Greenwood v. New York, Office of Mental Health

• Citation: 163 F.3d 119
• Decision Date: 11 December 1998
• Docket Number: No. 96-9261,96-9261
• Parties: Albert GREENWOOD, M.D., Plaintiff-Appellant, v. The State OF NEW YORK, Office of Mental Health; Manhattan Psychiatric Center; Gabrial Koz, M.D.; Michael H. Ford, M.D.; Yves Chenier, M.D.; Miodrag Ristich, M.D.; Willy Mautner, M.D.; Kenneth Kahaner, M.D.; and Ruby Cohen Pasini, C.S.W., Defendants-Appellees.
• Court: United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (2nd Circuit)

Page 119

163 F.3d 119

Albert GREENWOOD, M.D., Plaintiff-Appellant, v. The State OF NEW YORK, Office of Mental Health; Manhattan

Psychiatric Center; Gabrial Koz, M.D.; Michael H. Ford,

M.D.; Yves Chenier, M.D.; Miodrag Ristich, M.D.; Willy

Mautner, M.D.; Kenneth Kahaner, M.D.; and Ruby Cohen

Pasini, C.S.W., Defendants-Appellees.

No. 96-9261.

United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit.

Argued Nov. 16, 1998.

Decided Dec. 11, 1998.

John M. McLaughlin, Auburndale, NY, for Plaintiff-Appellant.

Thomas B. Litsky, Assistant Attorney General of New York, Albany, N.Y. (Dennis Vacco, Attorney General of New York, John W. McConnell, Deputy Solicitor General, Michael Belohlavek, Assistant Attorney General, on the brief), for Defendants-Appellees.

Before: CALABRESI, SACK, and SOTOMAYOR, Circuit Judges.

CALABRESI, Circuit Judge:

Plaintiff-appellant Albert Greenwood appeals from a judgment dated August 29, 1996 in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York (Loretta A. Preska, District Judge ). The district court granted summary judgment to the defendant-appellee state officials in Greenwood's suit brought pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983; it did so on the ground that the officials had qualified immunity. ¹ We disagree with the court's conclusion that Greenwood's property right in his clinical staff privileges was not

clearly established and that the state officials were therefore entitled to qualified immunity on Greenwood's property claim. We agree with the district court, however, that the state officials had qualified immunity with respect to Greenwood's liberty claim. Accordingly, we affirm in part, vacate in part, and remand for further proceedings.

BACKGROUND

Greenwood is a licensed psychiatrist. In 1977, he began working on the staff of the New York State Office of Mental Health ("OMH") in the OMH's Manhattan Psychiatric Clinic ("MPC"). In 1978, Greenwood received a permanent appointment at the MPC with the title of Psychiatrist II. As part of his MPC position, Greenwood obtained full clinical staff privileges.

The staff organization at the MPC to which Greenwood belonged was governed by the MPC By-laws, Rules and Regulations of the Medical Staff ("By-laws"). The By-laws and the Policy and Procedure Manual promulgated pursuant to them provided that staff members had a "right to due process ... where specific clinical privileges have been denied, disallowed, restricted or suspended."

Greenwood alleges that the defendant-appellee state officials ("MPC doctors"), all of whom were doctors at the MPC, conspired to destroy his career because of their unhappiness with his prior performance as president of the MPC staff. In November and December 1981, the MPC doctors began an investigation into four patient deaths that had occurred in Greenwood's ward. As a result of this investigation, which Greenwood contends was a sham, the MPC doctors concluded that Greenwood had been grossly negligent in his care of the four patients in question. The doctors recommended that Greenwood's clinical staff privileges be revoked and that he be demoted. Thereafter, Greenwood claims, the MPC doctors disseminated defamatory information about his medical skills to other hospitals and law enforcement personnel.

The recommendations of the MPC doctors were adopted by defendant-appellee Gabriel Koz, the MPC Director at the time, without any administrative hearing or notice to Greenwood. Koz also denied Greenwood's administrative appeal of these decisions on January 19, 1982. The MPC then moved to terminate Greenwood for cause, and over the next six years an arbitrator held hearings on the issue.

In 1988, the arbitrator concluded that--although Greenwood had been negligent in some cases--there was not just cause to fire him from the MPC. Moreover, the arbitrator found that the investigation of Greenwood was in bad faith, as "MPC's facility management was operating as a renegade .... [in] pursuing a personal vendetta against Dr. Greenwood." As a result of this ruling, Greenwood was reinstated to the MPC staff in 1989, but without the clinical privileges that he had previously enjoyed. Greenwood claimed that his new position was inadequate and refused to accept it. Shortly thereafter he was terminated from the MPC.

