ElGabri v. Lekas

• Court: Rhode Island Supreme Court
• Writing for the Court: BOURCIER; WEISBERGER, C.J., and FLANDERS
• Citation: ElGabri v. Lekas, 681 A.2d 271 (R.I. 1996)
• Decision Date: 22 August 1996
• Docket Number: No. 93-719-A,93-719-A
• Parties: 1996-2 Trade Cases P 71,616 Tarek H. ElGABRI, M. D. v. Mary D. LEKAS, M.D., et al. ppeal.

Page 271

681 A.2d 271

1996-2 Trade Cases P 71,616

Tarek H. ElGABRI, M. D. v. Mary D. LEKAS, M.D., et al.

No. 93-719-Appeal.

Supreme Court of Rhode Island.

Aug. 22, 1996.

David Cicilline, Providence, Randy Olen, Warwick, for Plaintiff.

Shannon Gilheeney, Bruce J. Balon, Thomas R. Bender, William H. Jestings, David W. Carroll, Dennis J. McCarten, Providence, for Defendants.

OPINION

BOURCIER, Justice.

This case comes before us on appeal by Tarek H. ElGabri, M.D. (Dr. ElGabri), from orders of summary judgment entered against him by a trial justice of the Superior Court. In Dr. ElGabri's Superior Court civil action, the trial justice granted summary judgment motions in favor of the defendants Mary D. Lekas, M.D. (Dr. Lekas), Steven A. Issenberg, M.D. (Dr. Issenberg), and Hani Zaki, M.D. (Dr. Zaki), for the reason that the defendants had previously received a favorable jury verdict in a civil action filed against them by Dr. ElGabri in the United States District Court for the District of Rhode Island. On appeal, that jury verdict was affirmed by the First Circuit Court of Appeals. Elgabri v. Lekas, 964 F.2d 1255 (1st Cir.), reh'g and reh'g en banc denied (1992). The summary judgment disposition of Dr. ElGabri's Superior Court action was based upon the doctrine of res judicata. For the reasons that follow, we believe that the trial justice correctly invoked and applied the doctrine, and we deny Dr. ElGabri's appeal.

Case Travel and Facts

Dr. ElGabri is an otolaryngologist, practicing in Rhode Island in the medical specialty commonly referred to as "ear, nose, and throat" (ENT) medicine. In 1972 Dr. ElGabri received his undergraduate degree from the State University of New York at Buffalo. In 1977 he received his medical degree from Cairo University Faculty of Medicine in Egypt. Doctor ElGabri served as a rotating intern at Cairo University in 1978 and 1979. He returned to the United States in 1979, completing his general internship at Tulane University in 1980, and his general residency at McLaren Medical Center in Michigan in 1981. In 1982 he commenced a first year residency in otolaryngology at the University of Minnesota. He thereafter transferred to the Otolaryngology Residency Program at Rhode Island Hospital in Providence and completed that program in June 1984. After completing his residency, Dr. ElGabri studied in England from October through December 1984, after which he returned to Rhode Island with the intention of commencing private practice in otolaryngology in the Providence area.

Upon returning to the Providence area, Dr. ElGabri began his private practice specializing in otolaryngology. At that time he also began submitting applications for staff privileges at various hospitals throughout the state. Hospital staff privileges allow a doctor to admit and treat patients at a given hospital. Doctor ElGabri did receive staff privileges at Notre Dame Hospital, Cranston General Hospital, Kent County Memorial Hospital, and Memorial Hospital, but was unable to obtain staff privileges at Roger Williams Hospital, Miriam Hospital, Rhode Island Hospital, and St. Joseph Hospital, despite repeated applications to those hospitals over the course of several years.

In August 1986, Dr. ElGabri commenced a civil action in the Providence County Superior Court against one of the present defendants, Dr. Lekas, alleging, inter alia, libel, slander, emotional distress, and tortious interference with prospective business relations. Those allegations concerned Dr. ElGabri's attempts to obtain staff privileges at Roger Williams, Rhode Island, Miriam, Kent County Memorial, St. Joseph, Woonsocket, and Blackstone Valley Hospitals. It was Dr. ElGabri's contention that Dr. Lekas had impeded his being granted staff privileges by falsely and maliciously defaming his character through her contacts with representatives of the various hospitals. Doctor ElGabri also charged Dr. Lekas with having intentionally interfered with his prospective business relations in Rhode Island's ENT medical specialty field.

