Halyalkar v. Board of Regents of State of N.Y.

• Decision Date: 07 July 1988
• Parties: , 527 N.E.2d 1222 In the Matter of Dinanath S. HALYALKAR, Appellant, v. BOARD OF REGENTS OF STATE OF NEW YORK et al., Respondents.
• Court: New York Court of Appeals Court of Appeals

Page 85

532 N.Y.S.2d 85

72 N.Y.2d 261, 527 N.E.2d 1222

In the Matter of Dinanath S. HALYALKAR, Appellant, v. BOARD OF REGENTS OF STATE OF NEW YORK et al., Respondents.

Court of Appeals of New York.

July 7, 1988.

Philip M. Gassel, New York City, for appellant.

Robert Abrams, Atty. Gen. (Judith R. Gordon, O. Peter Sherwood, Harvey M.

Berman and Anne S. Haskell, New York City, of counsel), for respondents

OPINION OF THE COURT

HANCOCK, Judge.

Petitioner, a physician, seeks to annul a determination of the Board of Regents finding him guilty of professional misconduct in willfully and knowingly filing false medical examination reports. ^* The question presented in his appeal is whether the Board of Regents properly invoked the doctrine of collateral estoppel, giving conclusive effect to a consent order in an earlier administrative proceeding before the New Jersey Board of Medical Examiners in which petitioner entered a plea of guilty to similar misconduct and agreed to a three-month suspension. The Appellate Division, where the proceeding was commenced (Education Law § 6510[5] ) held that collateral estoppel had been correctly applied and dismissed the petition. We granted leave to appeal and now reverse.

I

Petitioner, a native of India and educated and trained as a physician in that country, immigrated to the United States in 1975. Thereafter, he completed his residency and became licensed to practice medicine in New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania. On 10 to 12 separate occasions from 1976 to 1979, at the behest of Upen Patel, a salesman for the New York Life Insurance Company and also an immigrant from India, petitioner performed a physical examination for one of Patel's Indian clients. Patel had befriended petitioner on his arrival in this country and, with his better command of the language and familiarity with American customs, had been helpful to him in various routine personal and business matters. Patel was present at the examinations and assisted petitioner in filling out the forms for the insurance company. Petitioner has consistently maintained that he never knowingly signed a form for a person whom he had not examined.

On June 13, 1979, at the request of the New Jersey Board of Medical Examiners, petitioner voluntarily appeared at an "informal" hearing in connection with a complaint that he had submitted insurance forms for persons never examined. He was not represented by counsel and was unaware that he was to be questioned under oath. At the hearing, petitioner testified that he had performed the examinations at the request of and as a favor for his friend, Patel, who assisted him in completing the forms. Some of the forms produced at the hearing bore petitioner's signature but contained information filled in by someone else. It was possible, he conceded, that Patel, without his knowledge, had put before him for signature either blank forms or forms filled out for persons whom he had not examined.

On July 25, 1979 petitioner was served with a formal administrative complaint by the New Jersey Board of Medical Examiners charging him with willfully and knowingly filing nine false certifications for medical examinations not performed. Attached to the complaint was a "Notice of Hearing and Notice to Enter Plea" advising petitioner, among other things, that he had 35 days within which to enter a plea to the charges, that he could "enter a plea by mail", and that a "plea of guilty or nonvult [would] indicate that [he did] not wish to contest the charges stated, thus rendering unnecessary any hearing in [the] proceeding". On his lawyer's advice, he decided not to contest the charges but to accept the penalty provisions which his lawyer had negotiated as a plea bargain. The consent order--which petitioner signed in his lawyer's office and before him as witness--contained no adjudication or other determination by the Board of Medical Examiners finding petitioner guilty of the misconduct charged in the complaint. The only reference to the petitioner's guilt was the recital of the guilty plea and his agreement to waive a formal hearing. Under the order, petitioner received three months' active suspension of his license, a direction to make restitution to the insurance company in the amount of $180 for the examination fees it paid to petitioner, and a fine of $2,500.

In February 1981, administrative proceedings were commenced in Pennsylvania based on the suspension of petitioner's license in New Jersey. Before the Pennsylvania Hearing Examiner, petitioner testified that he had performed all of the medical examinations requested of him by his "good, trusted friend" Patel, and that he had no reason to believe that he was signing anything but the forms of the persons he had examined. He explained that he had agreed to the New Jersey consent order as a plea bargain in view of the expense that would be involved in contesting the charges, the short period of the actual suspension, and his attorney's promise that his agreement would not result in any punishment beyond what was stipulated in the order. The Hearing Examiner found that petitioner's misfeasance did "not rise to the level of gross and willful misconduct". Petitioner was given a private letter of reprimand specifying that it had "no effect on [his] competency to practice medicine in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania" and that it had been "issued because of a technical violation of the Medical Practice Act".

