Morrison Mahoney Partner Joe Desmond recently obtained a very significant win at the Supreme Judicial Court on certified questions from the First Circuit of Appeals. In a noteworthy win for the nursing home industry, the SJC held that the claims of the beneficiaries of an estate under the Massachusetts Wrongful Death Statute are derivative of the decedent’s cause of action. Therefore, beneficiaries of the estate were bound by the arbitration agreement signed by the decedent’s legal representative prior to the decedent’s death at the time of his admission to the nursing home.
The case has been reported in The Boston Globe and in the upcoming issue of Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly. To read those articles, please click here and here, respectively.
