Nelson v. Monroe Regional Medical Center

• Citation: 925 F.2d 1555
• Decision Date: 10 April 1991
• Docket Number: 89-3234,Nos. 89-3110,s. 89-3110
• Parties: , 1991-1 Trade Cases 69,343 Judith NELSON and Darci Anne Bowman, Plaintiff-Appellants, Cross-Appellees, v. MONROE REGIONAL MEDICAL CENTER, formerly known as the Monroe Clinic, Defendant-Appellee, Cross-Appellant.
• Court: United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (7th Circuit)

Page 1555

925 F.2d 1555

59 USLW 2557, 1991-1 Trade Cases 69,343

Judith NELSON and Darci Anne Bowman, Plaintiff-Appellants Cross-Appellees, v. MONROE REGIONAL MEDICAL CENTER, formerly known as the Monroe Clinic, Defendant-Appellee, Cross-Appellant.

Nos. 89-3110, 89-3234.

United States Court of Appeals Seventh Circuit.

Argued Sept. 25, 1990.

Decided Feb. 19, 1991.

Rehearing and Rehearing En Banc

Denied April 10, 1991.

Peter E. Hans, Schrank & Schultz, Madison, Wis., Raymond E. Schrank, II, Cannon & Dunphy, Milwaukee, Wis., for plaintiffs-appellants, cross-appellees.

James R. Troupis, Michael, Best & Friedrich, Madison, Wis., for defendant-appellee, cross-appellant.

Pamela J. Schmelzer, Monona, Wis., for Association for Retarded Citizens of Wisconsin, amicus curiae.

Before CUDAHY and FLAUM, Circuit Judges, and PELL, Senior Circuit Judge.

FLAUM, Circuit Judge.

Plaintiffs Judith Nelson and Darci Anne Bowman brought suit against defendant Monroe Clinic, alleging constitutional, antitrust, and state-law tort claims arising from defendant's refusal to continue to treat them. The district court dismissed all but the antitrust claims for failure to state a claim. Following the close of discovery, the district court granted summary judgment to defendant on the antitrust claims, ruling that plaintiffs had not demonstrated antitrust injury. Plaintiffs appeal the dismissal of their claims for intentional and negligent infliction of emotional distress and the grant of summary judgment to defendant on their antitrust claims. Defendant cross-appeals the district court's refusal to dismiss on the pleadings plaintiffs' antitrust claims for failure to allege facts showing that defendant's acquisition of Monroe Medical Center had a not insubstantial effect on interstate commerce. We affirm the district court's dismissal of the emotional distress claims but reverse its grant of summary judgment on the antitrust claim. In addition, we affirm but modify the district court's conclusion with respect to defendant's effect on interstate commerce. Recognizing, however, that the district court based its grant of summary judgment exclusively on the question of antitrust injury, we remand for renewed summary judgment motions concerning the relevant product and geographic markets and defendant's power in those markets, as well as the nexus between defendant's alleged antitrust violation and interstate commerce.

I. FACTS AND PRIOR PROCEEDINGS

Darci Bowman is a mildly retarded eighteen year-old. She lives with her mother, plaintiff Judith Nelson, in Monroe, a city of approximately 10,000 inhabitants located in south central Wisconsin. Because of her handicap, Bowman is in need of frequent medical attention. In 1984 and 1985, she received this treatment from, among others, Doctor James Raettig of the Monroe Clinic, a partnership of over 60 physicians providing health care from eight locations in Monroe and surrounding areas of Wisconsin and Illinois. In April, 1985, Bowman brought a malpractice suit against Raettig in Wisconsin state court. After filing the malpractice action, Bowman ceased patronizing Dr. Raettig, instead consulting with Dr. Eric Anderson, a physician at Monroe Medical Center, a clinic employing five physicians located in Monroe. In late 1986 Monroe Clinic acquired Monroe Medical Center. Monroe Medical Center became one of Monroe Clinic's branches and Monroe Medical Center physicians, including Dr. Anderson, joined Monroe Clinic. Bowman withdrew her malpractice claim against Raettig in mid-1987. On January 22, 1988, Nelson and Bowman received a letter from the Monroe Clinic informing them that it would no longer treat either of them on a non-emergency basis and offering to assist them to find alternate care and to transfer records to the providers they selected.

Plaintiffs allege that this letter was intended to, and did, cause both of them severe emotional distress. Alternatively, they allege that the Monroe Clinic acted negligently because it should have known that the letter would cause extreme emotional distress. Plaintiffs also allege that the merger between Monroe Clinic and Monroe Medical Center has increased concentration in the market for health care in Monroe, with the consequence that the denial of access to any branch of Monroe Clinic is equivalent to the complete denial of access to non-emergency medical care in Monroe and other parts of Green County, Wisconsin. Plaintiffs now obtain medical care in Madison, Wisconsin, some 40 miles north of Monroe. Another consequence of the Clinic's decision to deny them care is to prevent Bowman from obtaining medical care by herself; because she must travel outside Monroe, she must be driven by Nelson. According to Nelson and her employer, the City of Monroe, the need to accompany her daughter on her periodic visits to doctors in Madison has disrupted Nelson's work schedule and caused her to lose wages.

