Jeffreys v. Griffin

• Decision Date: 31 October 2002
• Citation: 301 A.D.2d 232,749 N.Y.S.2d 505
• Court: New York Supreme Court — Appellate Division
• Parties: CHRISTINE A. JEFFREYS, Appellant,<BR>v.<BR>PATRICK H. GRIFFIN, Respondent.

301 A.D.2d 232

749 N.Y.S.2d 505

CHRISTINE A. JEFFREYS, Appellant,

v.PATRICK H. GRIFFIN, Respondent.

TOM, J.

October 31, 2002.

Barry S. Gedan for appellant.

Denise Buda of counsel (Michael S. Kelton on the brief; Lippman Krasnow & Kelton LLP, attorneys), for respondent.

WILLIAMS, P.J., NARDELLI and ANDRIAS, JJ., concur with TOM, J.; BUCKLEY, J., dissents in a separate opinion.

OPINION OF THE COURT

TOM, J.

The issue before us is whether the factual determination of the Hearing Committee of the New York State Department of Health's Board for Professional Medical Conduct (the Medical Board), which revoked defendant doctor's license to practice medicine, collaterally estopped defendant from litigating the issue of liability with respect to plaintiff's civil cause of action for assault and battery. Under the particular circumstances of this case, I conclude that the defendant is entitled to a trial.

Defendant was a gastroenterologist who had treated plaintiff, his patient, for the stomach disorders gastritis and hyperacidity, and depression for several years. Between 1992 and 1994, plaintiff visited defendant at his medical office two or three times annually, during which time she complained that difficulties with her landlord, and her eventual eviction, caused her stress. On at least one occasion, in 1994, he recommended that she seek psychiatric help which, however, she declined to do. Plaintiff claimed that during a scheduled January 1995 endoscopy and upper colonoscopy, defendant orally sodomized her while she was under sedation. On the basis of her claim, defendant was indicted and convicted of sodomy in the first degree and falsifying business records. Defendant's conviction eventually was overturned by this Court on April 2, 1998 upon the ground that prosecutorial misconduct had deprived the defendant of a fair trial (242 AD2d 70, appeal dismissed 93 NY2d 955). As a consequence of that reversal, trial evidence and conclusions based thereon derived from the first criminal trial, whether compelling or not, to which the dissent alludes, would not properly be a basis for our current analysis. The crucial point is that notwithstanding the charges made and evidence proffered on retrial, defendant was acquitted of all criminal charges.

After his conviction and prior to our reversal, defendant was subjected to a disciplinary proceeding before the Medical Board. As a consequence of that proceeding, defendant's license to practice medicine was revoked by an order and determination dated October 24, 1996. The Hearing Committee, in addition to the sexual misconduct claims, had also considered charges relating to the preparation of false chart entries and other record keeping errors. Present plaintiff appeared as a witness at the hearing. Although all three members of the Hearing Committee found an adequate basis for revocation of defendant's medical license, only two found against defendant, with one finding for defendant, on the claim of sexual impropriety. The factfinding, by the Committee, alluded to at least the possibility that plaintiff had psychiatric problems, and some pharmacological evidence was introduced that medication may have affected her ability to recall the immediate aftermath of the medical procedure.

Plaintiff commenced the present civil action for damages allegedly arising from assault and battery and intentional infliction of emotional distress. By order dated April 2, 1997, Supreme Court granted plaintiff summary judgment on the issue of liability, based on defendant's conviction, as to the first cause of action sounding in assault and battery, but directed that trial be conducted on a related emotional distress claim insofar as the conviction was not dispositive regarding the requisite intent. The court noted that the parties had not yet been deposed. Hence, whether or not cross-examination was conducted at the criminal trial or even in the administrative hearing is not relevant to the question of whether there was adequate discovery in the present proceeding. There is a distinct difference in the latitude permitted for cross-examination of a witness and discovery. Cross-examination of a witness by a party is restricted only to the scope of testimony adduced during the direct examination of the witness. On the other hand, discovery is open-ended and provides for full disclosure of all evidence material and necessary in the prosecution or defense of an action. Therefore, cross-examination in a different proceeding should not be seen as filling the gap of discovery in the present proceeding, especially when the goals, procedures and burdens of proof differ for the respective proceedings.

