## Facts

- John Rogers stayed at the MGM Grand Hotel at Foxwoods, operated by Mashantucket Pequot Gaming Enterprise.
- Rogers alleged he slipped and fell in his hotel room when water accumulated on a tile floor, causing injury.
- Rogers’s wife, Bernadette Rogers, contacted the hotel’s risk management department to complain about the incident.
- Risk-management representative Corrine Toscano offered to comp the Rogerses’ hotel room and provide a restaurant credit if John Rogers signed a release of claims.
- Bernadette agreed to the arrangement, and Toscano brought a written release to the Rogerses’ hotel room.
- Bernadette signed the release; John Rogers did not sign it.
- John Rogers maintained he did not speak with Toscano and only saw his wife sign.
- Toscano maintained she explained the release to both spouses and that John, by a shrugging gesture, indicated Bernadette would sign on his behalf.
- Rogers later filed a negligence action in Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Court seeking damages for his injuries.
- Mashantucket Pequot Gaming Enterprise asserted special defenses, including release and accord and satisfaction, arguing that the credits and the signed release settled and barred Rogers’s claim.

## Issues

1. Whether the defendant proved that a release signed only by the plaintiff’s spouse, in exchange for hotel and restaurant credits, constituted a valid release or accord and satisfaction that barred the plaintiff’s negligence claim.
2. Whether the plaintiff’s spouse had authority to bind the plaintiff to the release, or whether the plaintiff otherwise assented to or ratified the release through words or conduct.
3. Which party bore the burden of proof on the special defenses of release and accord and satisfaction.

## Decision

- The court treated release and accord and satisfaction as special defenses for which the defendant bore the burden of proof.
- The court required the defendant to prove, by a preponderance of the evidence, that Bernadette Rogers had authority to sign the release and bind John Rogers.
- On the evidentiary record, the court found the defendant did not meet its burden to show that John Rogers agreed to the release or authorized his wife to sign it on his behalf.
- Because the defendant failed to prove a binding release or accord and satisfaction, those defenses did not bar Rogers’s negligence claim.

## Legal Principles

- Release and accord and satisfaction are affirmative defenses; the party asserting them must prove the facts necessary to establish the defenses.
- A settlement by accord and satisfaction requires proof that the claimant knowingly agreed to accept consideration as full resolution of the claim.
- A release signed by someone other than the claimant binds the claimant only if the signer had authority to act for the claimant, or the claimant later ratified the act.
- When the existence of authority or assent is disputed, the defense fails absent sufficient proof that the claimant agreed to surrender the claim.

## Conclusion

In Rogers v. Mashantucket Pequot Gaming Enterprise, the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Court held that the Gaming Enterprise, having asserted release and accord and satisfaction as special defenses, bore the burden to prove that the plaintiff’s spouse had authority to sign a release on the plaintiff’s behalf (or that the plaintiff otherwise agreed to it). Because the defendant did not prove that John Rogers assented to the release or authorized his wife to bind him, the court declined to treat the room comp and restaurant credit as a binding settlement that barred the negligence action.


Rogers v. Mashantucket Pequot Gaming Enterprise, No. CV-PI-2014-157 (2016)