By

Ava McCartin

A Spanish-speaking patient, Carlos Lopez Rivera (“Lopez”), will not be permitted to pursue his medical malpractice claim in Massachusetts court—instead, he will be compelled to arbitrate. Even though Lopez could not read the arbitration agreement, which was never translated or read aloud for him, a Massachusetts Appeals Court found that he had sufficient notice of the terms, reversed the lower court, and compelled arbitration.¹ This result illustrates the ways in which judicial preference for enforcement of non-negotiated arbitration agreements can lead to absurd results. In the future, Massachusetts courts should tighten notice requirements to ensure fair treatment of consumers in the law.

The issue began when Lopez sought vision correction services from Steven Stetson, an eye surgeon.² On the day of his procedure, Stetson presented Lopez with four sets of documents: three dealt with the procedure itself, while the fourth was an arbitration agreement.³ Importantly, “Lopez did not have a sufficient understanding of English to allow him to read the Arbitration Agreement,” and no one explained the agreement in Spanish.⁴ Nevertheless, Lopez signed the documents.

After the procedure, Lopez filed a claim for medical malpractice in Superior Court.⁵ Stetson moved to compel arbitration.⁶ The Superior Court found the agreement invalid and unenforceable, but the Appeals Court reversed.⁷ Even though the court agreed that Lopez could not read the agreement and lacked an understanding of the terms of the agreement, it found that he had sufficient notice of the terms to give reasonable manifestation of assent to them.⁸ This conclusion is self-contradictory.

While the court correctly explained that an arbitration agreement is valid “even if the party did not actually view the agreement, so long as the party had an adequate opportunity to do so,”⁹ it erred in its determination that “Lopez’s lack of facility with the English language” was not relevant to the analysis.¹⁰ Although the arbitration agreement was clearly marked and identifiable in plain English, those markings were not sufficient notice for Lopez because he could not read them.¹¹ Thus, while Lopez had an opportunity to “view” the contract, viewing it did not put him on notice of its terms.

Further, the judge found that when signing the four documents, Lopez “was led to believe that he was signing medical forms,” not a waiver of his right to pursue potential claims in court.¹² These facts indicate that Lopez clearly did not have notice of the arbitration agreement, and he testified that had he been aware of the terms of the agreement, he would not have signed.¹³ In spite of these facts, the court relied on two distinguishable cases from the early twentieth century to insist that Lopez was bound to the agreement without understanding it.¹⁴

Moving forward, courts should tighten notice requirements to ensure parties have a meaningful opportunity to comprehend legal agreements before being bound to them. While it may be fair to hold a party who can read a contract, but chooses not to, to their word, it is not fair to bind parties like Lopez to agreements they are unable to read or comprehend. Rather than focusing on whether parties have an opportunity to view an arbitration agreement, courts should ask whether parties have an opportunity to comprehend an agreement when considering its validity.¹⁵