After our reversal of the criminal judgment, the motion court, by decision and order dated December 10, 1998, vacated its prior order granting plaintiff summary judgment on her assault and battery claim. The motion court found that reversal of the criminal conviction basically eliminated applicability of collateral estoppel to bar litigation of the assault and battery claim in the civil action. The court, citing to David v Biondo (92 NY2d 318), was concerned that present plaintiff had not been the party in privity with the disciplinary board prosecutor, that the Committee on Professional Conduct was the actual party in interest, that the administrative remedy of revocation of the professional license was different from the monetary remedies sought by plaintiff in the civil action, and, insofar as the administrative proceeding and determination thus spoke to different issues, it could not be used as dispositive proof in the present civil action. Subsequently, defendant was retried on the criminal charge and was acquitted, as noted.

Plaintiff appeals from the order vacating the prior order which had granted her summary judgment, as to liability, on the first cause of action for assault and battery. On appeal, plaintiff argues that the factual determinations of the Medical Board to revoke defendant's medical license should be given preclusive collateral estoppel effect with respect to this cause of action.

I agree with the Supreme Court. However, I also conclude that we should not analyze this as just a case involving the application of an administrative determination to a related civil action. Rather, this case turns on the unique needs of professional disciplinary bodies, a factor articulated by Judge Bellacosa in David (supra), and the essential distinction between such a forum and a judicial forum, notwithstanding the possible relatedness of some of the claims. Moreover, I see it as a matter of elemental fairness that defendant be given the opportunity to present his case to a jury, a point articulated in the Third Department's decision in Stevenson v Goomar (148 AD2d 217, lv dismissed 74 NY2d 945). In that case, a plaintiff-patient sought to invoke collateral estoppel based on a determination by the New York State Board for Professional Medical Conduct that the defendant had engaged in misconduct, as a device for summary judgment in the civil action. The Third Department unequivocally held that "where * * * a party to a civil action seeks to invoke his right to a jury trial and he has not initiated or otherwise affirmatively sought to litigate the matter at the administrative level, fundamental fairness and the policy considerations referred to by the Court of Appeals in Staatsburg Water Co. v. Staatsburg Fire Dist. (72 NY2d 147, 153, supra) * * * require that preclusive effect not be given to the administrative determination. To conclude otherwise would result in the substantial erosion of rights far more fundamental and important than the concepts of finality and judicial economy served by the doctrine of collateral estoppel" (Stevenson, supra at 221).

The different natures of the proceedings also must be taken into account in discerning whether the defendant-physician has had a full and fair opportunity to litigate the claims asserted against him by a patient. Hence, in Stevenson (supra), the Third Department advanced the proposition that the New York State Board for Professional Medical Conduct, and judicial trials, are fundamentally different proceedings with differential impacts on the physician-defendant's ability to defend, necessarily restricting the availability of collateral estoppel as between the proceedings. Although there are basic procedural safeguards in any administrative proceeding, "such as the right to present evidence and cross-examine witnesses * * * there [is] no disclosure other than notice of the charges, and the rules of evidence [are] inapplicable" (id. at 220 [citation omitted]). The application of collateral estoppel in the present case would, in effect, foreclose defendant from conducting disclosure proceedings relevant to his defense of liability to plaintiff's charges.

As the Court of Appeals in David (supra at 325) stated, "In sum * * * collateral estoppel is not a tool to benefit or punish particular litigants. The judicial responsibility, rather, is to see to it that substantive and procedural safeguards are applied evenhandedly for the protection of all persons who turn to the court system * * *." Applying this perspective, the Third Department noted that, "[o]f equal significance is the scope of review available in the two settings. On appeal from a * * * trial, the Appellate Division has the broad power to review the facts and grant the judgment which upon the evidence should have been granted by the trial court * * *. The Appellate Division's scope of review of an administrative agency's quasi-judicial determination is, in contrast, very limited" (Stevenson, supra at 220 [citations omitted]). That Court also found significance in the fact that the medical defendant in that case, as in the present case, did not choose to litigate the matter at the administrative level; the defendant's participation "was prompted solely by his need to protect and defend his license to...