Atkinson v. SSC Sumter E. Operating Co.

• Decision Date: 07 December 2022
• Docket Number: 2022-UP-438,Appellate Case 2020-001143
• Parties: Andrietta Atkinson and Debra Clyburn-Wilson, individually and as Personal Representatives of the Estate of Willie Mae Clyburn, Respondents, v. SSC Sumter East Operating Company, LLC d/b/a Sumter East Health and Rehabilitation Center and Paul Granger, Defendants, of whom SSC Sumter East Operating Company, LLC d/b/a Sumter East Health and Rehabilitation Center is the Appellant.
• Court: South Carolina Court of Appeals

Andrietta Atkinson and Debra Clyburn-Wilson, individually and as Personal Representatives of the Estate of Willie Mae Clyburn, Respondents,
v.
SSC Sumter East Operating Company, LLC d/b/a Sumter East Health and Rehabilitation Center and Paul Granger, Defendants,

of whom SSC Sumter East Operating Company, LLC d/b/a Sumter East Health and Rehabilitation Center is the Appellant.

No. 2022-UP-438

Appellate Case No. 2020-001143

Court of Appeals of South Carolina

December 7, 2022

THIS OPINION HAS NO PRECEDENTIAL VALUE. IT SHOULD NOT BE CITED OR RELIED ON AS PRECEDENT IN ANY PROCEEDING EXCEPT AS PROVIDED BY RULE 268(d)(2), SCACR.

Submitted November 1, 2022

Appeal From Sumter County Kristi F. Curtis, Circuit Court Judge

Stephen Lynwood Brown, Russell Grainger Hines, and Donald Jay Davis, Jr., all of Clement Rivers, LLP, of Charleston, for Appellant.

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Daniel Nathan Hughey, Arthur Stuart Hudson, and Bradley Hunter Banyas, all of Hughey Law Firm, LLC, of Mount Pleasant; and Jordan Christopher Calloway, of McGowan Hood Felder & Phillips, of Rock Hill, for Respondents.

PER CURIAM

In this action for wrongful death and survivorship, SSC Sumter East Operating Company, LLC, d/b/a Sumter East Health and Rehabilitation Center (Sumter East), appeals the denial of its motion to enforce an agreement to arbitrate (the Arbitration Agreement) to which neither the decedent nor anyone with formal authority to act on her behalf was a signatory. We affirm pursuant to Rule 220(b), SCACR.

In Coleman v. Mariner Health Care, Inc., 407 S.C. 346, 355, 755 S.E.2d 450, 455 (2014), our supreme court acknowledged the general rule that documents "executed at the same time, by the same parties, for the same purposes, and in the course of the same transaction" would have merged unless there was a contrary intention. The court, however, ultimately held language in a residential facility admission agreement in a section titled "Entirety of Agreement," and a provision in a simultaneously executed arbitration agreement allowing that agreement to be disclaimed within thirty days of signing, "evidenc[ed] an intention that each contract remain separate." Here, the Arbitration Agreement and a "Resident Admission Agreement" (the Admission Agreement), which was purportedly the basis for the underlying action, were executed at the same time by a representative of Sumter East and the decedent's daughter, Respondent Debra Clyburn-Wilson, who at the time lacked legal...