City of Revere v. Massachusetts General Hospital

• Decision Date: 27 June 1983
• Docket Number: No. 82-63,82-63
• Citation: 77 L.Ed.2d 605,103 S.Ct. 2979,463 U.S. 239
• Parties: CITY OF REVERE, Petitioner v. MASSACHUSETTS GENERAL HOSPITAL
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

463 U.S. 239

103 S.Ct. 2979

77 L.Ed.2d 605

CITY OF REVERE, Petitioner

v MASSACHUSETTS GENERAL HOSPITAL.

No. 82-63.

Argued Feb. 28, 1983.

Decided June 27, 1983.

Syllabus

A police officer of petitioner city wounded a suspect who was attempting to flee from the scene of a breaking and entering. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court held that petitioner is liable for the medical services rendered by respondent hospital to the wounded person.

Held:

1. This Court does not lack jurisdiction to review the Massachusetts court's opinion on the asserted ground that the decision rested on an adequate and independent state ground. The Massachusetts court's opinion premised petitioner's liability squarely on the Eighth Amendment's prohibition of cruel and unusual punishments. P.242.

2. Respondent has standing in the Art. III sense to raise its constitutional claim in this Court. Moreover, invoking prudential limitations on respondent's assertion of the rights of a third party (the wounded person) would serve no functional purpose. Cf. Craig v. Boren, 429 U.S. 190, 97 S.Ct. 451, 50 L.Ed.2d 397. Pp. 242-243.

3. The relevant constitutional provision is not the Eighth Amendment but is, instead, the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Although the Eighth Amendment's pr scription of cruel and unusual punishments is violated by deliberate indifference to serious medical needs of prisoners, Eighth Amendment scrutiny is appropriate only after the State has secured a formal adjudication of guilt. Ingraham v. Wright, 430 U.S. 651, 97 S.Ct. 1401, 51 L.Ed.2d 711. Here, there had been no formal adjudication of guilt against the wounded person at the time he required medical care. Pp. 243-244.

SC2Q!]] 4. The Due Process Clause requires the responsible governmental entity to provide medical care to persons who have been injured while being apprehended by the police. However, as long as the governmental entity ensures that the medical care needed is in fact provided, the Constitution does not dictate how the cost of that care should be allocated as between the entity and the provider of the care. That is a matter of state law. Here, petitioner fulfilled its constitutional obligation by seeing that the wounded person received the needed medical treatment; how petitioner obtained such treatment is not a federal constitutional question. Pp. 244-246.

385 Mass. 772, 434 N.E.2d 185 (1982), reversed.

Ira H. Zaleznik, Boston, Mass., for petitioner.

Michael Broad, Boston, Mass., for respondent.

Justice BLACKMUN delivered the opinion of the Court.

The issue in this case is whether a municipality's constitutional duty to obtain necessary medical care for a person injured by the municipality's police in the performance of their duties includes a corresponding duty to compensate the provider of that medical care.

I

On September 20, 1978, members of the police force of petitioner city of Revere, Mass., responded to a report of a breaking and entering in progress. At the scene they sought to detain a man named Patrick M. Kivlin, who attempted to flee. When repeated commands to stop and a warning shot failed to halt Kivlin's flight, an officer fired at Kivlin and wounded him. The officers summoned a private ambulance. It took Kivlin, accompanied by one officer, to the emergency room of respondent Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) in Boston.¹ Kivlin was hospitalized at MGH from September 20 until September 29. Upon his release, Revere police served him with an arrest warrant that had been issued on September 26. Kivlin was arraigned and released on his own recognizance.

On October 18, MGH sent the Chief of Police of Revere a bill for $7,948.50 for its services to Kivlin. The Chief responded immediately by a letter denying responsibility for the bill. On October 27, Kivlin returned to MGH for further treatment. He was released on November 10; the bill for services rendered during this second stay was $5,360.41.²

In January 1979, MGH sued Revere in state court to recover the full cost of its hospital services rendered to Kivlin. The Superior Court for the County of Suffolk dismissed the complaint. MGH appealed, and the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts transferred the case to its own docket.

The Supreme Judicial Court reversed in part, holding "that the constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment, embodied in the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution [as applied to the States through the Fourteenth Amendment], requires that Revere be liable to the hospital for the medical services rendered to Kivlin during his first stay at the hospital." 385 Mass. 772, 774, 434 N.E.2d 185, 186 (1982). The court apparently believed that such a rule was needed to ensure that persons in police custody receive necessary medical attention.³ In view of this rather novel Eighth Amendment approach and the impor- tance of delineating governmental responsibility in a situation of this kind, we granted certiorari. --- U.S ----, 103 S.Ct. 48, 74 L.Ed.2d 55 (1982).

II

We first address two preliminary issues.

A.

