Morales Feliciano v. Rullan

• Decision Date: 15 July 2002
• Docket Number: No. 01-2201.,01-2201.
• Citation: 303 F.3d 1
• Parties: Carlos MORALES FELICIANO et al., Plaintiffs, Appellees, v. John RULLAN, Secretary of the Puerto Rico Department of Health, etc., Defendant, Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit

Page 1

303 F.3d 1

Carlos MORALES FELICIANO et al., Plaintiffs, Appellees, v. John RULLAN, Secretary of the Puerto Rico Department of Health, etc., Defendant, Appellant.

No. 01-2201.

United States Court of Appeals, First Circuit.

Heard May 9, 2002.

Decided July 15, 2002.

Carlos Del Valle, with whom Anabelle Rodriguez, Attorney General, Eileen Landrón Guardiola, and Eduardo A. Vera Ramirez were on brief, for appellant.

Alejandra Bird Lopez, with whom Carlos V. García Gutiérrez, Manuel Rodríguez Banchs, Rafael E. Rodrígues Rivera, and Civil Action and Education Corporation were on brief, for appellees.

Before BOUDIN, Chief Judge, BOWNES, Senior Circuit Judge, and SELYA, Circuit Judge.

SELYA, Circuit Judge.

This interlocutory appeal requires us to revisit a marathon class-action suit brought to remedy unconstitutional conditions of confinement in the Puerto Rico prison system. On this occasion, the Secretary of the Puerto Rico Department of Health (the Secretary) alleges that the district court's assignment of certain duties to the so-called chief health care coordinator (the CHCC) constitutes an unwarranted modification of a prior injunction and, in the bargain, violates the Prisoner Litigation Reform Act of 1995 (PLRA), Pub.L. No. 104-134, 110 Stat. 1321 (1996) (codified as amended in scattered sections of 18 U.S.C., 28 U.S.C., & 42 U.S.C.). The plaintiff class (composed of prison inmates) responds that this court lacks jurisdiction to consider the appeal on an interlocutory basis, and that, in all events, the challenged order is a proper exercise of the district court's authority. We agree with the first of the plaintiffs' assertions: the challenged order merely clarifies the court's prior decrees and imposes no serious consequences on the Secretary. Moreover, the order, in the last analysis, is a procedural measure that constitutes an exercise of the district court's housekeeping powers. For these reasons, immediate appellate review is not available to the Secretary as of right. Consequently, we dismiss the appeal without addressing the remaining issues briefed and argued by the parties.

I. BACKGROUND

Although the lore of this case is Byzantine, we confine our introductory remarks to those events that are directly pertinent to this appeal. We refer readers who hunger for more exegetic detail to the district court's myriad opinions. E.g., Morales Feliciano v. Roselló González, 13 F.Supp.2d 151 (D.P.R.1998) (Morales II); Morales Feliciano v. Romero Barcelo, 497 F.Supp. 14 (D.P.R.1979) (Morales I).

In early 1979, representatives of the plaintiff class commenced this action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. They named several public officials as defendants, including, pertinently, the Secretary. The suit alleged dire shortcomings in virtually every aspect of prisoner confinement. The district court found that the plaintiffs were likely to succeed on some of their claims and issued a preliminary injunction ordering the defendants to address the most pressing of the identified concerns. See Morales I, 497 F.Supp. at 38-41. The court gave very high priority to inadequate medical and mental health care. See id. at 37-38.

Over time, the district court grew frustrated with the defendants' desultory responses to the preliminary injunction. To expedite compliance, the court appointed a monitor in March of 1986. The court charged the monitor with studying the relevant elements of the corrections program and recommending remedial action. With the monitor in place, the court became actively involved in certain aspects of the management of the prison system. Not surprisingly, the court found inertia to be a persistent problem and, to overcome it, issued temporary restraining orders and contempt citations against the defendants when and as required. The court also began to impose fines for the defendants' most egregious failures to comply with its decrees (particularly those failures relating to overcrowding). Those fines escalated as the foot-dragging continued and the court's level of exasperation mounted. To date, the court has levied aggregate fines totaling nearly $135,000,000.

