Corporacion Insular de Seguros v. Garcia

• Decision Date: 15 March 1989
• Docket Number: Civ. No. 87-0431(RLA).
• Citation: 709 F. Supp. 288
• Parties: CORPORACION INSULAR de SEGUROS, Plaintiff, v. Hon. Juan Antonio GARCIA, Defendant.
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of Puerto Rico

709 F. Supp. 288

CORPORACION INSULAR de SEGUROS, Plaintiff, v. Hon. Juan Antonio GARCIA, Defendant.

Civ. No. 87-0431(RLA).

United States District Court, D. Puerto Rico.

March 15, 1989.

Jesús Rabell Méndez, Harry R. Nadal Arcelay, Cancio Nadal & Rivera, San Juan, P.R., Sheldon H. Nahmod, Chicago, Ill., for plaintiff.

Luis N. Blanco Matos, Pedro A. Del Valle, Federal Litigation Div., Dept. of Justice, San Juan, P.R., José Luis González Castañer, Kenneth Colón, Ramirez & Ramirez, Hato Rey, P.R., for defendant.

OPINION AND ORDER

ACOSTA, District Judge.

Before the Court are several documents submitted under seal by three non-party deponents¹ for our in-camera inspection. We must determine whether or not they are protected from disclosure by the Speech or Debate Clause (also known as the legislative privilege) or the executive privilege (often referred to as state secrets or the federal deliberative process privilege).

The intended deponents are: Mr. Oscar Rodríguez, an aide to the Governor of Puerto Rico, and Messrs. Juan B. Aponte and Jaime Platón,² aides to the President of the Senate of Puerto Rico (we will refer to all three as "petitioners"). All of them participated in the legislative consideration and eventual enactment of the now challenged Public Law No. 4.

Plaintiff, Corporación Insular de Seguros, a private insurance company with the largest local market-share of medical malpractice insurance underwriting, filed this 42 U.S.C. § 1983 action against the Puerto Rico Commissioner of Insurance asking this Court to declare Puerto Rico Act No. 4, of December 30, 1986, 26 L.P.R.A. §§ 4101 et seq. (Supp.1987) unconstitutional. Public Law No. 4 authorized the creation and operation of a medical malpractice insurance syndicate³ to ensure that doctors, especially those considered "high risks," and health institutions would have continued access to adequate insurance coverage.

Plaintiff alleges that Public Law No. 4 violates the taking, due process and equal protection clauses of — as well as the First Amendment to — the United States Constitution insofar as, e.g., Law No. 4 treats plaintiff dissimilarly from other similarly situated insurance companies and also that the law lacks a rational relationship between the so-called malpractice insurance crisis and the creation of SIMED.

Plaintiff argues that the information it seeks from these three individuals is essential to its prosecution of the present case because "... what transpired in these legislative meetings who met with whom and what did they say, and what documents were produced, regarding the enactment and implementation of the Syndicate...."⁴ will help it (plaintiff) show that the legislative process was somehow substantively infirm. Also that the information will shed light on how the legislated birth of SIMED vis-à-vis plaintiff rests on grounds wholly irrelevant to the achievement of Puerto Rico's objective of providing affordable and adequate medical malpractice insurance to some of its citizenry.

Petitioners' main objection to plaintiff's subpoenae duces tecum is that the information sought involves confidential governmental communications protected by one or another of the aforementioned privileges, i.e., legislative, executive or federal deliberative process.⁵

In our Omnibus Order filed September 14, 1988 (docket No. 122) we found that, contrary to petitioners' allegations, the information was relevant. Pursuant to Fed. R.Civ.P. 26(b) and Fed.R.Evid. 501, however, we determined that "the information sought as presently characterized falls within the Speech or Debate Clause and is therefore privileged against disclosure." (Order at 6) (emphasis added). We then decided that an inspection of the documents would help establish the particular need for any deposition. We thus limited our ruling to a prohibition of the taking of any immediate deposition of these parties until we had an opportunity to review, in camera, the disputed documents to determine their privileged status, if any. Id. at 6-7. See Kerr v. United States District Court, 426 U.S. 394, 406, 96 S.Ct. 2119, 48 L.Ed.2d 725 (1976) ("in camera review is a highly appropriate and useful means of dealing with claims of governmental privilege"). Therefore, the question left open was whether or not the documents should be protected and consequently whether or not any of the requested depositions could be taken.

We will begin our discussion with an exposition of the state of the law regarding the privileges asserted by petitioners and conclude with an application of that law to each of the documents submitted for inspection.

