Baqir v. Principi

• Decision Date: 20 January 2006
• Docket Number: No. 04-2369.,04-2369.
• Citation: 434 F.3d 733
• Parties: Riaz BAQIR, M.D., Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Anthony J. PRINCIPI, Secretary, Department of Veterans Affairs, Defendant-Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit

Page 733

434 F.3d 733

Riaz BAQIR, M.D., Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Anthony J. PRINCIPI, Secretary, Department of Veterans Affairs, Defendant-Appellee.

No. 04-2369.

United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit.

Argued September 21, 2005.

Decided January 20, 2006.

ARGUED: John Richard Sutton, Jr., Sutton Law Firm, Candler, North Carolina, for Appellant. Paul Bradford Taylor, Assistant United States Attorney, Office of the United States Attorney, Charlotte, North Carolina, for Appellee. ON BRIEF: April Burt Sutton, Sutton Law Firm, Candler, North Carolina, for Appellant. Gretchen C.F. Shappert, United States Attorney, Charlotte, North Carolina, for Appellee.

Before KING and GREGORY, Circuit Judges, and HARWELL, United States District Judge for the District of South Carolina, sitting by designation.

Affirmed by published opinion. Judge KING wrote the opinion, in which Judge HARWELL joined. Judge GREGORY wrote a separate opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part.

KING, Circuit Judge.

Dr. Riaz Baqir appeals the district court's award of summary judgment in favor of the Secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs (the "VA") in Baqir's employment discrimination suit. Baqir initiated this action in the Western District of North Carolina, alleging claims under, inter alia, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as amended, 42 U.S.C. §§ 2000e to 2000e-17 ("Title VII"), and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967, as amended, 29 U.S.C. §§ 621-634 (the "ADEA"). Baqir maintains that the VA subjected him to a hostile work environment during his employment at the VA Medical Center in Asheville, North Carolina (the "Asheville VA Center"); discharged him from that employment on the basis of his race, color, religion, national origin, and age; and retaliated against him for seeking administrative relief on his discrimination claims. Following discovery, the court awarded summary judgment to the VA on each of Baqir's Title VII and ADEA claims. As explained below, we affirm.

I.

A.

In his complaint, Baqir alleges that he is black, he is a practicing Muslim, his national origin is Pakistani, and he was born on November 1, 1946.¹ After receiving a medical degree in Bangladesh in 1970, Baqir pursued his career as a physician in the United States, eventually as a cardiologist. He worked as a cardiologist at a hospital in New York between 1989 and 1994, and at the VA Medical Center in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania (the "Wilkes-Barre VA Center"), between 1994 and 1998. In April 1998, Baqir left the Wilkes-Barre VA Center for a one-year unaccredited fellowship at the Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia. His fellowship focused on training in the specialized field of interventional cardiology, which involves performing invasive procedures such as catheterizations to treat blockages in coronary arteries with balloons, stents, and cutting devices. During his fellowship, Baqir acted as the primary operator on only basic — and never complex — procedures. Nevertheless, upon the completion of his fellowship, Baqir's supervisors recommended him as an interventional cardiologist, observed that he was ready to perform more complicated procedures, and opined that he was prepared to work independently.

Baqir was thereafter hired to serve as an interventional cardiologist at the Asheville VA Center, a job opportunity created by the resignations of the only two interventional cardiologists on the Asheville VA Center's staff. Baqir was expected to serve as the sole interventional cardiologist at the Asheville facility and to work independently without further specialized training.²

On July 7, 1999, Baqir (then age fifty-two) received a written employment offer from the Asheville VA Center. The offer specified that Baqir's appointment was contingent upon his "satisfactory completion of the credentialing process" and "approval by the Medical Center Director," and that the appointment was to run for a temporary period not to exceed thirteen months. J.A. 62.³ Baqir had been recruited to work for the Asheville VA Center by its Chief of Surgery, Dr. Peter McKeown; however, as reflected in the written offer, the final hiring authority rested with the Medical Center Director, James Christian, a non-physician.

