Quigley v. Tuong Vinh Thai

• Decision Date: 21 February 2013
• Docket Number: No. 11–2014.,11–2014.
• Citation: 707 F.3d 675
• Parties: Allen QUIGLEY, Administrator of the Estate of Scott Allen Quigley, Jr., Deceased, Plaintiff–Appellee, v. TUONG VINH THAI, Defendant–Appellant, Correctional Medical Services, Inc.; Steven Garver, Defendants.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit

707 F.3d 675

Allen QUIGLEY, Administrator of the Estate of Scott Allen Quigley, Jr., Deceased, Plaintiff–Appellee,

v. TUONG VINH THAI, Defendant–Appellant,Correctional Medical Services, Inc.; Steven Garver, Defendants.

No. 11–2014.

United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit.

Argued: July 26, 2012.

Decided and Filed: Feb. 21, 2013.

ARGUED:John G. Fedynsky, Office of the Michigan Attorney General, Lansing, Michigan, for Appellant. Heather A. Glazer, Fieger, Fieger, Kenney, Giroux & Danzig, P.C., Southfield, Michigan, for Appellee. ON BRIEF:John G. Fedynsky, Office of the Michigan Attorney General, Lansing, Michigan, for Appellant. Heather A. Glazer, Fieger, Fieger, Kenney, Giroux & Danzig, P.C., Southfield, Michigan, for Appellee.

Before: COOK and STRANCH, Circuit Judges; STAMP, District Judge. ^*

OPINION

JANE B. STRANCH, Circuit Judge.

This appeal addresses whether defendant Dr. Tuong V. Thai, a prison psychiatrist, is entitled to immunity from state and federal civil claims brought by the estate of the now-deceased Scott Quigley, Jr., who Thai treated for moderate depression. The estate alleges that Thai's medical care caused Quigley's death, violated Quigley's Eighth Amendment right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment, and constituted gross negligence under state law. Thai moved for summary judgment, asserting the defense of qualified immunity to the estate's federal claim and state-law immunity to the estate's gross-negligence claim. The district court denied Thai summary judgment on both claims. For the reasons set forth below, we AFFIRM the judgment of the district court.

I. BACKGROUND

Quigley was a 23–year–old man with no known life-threatening physical ailments or conditions.¹ In February 2008, Quigley was transferred from one Michigan Department of Corrections (MDOC) facility to an MDOC guidance center. For the next month until his death, Quigley was under the medical supervision and care of Correctional Medical Services, Inc. (CMS), a service provider with which MDOC contracted. Thai and physician's assistant Steven Garver treated Quigley for moderate depression at the guidance center.

The medical-intake assessment completed on the day Quigley arrived at the guidance center indicates that Quigley was taking 25 mg of Amitriptyline (brand name, Elavil) once a day for depression. The next day, Garver completed a physical examination of Quigley and prescribed three months of 50 mg Amitriptyline once a day.

A few weeks later, on March 7, 2008, Thai conducted a “Comprehensive Psychiatric Assessment” of Quigley. Thai's notes indicate that he discussed Quigley's taking Amitriptyline for depression and that Quigley expressed an interest in trying Trazodone for his moderate depression. Thai prescribed 100 mg of Trazodone (brand name, Desyrel) to be taken once a day for four weeks, and he discussed the side effects of Trazodone with Quigley.

On March 10, 2008, Quigley was found dead in his cell. The prison's medication chart confirms that Quigley had been administered both Amitriptyline and Trazodone the previous three days.

No documents in the record definitively ascertain Quigley's cause of death. The autopsy report concluded that Quigley died of an epileptic seizure disorder. Quigley's estate provides two affidavits from forensic pathologist Werner Spitz, who concluded that Quigley likely died not from an epileptic seizure, but rather from a fatal drug interaction between the tricyclic Amitriptyline and tetracyclic Trazodone. Spitz opined that taking a tricyclic and tetracyclic at the same time is “fraught with risks including [the] risk of coma and death” because the drugs together can cause serotonin syndrome. The estate also provided an affidavit from psychiatrist Dr. Gerald A. Shiener, who similarly opined that the tricyclic Amitriptyline and tetracyclic Trazodone when used together are dangerous because they exponentially increase the potency of one another and can be fatal. Shiener, like Spitz, concluded that the fatal drug interaction likely killed Quigley. On the other hand, Thai has provided three medical-expert affidavits, all of which criticize the conclusions of the estate's medical experts and conclude that the best explanation for Quigley's death is epileptic seizure.

