Bonnie Townsend, acting as executor of her deceased sister Linda Elam's estate, sued BLC Lexington SNF, LLC and related Brookdale entities in Kentucky state court over Elam's care at their nursing home facility where she died in 2020. Townsend alleged wrongful death, negligence, and statutory violations after Elam developed sepsis, pneumonia, dehydration, severe malnutrition, and multiple ulcers during her stay at Brookdale Richmond Place SNF.
Judge Amul Thapar wrote for the panel that Kentucky law doesn't require parties to explicitly state they're acting as attorney-in-fact when signing arbitration agreements. "It suffices that she specified that she was acting as Elam's representative," the court ruled, noting Townsend signed the agreement as 'Resident Representative' without indicating she was acting in any other capacity. The court distinguished the case from Cambridge Place Group v. Mundy, where a wife explicitly signed as 'wife' rather than as attorney-in-fact.
U.S. District Judge Karen Caldwell had initially granted BLC Lexington's motion to compel arbitration and enjoin the state court proceedings, later denying Townsend's motion for reconsideration and confirming the arbitration award after retired judge Thomas McDonald III ruled for the nursing home following a week-long hearing with 14 witnesses and 98 exhibits.
The ruling strengthens nursing homes' ability to enforce arbitration clauses signed by representatives and limits challenges based on arbitrators' remote misconduct. Townsend's attempt to vacate the award based on the arbitrator's 1990 public censure for improper campaign contributions failed because she couldn't show the three-decade-old incident created evident partiality toward the nursing home operators.