In December 1988, Dr. ElGabri amended his then pending Superior Court civil action complaint. He did so in order to add as party defendants, Drs. Issenberg and Zaki and to add additional counts and new causes of action for which Dr. ElGabri sought relief. ¹ The new counts and causes of action included, inter alia, additional charges of slander, libel, and tortious interference with prospective business relations, and also violations of the Rhode Island Antitrust Act, G.L.1956 § 6-36-4. In the antitrust counts Dr. ElGabri alleged that the newly-named defendant doctors, along with Dr. Lekas, had conspired together to exclude him from the ENT specialty field, as well as to monopolize that specialty field exclusively for themselves. Doctor ElGabri's complaint, in essence, alleged a civil conspiracy by the defendants to defame his character and thus effectively to exclude him from their field of specialization. That alleged defamation is reflected in the various libel and slander counts contained in Dr. ElGabri's amended complaint.

Doctor ElGabri's zeal for litigation, however, was hardly satisfied by his lingering Superior Court action, and so while that action was still pending, he opted for a new judicial offensive on a different battle front. He accordingly filed an action in United States District Court for the District of Rhode Island. In that federal action complaint, he named Drs. Lekas, Issenberg, and Zaki as defendants, as well as three other Rhode Island physicians who are not parties in this appeal. His federal court complaint included causes of action for alleged violations of sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Antitrust Act, tortious interference with Dr. ElGabri's prospective business relationships, and, as in his pending state action, violations of the Rhode Island Antitrust Act. Doctor ElGabri also asserted in his federal court action complaint that the federal court had "pendent jurisdiction over the claims arising under the Rhode Island code, [G.L.1956] Sections 6-36-1 et seq., and the Rhode Island common law." (Emphasis added.)

The federal action also included allegations, as did the state action, that the defendant doctors had conspired to exclude him from Rhode Island's ENT field of medical specialty practice, as well as to monopolize for themselves the ENT medical and surgical services market, and that the defendants had encouraged others not to deal with him, and had tortiously interfered with his prospective business relationships by preventing him from obtaining staff privileges at Roger Williams, Miriam, Rhode Island, and St. Joseph Hospitals.

In the federal action, the defendants Drs. Lekas, Issenberg, and Zaki, in their answers to Dr. ElGabri's complaint, each posited the affirmative defense that the federal action should be dismissed because there was a "prior action pending" in the Rhode Island Superior Court that involved the same parties and issues. ² Doctor Issenberg's answer specifically denied federal court pendent jurisdiction over the Rhode Island-based causes of action, "since the plaintiff has filed a State Court action regarding the same facts as set forth below, said action is pending in the Providence Superior Court." In April 1991 when Doctor ElGabri's federal action was reached for trial his State Superior Court civil action was then still pending.

On May 29, 1991, after a nineteen day trial, a federal court jury rejected all of Dr. ElGabri's claims and returned verdicts in favor of all of the defendant doctors. Doctor ElGabri's appeal from the judgment entered on the verdicts was rejected by the First Circuit Court of Appeals on June 3, 1992, and after rehearing in that court, denied en banc on July 6, 1992. ³

In the meantime all was quiet on the Superior Court front, but that judicial tranquillity would soon end. Upon learning that the Circuit Court of Appeals had rejected his appeal, Dr. ElGabri, as someone wrote in an old song, picked himself up, dusted himself off, and started all over again, this time in the Providence County Superior Court. Upon his return to the state battlefield in January 1993, however, he was met this time by a salvo of motions for summary judgment fired by defendants Drs. Lekas, Issenberg, and Zaki. Those motions claimed that the federal court jury verdicts and the final judgment thereon foreclosed Dr. ElGabri's civil action in the Superior Court under the doctrine of res judicata. In their motions the defendants contended that the plaintiff's state action claims all targeted the same basic underlying occurrences and causes of action that had served as the bases for Dr. ElGabri's ill-fated federal civil action. The defendants asserted that because a jury had rendered a verdict resolving those claims in the federal court action, Dr. ElGabri was now barred from relitigating those claims as well as any claims or causes of action that could have been litigated in the federal case.

A Superior Court trial justice, granted the defendants' motions for summary judgment on October 1993, ruling that Dr. ElGabri's state action claims were in fact barred under the dictates of the res judicata doctrine. The trial justice found that the res judicata bar extended also to Dr. ElGabri's state action claims for libel, slander, and infliction of emotional distress, even though those specific claims had not been asserted in the federal court action. The trial justice, in granting summary judgment, reasoned that Dr. ElGabri's three state claims all derived from a "single core of operative facts." Upon entry of final judgment for the defendants, Dr. ElGabri duly filed his appeal to this Court.

Summary Judgment

This Court, when reviewing the grant or the denial of a motion for summary judgment, employs the same analysis as did the trial justice when ruling upon the motion. See Boland v. Town of Tiverton, 670 A.2d 1245 (R.I.1996); Chester v. aRusso, 667 A.2d 519 (R.I.1995)...