MGH suggests that we lack jurisdiction to decide this case because the state court decision rests on an adequate and independent state ground. The Supreme Judicial Court's opinion, however, stated unequivocally that state contract law provided no basis for ordering Revere to pay MGH for the hospital services rendered to Kivlin, 385 Mass., at 774, 434 N.E.2d, at 186, and that MGH had not invoked the Commonwealth's Constitution in support of its claim, id., at 776, n. 6, 434 N.E.2d, at 188, n. 6. In a section of its opinion entitled "Eighth Amendment," the court premised Revere's liability squarely on the Federal Constitution.⁴ Because the court's decision was based on an interpretation of federal law, we have jurisdiction notwithstanding the fact that the same decision, had it rested on state law, would be unreviewable here. See Oregon v. Hass, 420 U.S. 714, 719, and n. 4, 95 S.Ct. 1215, 1219, and n. 4, 43 L.Ed.2d 570 (1975).

B

The parties submit various arguments concerning MGH's "standing" to raise its constitutional claim in this Court. MGH, however, clearly has standing in the Article III sense: it performed services for which it has not been paid, and through this action it seeks to redress its economic loss directly.

Moreover, prudential reasons for refusing to permit a litigant to assert the constitutional rights of a third party are much weaker here than they were in Craig v. Boren, 429 U.S. 190, 193-194, 97 S.Ct. 451, 454-455, 50 L.Ed.2d 397 (1976), where the Court permitted a seller of beer to challenge a statute prohibiting the sale of beer to males, but not to females, between the ages of 18 and 21. In this case, as in Craig, the plaintiff's assertion of jus tertii was not contested in the lower court, see 385 Mass., at 776-777, n. 7, 434 N.E.2d, at 188, n. 7, and that court entertained the constitutional claim on its merits. Unlike Craig, this case arose in state court and the plaintiff, MGH, prevailed. The Supreme Judicial Court, of course, is not bound by the prudential limitations on jus tertii that apply to federal courts. The consequence of holding that MGH may not assert the rights of a third party (Kivlin) in this Court, therefore, would be to dismiss the writ of certiorari, leaving intact the state court's judgment in favor of MGH, the purportedly improper representative of the third party's constitutional rights. See Doremus v. Board of Education, 342 U.S. 429, 434-435, 72 S.Ct. 394, 397-398, 96 L.Ed. 475 (1952). In these circumstances, invoking prudential limitations on MGH's assertion of jus tertii would "serve no functional purpose." Craig v. Boren, 429 U.S., at 194, 97 S.Ct., at 455.⁵

III

A.

The Eighth Amendment's proscription of cruel and unusual punishments is violated by "deliberate indifference to serious medical needs of prisoners." Estelle v. Gamble, 429 U.S. 97, 104, 97 S.Ct. 285, 291, 50 L.Ed.2d 251 (1976). As MGH acknowledges, Brief for Respondent 3, on the facts of this case the relevant constitutional provision is not the Eighth Amendment but is, instead, the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. "Eighth Amendment scrutiny is appropriate only after the State has complied with the constitutional guarantees traditionally associated with criminal prosecutions. . . . [T]he State does not acquire the power to punish with which the Eighth Amendment is concerned until after it has secured a formal adjudication of guilt in accordance with due process of law." Ingraham v. Wright, 430 U.S. 651, 671-672, n. 40, 97 S.Ct. 1401, 1412-1413, n. 40, 51 L.Ed.2d 711 (1977); see Bell v. Wolfish, 441 U.S. 520, 535, n. 16, 99 S.Ct. 1861, 1872, n. 16, 60 L.Ed.2d 447 (1979). Because there had been no formal adjudication of guilt against Kivlin at the time he required medical care, the Eighth Amendment has no application.

B

The Due Process Clause, however, does require the responsible government or governmental agency to provide medical care to persons, such as Kivlin, who have been injured while being apprehended by the police. In fact, the due process rights of a person in Kivlin's situation are at least as great as the Eighth Amendment protections available to a convicted prisoner. See Bell v. Wolfish, 441 U.S., at 535, n. 16, 545, 99 S.Ct., at 1872, n. 16, 1877.⁶ We need not define, in this case, Revere's due process obligation to pretrial detainees or to other persons in its care who require medical attention. See Youngberg v Romeo, 457 U.S. 307, 312, n. 11, 102 S.Ct. 2452, 2456, n. 11, 73 L.Ed.2d 28 (1982); Norris v. Frame, 585 F.2d 1183, 1187 (CA3 1978); Loe v. Armistead, 582 F.2d 1291 (CA4 1978), cert. denied, 446 U.S. 928, 100 S.Ct. 1865, 64 L.Ed.2d 281 (1980). Whatever the standard may be, Revere fulfilled its constitutional obligation by seeing that Kivlin was taken promptly to a hospital that provided the treatment necessary for his injury. And as long as the...