On July 15, 1999, the Physician Professional Standards Board and the Medical Staff Executive Council (together, the "Board") of the Asheville VA Center met to review Baqir's credentials and consider his request for privileges in interventional cardiology.⁴ It was observed that, although Baqir was recommended as an interventional cardiologist by his supervisors at the Pennsylvania Hospital, one of his colleagues at the Wilkes-Barre VA Center described Baqir's practice abilities as "average" and refused to sign a peer appraisal form because the number of procedures that Baqir claimed to have performed "appeared grossly exaggerated." J.A. 65. Based on these mixed reviews of Baqir's work, the Asheville VA Center's Chief of Medicine, Dr. Lewis Elliston, expressed concern that Baqir was inexperienced and that there was no interventional cardiologist on staff to proctor him. Id.⁵ Accordingly, the Board recommended, on July 15, 1999, that Baqir be granted privileges in "general, diagnostic cardiology," but that privileges in interventional cardiology be withheld pending an assessment of Baqir by an interventional cardiologist at another facility. Id. at 65-66. These recommendations, as embodied in the minutes of the Board meeting, were accepted by the Asheville VA Center's then-Acting Chief of Staff, Dr. James Martin, and given final approval by Christian.⁶

B.

Baqir began working for the Asheville VA Center on July 18, 1999. According to the written offer, his annual salary was set at $92,217, and he was given a "special pay" enhancement of $41,500 based on his skill level. On July 19, 1999, Baqir signed a standard "Special Pay Agreement" that contained provisions providing for the full refund of the special pay if his employment ended either "voluntarily or because of misconduct" prior to July 17, 2000. J.A. 211.

Pursuant to federal travel regulations, Baqir was entitled to payment of his moving expenses, as well as storage of household goods for ninety days (plus an additional ninety days under certain circumstances upon Baqir's written request). Baqir's belongings were picked up by a moving company, delivered to Asheville on July 27, 1999, and, because Baqir was not able to receive the goods, placed into storage by the moving company, all at the VA's expense. Baqir had until approximately October 27, 1999, to retrieve his belongings or request an extension of the paid storage period.

C.

During its July 15, 1999 meeting, the Board had decided that Baqir's direct supervisor, Elliston, would arrange for Baqir to go to the VA Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina (the "Durham VA Center"), for an assessment of his skills in interventional cardiology. Meanwhile, Baqir was to be proctored in diagnostic cardiology at the Asheville VA Center by Dr. Sundeep Mediratta. At the time he was proctoring Baqir, Mediratta was the only other cardiologist on staff at the Asheville VA Center, and he was not a member of the Board. Mediratta, a Hindu originally from India, is younger than Baqir. Although Mediratta did not practice interventional cardiology, he did perform invasive diagnostic catheterizations, in addition to carrying out noninvasive functions such as reading tests and ordering medications.

Baqir asserts that he was subjected to hostile treatment as early as his first day of work at the Asheville VA Center, when he approached another Hindu colleague, who responded: "`Don't talk to me. Dr. Mediratta is your chief of cardiology. Report to him. And they have decided to ... make you [a] noninvasive cardiologist.'" J.A. 110. On July 22, 1999, the day that Mediratta and Baqir first met, Mediratta allowed Baqir to take the lead in performing a diagnostic catheterization. Mediratta observed that Baqir "was not handling the catheters with confidence or accurately" and "did not know how to do the catheterization properly." J.A. 152. Mediratta relayed this assessment to Elliston, and they subsequently decided not to allow Baqir to perform any further catheterizations until he returned from his visit to the Durham VA Center. Baqir perceived the episode as further hostile treatment, in that Mediratta had become agitated with him and left the catheterization laboratory before the July 22, 1999 procedure had been completed, and in that Baqir was thereafter excluded from working in the catheterization laboratory (meaning that he was to practice only noninvasive cardiology). According to Baqir, Mediratta subsequently refused to communicate with him, perpetuating an abusive workplace atmosphere.

On July 23, 1999, Elliston wrote to the Chief of Cardiology at the Durham VA Center, Dr. Kenneth Morris, enclosing the Asheville VA Center's files on Baqir. Elliston asked Morris for "an independent assessment by you of Dr. Baqir's interventional cath skills and any pertinent observations." J.A. 67. Elliston also wrote that "[d]uring our initial assessment of this practitioner he appeared to show signs of excessive insecurity in his procedures and techniques." Id.

On July 26, 1999, Dr. Arnold Brown became the Chief of Staff at the Asheville VA Center. On July 30, 1999, Brown directed memoranda to Baqir and Mediratta advising them that Mediratta was appointed to proctor Baqir in diagnostic cardiology for an additional period of at least ninety days. Brown also advised, in his memorandum to Baqir, that arrangements were being made to provide him with proctoring in interventional cardiology at the Durham VA Center, in view of the Asheville VA Center's inability to provide such proctoring itself. Thereafter, on August 26, 1999, Brown sent an e-mail message to his contacts at the Durham VA Center, reiterating the request for physicians there "to...