Nursing home loses right to arbitrate employee dispute

The Ohio Court of Appeals, Eighth Appellate District, affirmed a trial court ruling on May 14, 2026, finding that King David Post Acute Nursing & Rehabilitation waived its right to push a former employee’s discrimination case into arbitration.

The reasoning was simple—the nursing home waited too long.

The case arose from employee Ilona Yormick’s termination on July 2, 2024.

Yormick sued King David on December 3, 2024, alleging age discrimination and retaliation.

King David and two individual defendants answered the complaint on February 13, 2025, and the lawsuit rolled on. The defendants joined a case-management conference, traded discovery requests, asked for extensions, served responses, and discussed deposition dates.

It wasn’t until July 21, 2025—seven and a half months after the lawsuit was filed and over a year past her termination—that the defendant moved to stay the case pending arbitration.

The trial court refused the stay, finding the request untimely under the arbitration agreement’s own one-year limitation clause.

Separately, the court found that King David had waived the right to arbitrate through its active participation in the case. Given the fact that the arbitration agreement had been sitting in its own administrator’s affidavit, the court concluded that the defendants had acted inconsistently with their right to arbitration.

The appeals court agreed. Writing for the majority, Judge Sean C. Gallagher walked through the totality-of-the-circumstances test Ohio courts apply to arbitration waiver. The factors include whether the company invoked the court’s jurisdiction without asking for a stay, how long it delayed, how much it participated in litigation, and whether the other side was prejudiced. No single factor controls.

King David argued the timeliness question belonged to an arbitrator, not a judge. It also pointed to its substitution of counsel, saying the new lawyers moved to enforce arbitration as soon as they spotted the agreement.

The appeals court was not persuaded. As the trial court had observed in distinguishing one of the cases King David relied on, the defendants were never without counsel during the litigation. Switching law firms did not reset the clock.

The takeaway for defendants seeking arbitration is clear. An arbitration clause only works if invoked early—before answers are filed, before discovery starts, before case-management deadlines pile up. Routine litigation conduct can quietly burn the right away. And once it is gone, the case stays in court.

Judge Mary J. Boyle concurred separately, noting that the central question is not whether arbitration was raised in the first answer but whether the company’s overall conduct lined up with the right to arbitrate. Here, it did not.

The judgment is final at the appellate level.