DISCUSSION

A. The Speech or Debate Clause Privilege

The federal legislative privilege emanates from the Speech or Debate Clause of the Constitution.⁶ The Clause is designed to protect legislators against "possible prosecution by an unfriendly executive and conviction by a hostile judiciary." United States v. Johnson, 383 U.S. 169, 179, 86 S.Ct. 749, 754, 15 L.Ed.2d 681 (1966). This legislative privilege is rooted in the Framers' concern for an effective system of checks and balances among the three governmental branches. Such a system, it was felt, would avoid an American version of the parliamentary struggles typical of 17th Century England where monarchs would improperly bend the will of parliamentarians with threats and acts of criminal prosecution. See generally United States v. Gillock, 445 U.S. 360, 368-70, 100 S.Ct. 1185, 1191-92, 63 L.Ed.2d 454 (1980) (citing 8 The Works of Thomas Jefferson 322 (Ford ed. 1904); The Works of James Wilson 421 (R. McCloskey ed. 1967); Lake Country Estates, Inc. v. Tahoe Reg. Plan., 440 U.S. 391, 403, 99 S.Ct. 1171, 1178, 59 L.Ed.2d 401 (1979); and Tenney, 341 U.S. at 372-75, 71 S.Ct. at 786-87). The purpose of the Speech or Debate Clause is thus to create an evidentiary privilege for congressmen that immunizes them "not only from the consequences of litigations' results but also from the burden of defending themselves." Dombrowski v. Eastland, 387 U.S. 82, 85, 87 S.Ct. 1425, 1427, 18 L.Ed.2d 577 (1967). The scope of the Clause includes actual communications on the congressional floor and "... other matters that are an integral part of the deliberative and communicative processes by which members participate in committee and House proceedings...." Hutchinson v. Proxmire, 443 U.S. 111, 127, 99 S.Ct. 2675, 2684, 61 L.Ed.2d 411 (1979) (In a libel suit against a United States Senator the court held that the Senator's press releases and newsletters were not protected by the Speech or Debate Clause).⁷ In other words, the privilege applies to evidence or testimony about all "acts that occur in the regular course of the legislative process." U.S. v. Brewster, 408 U.S. 501, 525, 92 S.Ct. 2531, 2544, 33 L.Ed.2d 507 (1972).⁸

The privilege applies equally in the criminal and civil contexts. Eastland v. United States Servicemen's Fund, 421 U.S. 491, 502-03, 95 S.Ct. 1813, 1821, 44 L.Ed.2d 324 (1975). This protection accorded members of Congress extends to all congressional aides and assistants, provided that the activity in question would be protected if performed by a congressman. Gravel, 408 U.S. at 616-18, 92 S.Ct. at 2622-23. In this context, aides are perceived as the alteregos of their superiors in recognition of the important role they play in the legislative decisionmaking process. This contribution entitles them to be free from prosecution for their official acts.

The basic rationales that undergird the Speech or Debate Clause are essentially two and they are symbiotic: (1) separation of powers, and (2) legislative independence. Gillock, 445 U.S. at 369, 100 S.Ct. at 1191. Other principles articulated by the Supreme Court all seem interrelated with the Clause's central purpose of "avoiding intrusion by the Executive or Judiciary into the affairs of a coequal branch." Gillock, 445 US. at 369, 100 S.Ct. at 1191.⁹ For example, the chill that a threat of criminal prosecution may have over legislators in the performance of their duties, Gravel, 408 U.S. at 617-18, 92 S.Ct. at 2623; the diversion of a legislator's official time, energy and attention to their legislative tasks, Eastland v. United States Servicemen's Fund, 421 U.S. 491, 503, 95 S.Ct. 1813, 1821, 44 L.Ed.2d 324 (1975); the potential harassment a simple "conclusion of the pleader" may effect over a legislator, Tenney, 341 U.S. at 377, 71 S.Ct. at 788; and, to a much lesser extent, the need to preserve the confidentiality¹⁰ of official communications. This constitutional immunity embodies the public interest of ensuring that legislators be free from outside intrusion — either by a coequal branch of government or the public itself — so that they may perform their public tasks efficiently and properly.

In sum, federal legislators and their aides have an absolute¹¹ immunity from criminal or civil liability (for either injunctive relief or damages) for the purely legislative acts they perform.

An analysis of the privilege for members of Congress, as made clear above, inevitably involves constitutional concerns. In contrast, an analysis of the privilege for state legislators involves only the federal common law of evidence.

Although the Clause by its terms applies only to members of Congress; federal common law, pursuant to Fed.R.Evid. 501, has long upheld the immunity of state legislators from civil liability based on general speech or debate clause rationales. See generally United States v. Johnson, 383 U.S. at 169, 180, 86 S.Ct. 749, 755 ("the state legislative privilege in § 1983 suits is on a parity with the similar federal privilege" under the Speech or Debate Clause); Tenney v. Brandhove, 341 U.S. 367, 71 S.Ct. 783, 95 L.Ed. 1019 (1951) (state legislators enjoy immunity from civil suits brought by private litigants alleging constitutional torts under 42 U.S.C. § 1983);¹² Martínez Acosta v. Hernández Agosto, 590 F.Supp. 144 (D.C.P.R.1984) (Pieras, J.) (...