Waiving Right to Trial

After losing his constitutional right to justice, Darrell Thomas is sharing his story with KFOR to prevent others from enduring the same fate.

A few years ago, Thomas’ health was put in peril after he suddenly endured a heart attack, which required him to undergo heart surgery and become paralyzed. Soon after, Thomas entered a nursing home for rehabilitation. Despite being heavily medicated and nearly unconscious at this time, the nursing home required Thomas to sign various contracts with dense legal language and serious personal implications. He says he does not even remember being given any contracts.

“When I look back at my signature, it was like a little kid had signed something, like just scribbled just a portion of it, due to the medication,” Thomas said.

Hidden within those documents was an arbitration contract that revoked Thomas’s Sixth Amendment right to sue the nursing home in court, and instead, settle any legal case in arbitration. Arbitration prevents the nursing home from receiving as much bad press and also allows the nursing home to receive a more favorable, yet less just, verdict. Arbitration, essentially, stands as a clear obstruction of justice to anyone who has been wronged by their long-term care facility.

In the end, the very car facility that promised to care for and nurse Thomas back to good health, took advantage of his unstable state to put themselves in a more profitable position.

Worse, despite arbitration typically being illegal in Oklahoma, federal laws provide a loophole for nursing homes to continue tricking residents into giving up their access to justice. Attorney Mark Cox has seen more and more of these unethical arbitration cases, stating, “Before [this federal law] the arbitration issue wasn’t as forefront. Now it is forefront and I’m afraid we’re going to be seeing this all the time.”

He is now working with Thomas to seek justice after his severe mistreatment in his Oklahoma nursing home.

While experiencing the trauma of recent paralysis and sudden heart complications, Thomas began to grow sick in the nursing home, saying, “sometimes it would be hours and hours before anybody would come to assist me or help me,” leaving him with long-term health defects.

Ultimately, after forcing Thomas to sign contracts ensuring legal protections for the facility, they then gave Thomas massive bed sores on his backside and feet.

Therefore, not only are nursing homes permitted to revoke Americans’ right to a fair and speedy trial, but they are also allowed to acquire consent to revoke this right while patients are heavily medicated and nearly unconscious. We should be hopeful that attorneys like Mark Cox are able to end this precedent and allow for justice and trust to be restored in American healthcare systems.