In October of 1990, the court ordered the implementation of medical and mental health care plans (the Plans) recommended by the monitor. By their terms, the Plans contemplated that overall responsibility for inmate health care would pass from the Administration of Corrections to the Department of Health. The Plans also required the Secretary to employ, for at least three years, a designated official — the CHCC — who would be responsible for easing the transition and coordinating compliance with the Plans.¹ In April of 1993, the Secretary nominated Dr. Aida Guzmán Font to assume the position. The district court approved financial support (from the fine fund) for her endeavors. When her term expired three years later, the parties jointly requested that the court approve her reappointment. The court obliged.

In January of 1996, the district court entered what it termed a "partial final judgment." In this decree, the court settled several disputed issues and urged the parties to focus their energies on "consensus-based compliance efforts, and the resolution of yet unresolved areas of the case." In the same document, the court enumerated certain prior orders that it now considered final (including the order approving the Plans and the orders containing the job description for the CHCC position).

The passage of time revealed that the remedial framework was not functioning smoothly. In April of 1997, a court-appointed expert found that the extant correctional health program was a bureaucratic morass incapable of meeting constitutional standards. To rectify this situation, the expert suggested the appointment of a receiver for the ailing program. The parties closed ranks to oppose this recommendation, proposing instead the creation of a private non-profit corporation (the Corporation), which would eventually assume total responsibility for providing medical and mental health services to the inmate population.

On September 26, 1997, the parties filed a stipulation designed to flesh out this joint proposal. Under its terms, the Corporation would provide health care services, consistent with the Plans, to all persons held in institutions operated by the Administration of Corrections. The stipulation promised "full coordination among all parties concerned" and required the defendants (including the Secretary) to take a series of preparatory steps to lay the groundwork for an effective transition from the existing correctional health program to the new model. The stipulation also memorialized the parties' agreement to engage in further discussions "concerning the role and authority of the CHCC with respect to monitoring the Corporation." Finally, the process of privatization — that is, the transition from the existing remedial framework to the stipulated alternative — was made subject to the district court's supervision. The court would be kept informed by, inter alia, the submission of regular progress reports from the CHCC.

In an ensuing opinion, the district court elaborated on the constitutional deficiencies of the existing health care programs, but declined to rule on the receivership recommendation. Morales II, 13 F.Supp.2d at 213. Instead, the court issued a series of orders designed to "build on the remedial structure ... already in place." Id. In so doing, the court reaffirmed its earlier support for the Plans and expressed a willingness to listen should the parties or the CHCC "request modifications of the [Plans] to keep abreast of health care developments or to enhance administrative and fiscal efficiency." Id. at 158.

The court also acknowledged the recommendation for the creation of a private non-profit corporation as a vehicle for the delivery of inmate health care services. See id. at 203 (citing the testimony of an expert in correctional health care to the effect that "[t]he objective of an adequate budget process and a sense of relative permanency can be accomplished through a private not-for-profit health care corporation whose primary mission is correctional health care"). But the court expressed skepticism about the parties' abilities to establish such an entity and ordered class counsel to report within ten days on the progress made in organizing the Corporation. Id. at 214. Within the allotted period, class counsel outlined the steps that were being taken to create the Corporation.

Although Morales II provides, at best, a tentative endorsement of the parties' suggested remedy, the court's subsequent statements and actions indicate full support for the nascent Corporation. That support has been unwavering: despite slower-than-expected progress on the path to privatization, the court has regularly reviewed and approved annual budgets for the Corporation and has authorized the disbursement of substantial monies from the fine fund to cover the Corporation's operating expenses. To date, these disbursements total around $20,000,000.

On March 31, 2000, Dr. Guzmán resigned. The district court believed that recruiting a new CHCC would be inopportune given the Corporation's "advanced stage of development" and the court's expectation that the Corporation would take over the delivery of correctional health care services within the next eighteen months. Still, the vacancy left a void. To bridge the gap temporarily, the court entered an order transferring some of the CHCC's duties to the executive director of the correctional health program (Dr. Ernesto Torres Arroyo).

A new administration came to power in Puerto Rico following the November 2000 general elections. The following February, the Secretary — an appointee of the newly-elected governor — sought to terminate Dr. Torres' employment as executive director of the correctional health program. In response to the plaintiffs' objection, the district court restrained the Secretary from...