In October 2009, the administrator of Quigley's estate sued Thai, Garver, and CMS, asserting in relevant part claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for violating Quigley's Eighth Amendment right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment, as well as state-law claims for gross negligence. In April 2010 while discovery was ongoing, Thai moved for summary judgment on qualified-immunity grounds. Later that same month, Quigley's estate provided the first affidavit from Spitz and the affidavit from Shiener. The district court denied Thai's first motion for summary judgment, reasoning that the facts taken in the light most favorable to the estate would allow a reasonable factfinder to conclude (1) that Thai violated Quigley's Eighth Amendment right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment and (2) that this right was clearly established. The court determined that there were disputes of material fact as to whether Thai knew that prescribing Trazodone when Quigley was already taking Amitriptyline created a substantial risk of serious harm. And the court determined that whether Thai's course of treatment caused Quigley's death was a “factual issue warranting further discovery.”

During the additional discovery, Thai produced his three medical-expert affidavits, which disputed the conclusions of the estate's medical-expert affidavits and concluded that the most likely cause of Quigley's death was epileptic seizure. Thai then moved for summary judgment again in December 2010. He argued that the additional discovery—and in particular, his medical-expert affidavits—showed that he was undisputedly not liable for Quigley's death. The district court denied this motion as well, reasoning that the estate “has presented sufficient proof to create genuine issues of material fact as to whether [Thai's] course of treatment entitles him to a qualified immunity defense.” All that had changed between the first and second motions for summary judgment was that Thai had now presented the court with a “battle of the experts.” But the court concluded that viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the estate would still allow a reasonable factfinder to conclude that Thai violated a clearly established constitutional right of Quigley's.

Thai appealed this denial.

II. ANALYSIS

A. Standard of review

This court reviews a district court's denial of summary judgment based on qualified-immunity grounds de novo. Bishop v. Hackel, 636 F.3d 757, 765 (6th Cir.2011). Summary judgment is proper if there are no genuine issues of material fact and the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. Fed.R.Civ.P. 56(a). Courts consider the evidence in the light most favorable to the nonmoving party and draw all reasonable inferences in that party's favor. Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 255, 106 S.Ct. 2505, 91 L.Ed.2d 202 (1986). The ultimate question is “whether the evidence presents a sufficient disagreement to require submission to a jury or whether it is so one-sided that one party must prevail as a matter of law.” Id. at 251–52, 106 S.Ct. 2505.

B. Jurisdiction over Thai's qualified-immunity claim

28 U.S.C. § 1291 grants us “jurisdiction of appeals from all final decisions of the district courts.” (Emphasis added). A district court's denial of qualified immunity is an appealable final decision under § 1291 only “to the extent that it turns on an issue of law.” Estate of Carter v. City of Detroit, 408 F.3d 305, 309 (6th Cir.2005) (quoting Mitchell v. Forsyth, 472 U.S. 511, 530, 105 S.Ct. 2806, 86 L.Ed.2d 411 (1985)) (internal quotation marks omitted). A defendant raising a qualified-immunity defense may not appeal a district court's summary-judgment order insofar as that order determines whether the pretrial record sets forth a genuine dispute of material fact for trial. Johnson v. Jones, 515 U.S. 304, 319–20, 115 S.Ct. 2151, 132 L.Ed.2d 238 (1995). Instead, a defendant denied qualified immunity may appeal only if the issue on appeal is whether the plaintiff's facts, taken at their best, show that the defendant violated clearly established law. Williams v. Mehra, 186 F.3d 685, 689 (6th Cir.1999) (citing Johnson, 515 U.S. at 311, 115 S.Ct. 2151).

Because we do not have jurisdiction over factual issues, “a defendant must concede the most favorable view of the facts to the plaintiff for purposes of the appeal.” Estate of Carter, 408 F.3d at 309–10 (internal quotation marks omitted). But as the estate argues, Thai's appellate briefs waste many of their words disputing the estate's version of the facts, arguing, for example, that the estate's theory of a fatal drug interaction “lacks objective factual support” and that the estate's affidavits are “fundamentally flawed [,] unreliable,” and should not have been considered by the district court. See id. (reasoning that the defendant disputed the plaintiff's version of the facts by arguing, among other things, “that the district court ‘erroneously considered inadmissible evidence’ ”).

The estate therefore argues that we do not have jurisdiction to consider Thai's fact-based appeal. In what may seem like additional support for the estate's argument, the district court in the present case denied Thai's summary-judgment motion because genuine disputes of material fact exist, and we lack jurisdiction to review those conclusions. But Thai's improper arguments and the basis of the district court's decision do not necessarily prevent us from having jurisdiction over Thai's appeal: “ regardless of the district court's reasons for denying qualified immunity, we may exercise jurisdiction over the [defendant's] appeal to the extent it raises questions of law.” Williams, 186 F.3d at 689–90 ...