4th 456, 465; Western Aggregates, Inc. v. County of Yuba (2002) 101 Cal.App.4th 278, 290-291.) However, as they are readily dispatched, we will address the merits. --------
In its order, the trial court stated, "[Aloe] has not established that Mrs. Hendrix had authority to execute the arbitration agreement on [Hendrix's] behalf. To the contrary, evidence presented to [this] court establishes [Hendrix] was competent at the time the agreement was executed; was not presented with the arbitration agreement for review or signature; and never authorized anyone to sign an arbitration agreement on his behalf." (Italics added.)
DISCUSSION
Aloe contends the wife had either actual or ostensible agency to sign arbitration agreements on Hendrix's behalf because there did not appear to be any limit on her general authority in the admissions process. This proposition does not find any support in the facts of this case or established principles of law in this context.
Disregarding the declaration in support of Aloe's petition, the facts show at best that Hendrix authorized his wife to execute documents facilitating his admission to Auburn Oaks. He was never informed that the optional agreements on the separate topic of waiving his right to sue Aloe in court, which by virtue of Health and Safety Code section 1599.81 are not part of the admission process, would be among the documents presented to his wife for signature. Thus, whether or not his wife should have been cognizant of what she was signing, she did not carry his general or specific imprimatur to subject him to arbitration of any claims against Aloe.
Equally devoid of evidentiary support is Aloe's claim that Hendrix failed to rescind his "approval" of the arbitration agreement within the 30-day term provided in it. Unexplained is how Hendrix, according to the facts that the trial court implicitly credited, was to rescind an agreement extraneous to his admission that he did not authorize and of which he was unaware. We thus do not need to devote any further analysis to this argument.
Relying on general agency law, Aloe utterly disregards established case law in its opening brief on the subject at hand. As stated in Flores v. Evergreen at San Diego, LLC (2007) 148 Cal.App.4th 581, where a patient does not sign an arbitration agreement and a spouse does not have power of attorney for the patient, agency is created only as a result of the conduct of the patient, not the conduct of the spouse alone. (Id. at pp. 587-589.) The facts in the present case, once we disregard Aloe's impermissible reliance on facts favorable to itself, do not remotely demonstrate any conscious delegation on Hendrix's part to authorize any action on the part of his wife beyond doing what was necessary to admit him to Auburn Oaks. (Accord, Young, supra, 220 Cal.App.4th at pp. 1129-1130; Goliger v. AMS Properties, Inc. (2004) 123 Cal.App.4th 374, 377 [the authority to make any medical decisions for a plaintiff does not include the power to waive the right to a jury trial in any subsequent dispute].)
Aloe makes a curious citation to Scott v. Yoho (2016) 248 Cal.App.4th 392 in support of a contention that federal arbitration law does not permit limiting the scope of Hendrix's delegated authority to its admissions documents and not the separate arbitration agreements that it proffered simultaneously. The case is not apposite. It involves a state-imposed substantive provision (specifically, a right to rescission) on a valid arbitration agreement that the decedent patient executed herself. The issue of whether federal law controls the determination of the scope of delegated authority to act as an agent—a neutral principle of state contract law—does not play any part in the court's analysis. The citation to the ungainly titled Pinnacle Museum Tower Assn. v. Pinnacle Market Development (US), LLC (2012) 55 Cal.4th 223 is equally unavailing for the same reason: The case involved an arbitration clause binding on the plaintiff homeowners association as a matter of "statutory and decisional law pertaining to common interest developments," which the lack of actual notice could not invalidate. (Id. at pp. 232, 245.) It is not a case deciding the scope of delegated authority, in which the principal's lack of actual notice provides context as to what the agent was authorized to do.
Given our agreement with the trial court's rationale, we do not need to address any of Hendrix's additional arguments in favor of the judgment. We now return the matter to the trial court for a determination on the merits of whether Aloe's standard of care was deficient.
DISPOSITION
The order denying the petition for arbitration is affirmed, and the trial court upon the issuance of our remittitur is to proceed expeditiously on Clyde Hendrix's application for preference. We award costs on appeal to Hendrix. (Cal. Rules of Court, rule 8.278(a)(1), (2).)
BUTZ, Acting P. J. We concur: MAURO, J. RENNER, J.