II. CLAIMS FOR INFLICTION OF EMOTIONAL DISTRESS

A. Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress.

Plaintiffs first challenge the district court's dismissal of their claim for intentional infliction of emotional distress. On appeal from a dismissal of a claim under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6),

we must accept as true all the plaintiff's well-pleaded factual allegations and the inferences reasonably drawn from them. Zinser v. Rose, 868 F.2d 938, 939 (7th Cir.1989); Gillman v. Burlington N. R.R., 878 F.2d 1020, 1022 (7th Cir.1989). We shall affirm the dismissal only if the plaintiff has failed to allege any set of facts upon which relief can be granted. Zinser, 868 F.2d at 939.

Yeksigian v. Nappi, 900 F.2d 101, 102 (7th Cir.1990). "In giving the pleadings a liberal construction, however, we are not required to accept legal conclusions either alleged or inferred from the pleaded facts." Mescall v. Burrus, 603 F.2d 1266, 1269 (7th Cir.1979); see 5 C. Wright & A. Miller, Federal Practice & Procedure (Civil) Sec. 1357 at 595-96 (1969 & Supp.1989).

Under Wisconsin law, "one who by extreme and outrageous conduct intentionally causes severe emotional distress to another is subject to liability for such emotional distress...." Alsteen v. Gehl, 21 Wis.2d 349, 358, 124 N.W.2d 312, 317 (1963); see Estate of Drab v. Anderson, 143 Wis.2d 568, 572, 422 N.W.2d 144, 146 (Wis.App.1988).

"Four factors must be established to prove a claim of intentional infliction of emotional distress: (1) the conduct was intended to cause emotional distress; (2) the conduct was extreme and outrageous; (3) the conduct was the cause of the person's emotional distress, and (4) the emotional distress must be extreme and disabling."

Stoll v. Adriansen, 122 Wis.2d 503, 516, 362 N.W.2d 182, 189 (Wis.App.1984), rev. den. 122 Wis.2d 782, 367 N.W.2d 222 (1985); see Alsteen, 21 Wis.2d at 359-61, 312 N.W.2d at 318; Laska v. Steinpreis, 69 Wis.2d 307, 322, 231 N.W.2d 196, 204 (1975). According to the district court, plaintiffs' complaint failed to establish that defendant's decision to terminate its relationships with Bowman and Nelson was sufficiently extreme and outrageous to satisfy the second part of this four-part test. We agree.

Since Wisconsin explicitly recognized the tort of intentional infliction of emotional distress in Alsteen, its courts have required plaintiffs asserting intentional infliction claims to show that defendant's conduct was so egregious that "the average member of the community" would regard the acts forming the basis for the claim "as being a complete denial of the plaintiff's dignity as a person." Alsteen, 21 Wis.2d at 359-60, 124 N.W.2d at 318. ¹

Wisconsin courts have been reluctant to find that liability existed even where plaintiffs alleged that defendants conducted themselves in a manner far more egregious than the Monroe Clinic did when it ended its relationship with Darci Bowman and Judith Nelson. In Alsteen, the first case in which the Wisconsin Supreme Court recognized the tort of intentional infliction of emotional distress, it refused to find that the defendant in that case, a building contractor, had acted in a sufficiently outrageous fashion despite the fact that he had left a job half-done, exposing his elderly client to the elements; when Alsteen complained, he told her that she made him sick. 21 Wis.2d at 353, 124 N.W.2d at 314. Similarly, in Laska v. Steinpreis, the Supreme Court affirmed a trial court's decision to sustain a defendant's demurrer to a complaint alleging that the defendant, a landlord, was liable for intentionally inflicting emotional distress on his tenant by spying on the tenant's domestic activities and driving his car at high speed onto the lawn of the leased property, scattering the tenant's children. 69 Wis.2d at 319, 231 N.W.2d at 203.

The three Wisconsin Supreme Court cases in which intentional infliction claims have been upheld also show the extreme nature of the conduct required to state a claim for intentional infliction of emotional distress. In McKissick v. Schroeder, 70 Wis.2d 825, 235 N.W.2d 686 (1975), the Wisconsin Supreme Court reversed an order of a trial court sustaining defendant Schroeder's demurrer to plaintiff McKissick's intentional infliction claim. Mrs. McKissick alleged that she had seen defendant Schroeder, a policeman, shoot her son and that after the shooting, as her son lay bleeding to death, the policeman questioned Mrs. McKissick rather than calling for medical assistance. In Slawek v. Stroh, 62 Wis.2d 295, 215 N.W.2d 9 (1974), the Supreme Court reversed the order of a trial court sustaining a demurrer to a complaint, in which plaintiff alleged that a former paramour had sought to continue their relationship "by his intentional physical acts in repeatedly telephoning her and her family at all hours of the day and night, interrupting her sleep and other activities ... [and] by wild and false ruses, stories, and the use of false names...." Id. at 314, 215 N.W.2d at 20. And in Scarpaci v. Milwaukee...