Opinion ID: 2459975
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 9

Heading: Breadth

Text: We also disagree with the contention that the arbitration agreements are not enforceable because of the breadth of their application. The question of whether a physician-patient agreement must be limited to a specific surgery or course of treatment was considered and rejected in Hilleary v. Garvin, 193 Cal. App.3d 322, 238 Cal. Rptr. 247 (1987). Like the agreements in this case, the agreement in Hilleary provided that any dispute as to medical malpractice will be determined by submission to arbitration. The California trial court refused to compel arbitration, holding that the arbitration agreement should have specified the particular course of medical treatment to which it applied. On appeal, the Hilleary court rejected that notion stating: Here, plaintiff submitted herself to the medical group for a course of continuing treatment relating to complications of childbirth. As most patients, she did not enter into lengthy or detailed bargaining negotiations as might be present in other types of commercial transactions. Rather, the parties, as in the traditional doctor-patient relationship, entered into an implied-in-fact contract that defendant would treat her condition, and in return, she would follow his prescribed treatment and pay for his services. .... To impose upon a physician, during a continuous doctor-patient relationship, the extra burden of having to renew the arbitration agreement each time there is a variation in treatment or ailment would be impractical, and would frustrate the purpose of the statute, which is to facilitate, not emasculate, the arbitration process. Id. 238 Cal. Rptr. at 250; see also Gross v. James A. Recabaren, M.D., Inc., 206 Cal. App.3d 771, 253 Cal. Rptr. 820 (1988). Though the language contained within the agreements in Hilleary and Gross was prescribed by statute, the reasoning employed by those courts is persuasive and applies with equal force in this case. We therefore conclude that the arbitration agreements are not too broad for enforcement. Moreover, arbitration is not precluded in the Bridges case because the medical treatment giving rise to this dispute was rendered prior to the time she signed the arbitration agreement. The Arbitration Act, Tenn. Code Ann. § 29-5-302(a), explicitly provides that private agreements between parties to submit to arbitration any controversy thereafter arising are valid, enforceable and irrevocable save upon such grounds as exist at law or in equity for the revocation of any contract... . In this case, Bridges agreed to submit to arbitration any future controversy arising from the previously rendered medical care. In addition, Bridges initialed the clause which applied to the previously rendered treatment and was therefore obviously aware of it. Accordingly, the retroactive clause is enforceable. See Coon v. Nicola, 17 Cal. App.4th 1225, 21 Cal. Rptr.2d 846, 850-51 (1993).