On August 28, 1984, approximately five years after the New Jersey proceedings, administrative action arising out of the same matter was commenced against petitioner in New York. The Office of Professional Medical Conduct, relying solely on the New Jersey consent order, maintained that the New York charges should be deemed proven under the doctrine of collateral estoppel. The Hearing Committee (see, Public Health Law § 230[10] ), however, found that petitioner had not had "a full and fair opportunity to be heard and to defend himself" against the New Jersey charges "due to inadequate advice given to him by his then attorney". For that reason, the Committee rejected collateral estoppel. Characterizing petitioner's testimony as "credible and worthy of belief", it made specific findings that he had not willfully or knowingly submitted false insurance forms and that he had actually performed several of the examinations which he was charged with not performing. The Committee recommended that the charges be dismissed.

The Board of Regents, nevertheless, accepted the contrary recommendations of the Commissioner of Health (see, Public Health Law § 230[10][i] ) and of its own Review Committee (see, Education Law § 6510[4][a], [b] ), concluding that collateral estoppel should be applied. Petitioner was found guilty of willfully and knowingly filing false medical reports and, by order of the Commissioner of Education dated April 2, 1986, he received a one-year suspension of his license, stayed subject to the terms of his probation.

In its decision dismissing the petition, the Appellate Division held that its review of the records in the New Jersey, Pennsylvania and New York proceedings showed that no evidence had been "developed at any of the hearings to establish that petitioner had the knowledge or intent necessary to sustain the charges against him" (127 A.D.2d 346, 349, 515 N.Y.S.2d 324). The court, however, confirmed the determination of profession misconduct on the ground that the Board of Regents and the Commissioner of Education had properly applied the doctrine of collateral estoppel. For reasons which follow, we disagree.

II

The Appellate Division, in deciding that preclusive effect was properly given to the New Jersey consent order, held under established rules that the two basic requirements for the application of collateral estoppel had been satisfied: (1) the identicality of an issue necessarily decided in the prior action with one which is decisive of the present action, and (2) that there was a full and fair opportunity to contest the issue in the prior action ( see, Gilberg v. Barbieri, 53 N.Y.2d 285, 291, 441 N.Y.S.2d 49, 423 N.E.2d 807; Schwartz v. Public Adm'r of County of Bronx, 24 N.Y.2d 65, 71, 298 N.Y.S.2d 955, 246 N.E.2d 725). The court determined that the Office of Professional Medical Conduct had met its burden in showing identicality of the issue and that petitioner had failed to meet his burden of showing that he lacked a full and fair opportunity to contest it in the prior proceeding ( see, Kaufman v. Lilly & Co., 65 N.Y.2d 449, 456, 492 N.Y.S.2d 584, 482 N.E.2d 63; Ryan v. New York Tel. Co., 62 N.Y.2d 494, 501, 478 N.Y.S.2d 823, 467 N.E.2d 487).

Because we conclude that the first requirement--identicality of the issue--was not satisfied, we address only that point. Preliminarily, we observe that the basis for petitioner's objection to giving preclusive effect to the New Jersey consent order is not that it was entered in a proceeding brought before an administrative tribunal. He does not contend that the New Jersey Board of Medical Examiners acted outside its authority (see, N.J. Statutes Annot. § 45:9-1 et seq.; § 45:1-14 et seq.; § 45:1-21[b]; § 45:9-6) or that the New Jersey proceeding was not quasi-judicial in nature and governed by "procedures substantially similar to those used in a court of law" ( Ryan v. New York Tel. Co., supra, at 499, 478 N.Y.S.2d 823, 467 N.E.2d 487; see, Staatsburg Water Co. v. Staatsburg Fire Dist., 72 N.Y.2d 147, 152-153, 531 N.Y.S.2d 876, 527 N.E.2d 754; Clemens v. Apple, 65 N.Y.2d 746, 492 N.Y.S.2d 20, 481 N.E.2d 560; Carlisle, Getting a Full Bite of the Apple: When Should the Doctrine of Issue Preclusion Make an Administrative or Arbitral Determination Binding in a Court of Law?, 55 Fordham L.Rev. 63). Petitioner's sole objection is that collateral estoppel should not apply to this consent order.

The Appellate Division's decision that the consent order meets the identicality of...