Wal-Mart Sanctioned

The recent sanctions order in the federal class action against Walmart — where the court penalized plaintiffs’ counsel for failing to disclose an arbitration agreement and then invited Walmart to seek over $745,000 in attorneys’ fees — is a stark reminder of how corporations weaponize arbitration to avoid accountability. While the dispute in Golikov v. Walmart isn’t a nursing home case, the implications for long-term care litigation are enormous, because the very same tactics are used by some of the worst operators in our industry.

In this case, the court didn’t find that Walmart was innocent. It didn’t reject the allegations on their merits. Instead, everything turned on a procedural landmine: the existence of an arbitration clause that, once revealed, undercut the entire basis for proceeding as a class action. Walmart seized on that error immediately, arguing that every hour spent litigating before the disclosure was wasted — and demanding that plaintiffs pay for it. This is exactly the kind of legal leverage that massive corporations count on when they bury arbitration language in contractual fine print.

Arbitration clauses in long-term care are routinely buried in admission documents signed by overwhelmed family members who have no idea what rights they’re giving up. And nursing home corporations almost never disclose them upfront when a resident dies or suffers neglect. Instead, they wait. They wait for the lawsuit, for discovery, for plaintiffs to invest in experts, for months of case development — and only then do they file a motion to compel arbitration. It is deliberate. It is calculated. And it is one of the fastest ways to derail a strong negligence or wrongful-death claim.