In 1984, Greenwood filed a § 1983 action alleging (1) that the MPC doctors had deprived him of a property interest in his clinical privileges without due process, and (2) that the "defendants' dissemination of the stigmatizing information contained in their fabricated ... report effectively rendered plaintiff unemployable" and therefore deprived him of a liberty interest without due process. The district court granted summary judgment for the MPC doctors, holding that (1) a property interest in clinical staff privileges was not clearly established in January 1982, when the alleged deprivation without due process was completed, and (2) a liberty interest for defamation combined with the loss of clinical staff privileges was also not clearly established in January 1982.

DISCUSSION

We review a grant of summary judgment de novo. See Russell v. Smith, 68 F.3d 33, 35 (2d Cir.1995). "The defense of qualified immunity shields government officials from civil liability if the official's conduct did not violate constitutional rights that were clearly established at the pertinent time or if it was objectively reasonable for the official to believe that the conduct did not violate such rights." Cecere v. City of New York, 967 F.2d 826, 829 (2d Cir.1992).

In determining whether a particular right was clearly established at the time defendants acted, this Court has considered three factors: (1) whether the right in question was defined with 'reasonable specificity'; (2) whether the decisional law of the Supreme Court and the applicable circuit court support the existence of the right in question; and (3) whether under preexisting law a reasonable defendant official would have understood that his or her acts were unlawful.

Jermosen v. Smith, 945 F.2d 547, 550 (2d Cir.1991). "Even defendants who violate [clearly established] constitutional rights enjoy a qualified immunity that protects them from liability for damages unless it is further demonstrated that their conduct was unreasonable under the applicable standard." Davis v. Scherer, 468 U.S. 183, 190, 104 S.Ct. 3012, 82 L.Ed.2d 139 (1984).

I

We address Greenwood's property claim first. The question of whether clinical staff privileges at a state hospital constitute a property interest, when they are supported by state law, is a matter as to which this court has not specifically ruled. In Board of Regents v. Roth, 408 U.S. 564, 92 S.Ct. 2701, 33 L.Ed.2d 548 (1972), however, the Supreme Court stated that a property interest is "defined by existing rules or understandings that stem from an independent source such as state law--rules or understandings that secure certain benefits and that support claims of entitlement to those benefits." Id. at 577, 92 S.Ct. 2701. Accordingly, all the other circuits that have faced this issue have held that clinical staff privileges guaranteed by state law at a state hospital are a property interest protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. See, e.g., Lowe v. Scott, 959 F.2d 323, 335-36 (1st Cir.1992) (collecting authorities). We agree with their holdings.

There is no doubt, moreover, that Greenwood's clinical privileges were an entitlement under state law--the MPC By-laws--and that under that law his privileges could not be revoked without certain procedural protections. We therefore hold that Greenwood's clinical privileges constituted property for purposes of due process.

The more difficult question is whether Greenwood's property interest in clinical privileges was clearly established in January 1982, when the alleged deprivation was completed. In holding that Greenwood's property interest was not so established, the district court relied on the absence of Second Circuit case law dealing directly with clinical privileges, as well as on cases both within and outside our circuit that it believed cast doubt upon the existence of a property interest in clinical privileges that are guaranteed by state law. Although we had not expressly addressed the status of clinical privileges before 1982, we nevertheless now conclude that a property right in such staff privileges was clearly established in New York as early as 1982.

In Roth and Perry v. Sindermann, 408 U.S. 593, 92 S.Ct. 2694, 33 L.Ed.2d 570 (1972), which were decided in the 1970s, the Supreme Court established the principle that: "A person's interest in a benefit is a 'property' interest for due process purposes if there are such rules or mutually explicit understandings that support his claim of entitlement to the benefit and that he may invoke at a hearing." See Perry, 408 U.S. at 601, 92 S.Ct. 2694 (citing Roth ). After Roth and Perry, but prior to 1982, two circuits had held that clinical staff privileges were a property interest under their respective state law for due process purposes. See Ong v. Tovey, 552 F.2d 305, 307 (9th Cir.1977); Christhilf v. Annapolis Emergency Hosp., Ass'n, 496 F.2d 174, 179 (4th Cir.1974). One circuit had so ruled even before Roth and Perry were decided. See Chiaffitelli v. Dettmer Hosp. Inc., 437 F.2d 429, 430 (6th Cir.1971) (per curiam). No court of appeals had disagreed with this view prior to 1982. Indeed, no circuit court--before 1982 or since--has ever disputed that clinical staff privileges are a property interest if guaranteed by state law.

The district court advanced three arguments to support its holding that a property interest in clinical privileges was not clearly established in 1982. First, it read our cases addressing due process property claims to imply that "property interests are confined to rights in continued employment, rather than in ancillary privileges such as those at issue in the instant...