Sarasota Cnty. Pub. Hosp. Dist. & Sarasota Cnty. v. Venice HMA, LLC

• Decision Date: 16 June 2021
• Docket Number: No. 2D19-3745,2D19-3745
• Parties: SARASOTA COUNTY PUBLIC HOSPITAL DISTRICT AND SARASOTA COUNTY, Petitioners, v. VENICE HMA, LLC, D/B/A VENICE REGIONAL MEDICAL CENTER, SARASOTA DOCTORS HOSPITAL, INC., AND ENGLEWOOD COMMUNITY HOSPITAL, Respondents.
• Court: Florida District Court of Appeals

SARASOTA COUNTY PUBLIC HOSPITAL DISTRICT AND SARASOTA COUNTY, Petitioners, v. VENICE HMA, LLC, D/B/A VENICE REGIONAL MEDICAL CENTER,SARASOTA DOCTORS HOSPITAL, INC.,AND ENGLEWOOD COMMUNITY HOSPITAL, Respondents.

No. 2D19-3745

DISTRICT COURT OF APPEAL OF FLORIDA SECOND DISTRICT

June 16, 2021

Petition for Writ of Prohibition to the Circuit Court for Sarasota County; Maria Ruhl, Judge.

Raymond T. Elligett, Jr., and Amy S. Farrior of Buell and Elligett, P.A., Tampa; and Frederick J. Elbrecht of Office of the County Attorney, Sarasota, for Petitioner, Sarasota County.

David A. Wallace of Bentley Law Firm, P.A., Sarasota, for Petitioner, Sarasota County Public Hospital District.

Geoffrey D. Smith, Susan C. Smith, Timothy B. Elliott, and Corinne T. Porcher of Smith and Associates, Melbourne, for Respondent, Venice, HMA, LLC d/b/a Venice Regional Medical Center.

Stephen A. Ecenia, J. Stephen Menton, Gabriel F. V. Warren, and Jennifer F. Hinson of Rutledge Ecenia, P.A., Tallahassee, for Respondents, Sarasota Doctors Hospital, Inc., and Englewood Community Hospital, Inc.

LUCAS, Judge.

After years of litigation between the plaintiffs below, Venice HMA, Sarasota Doctors Hospital (Doctors Hospital), and Englewood Community Hospital, Inc. (Englewood) (collectively, the "Hospitals"), and the defendant below, Sarasota County (County), over whether the County is statutorily obligated to reimburse the Hospitals for the costs of providing indigent care, the County sought summary judgment on its sovereign immunity defense. The circuit court denied the County's motion for summary judgment. The County then filed a petition for a writ of prohibition before this court, arguing that the circuit court's denial of its motion constitutes an unwarranted exercise of subject matter jurisdiction in violation of the County's immunity. We have considered the County's arguments carefully, but we must deny its petition.

I.

The essential dispute before us is straightforward: who is responsible to pay for indigent health care at the Hospitals since 2008? Resolving that question, though, requires consideration of various state statutes, county ordinances, and the course of conduct between these parties.

In 2003 the Florida Legislature repealed numerous special and local acts enacted between 1949 and 2000 and recodified them as a single Special Act that recreated and provided for the governing of the Sarasota County Public Hospital District (District). See ch. 2003-359, § 2, Laws of Fla. Under the Special Act, the District, an "independent special district" contiguous with Sarasota County, is governed by a Hospital Board (Board). Charter § 1.¹ Every month, the Board is authorized to certify to the Sarasota Board of County Commissioners (BOCC) a list of medically indigent persons treated by Board-managed (i.e., public) hospitals during the previous month, together with the itemized charges for those persons' care.Charter § 8(9). Within forty-five days the BOCC "shall" remit to the Board the amount requested. Id. The statute authorizes the Board to impose up to two mils of an ad valorem tax throughout the county to pay for these reimbursement charges. Charter § 8(8).

The statute includes private hospitals within its ambit as well. Thus, upon appropriate certification,

[t]he said Board of County Commissioners shall in like manner reimburse any other hospital in Sarasota County, approved by the State Board of Health, for hospital services rendered to medically indigent persons as herein defined, upon like certification by such hospital and at such rates as shall not exceed those prescribed for such patients by hospitals owned and operated by said Hospital Board.

Charter § 8(9).

Some three years before the Special Act's 2003 recodification, the BOCC had adopted as a county ordinance the special and local acts described above.² See Code of Ordinances of Sarasota County, ch. 4, art. II, § 4-24(i), -31, adopted Sept. 13, 2000. The countyordinance and the Special Act are virtually identical in content, including the sequence of their presentation.

In 2011, the Hospitals filed complaints against Sarasota County and the District seeking declaratory relief pursuant to chapter 86, Florida Statutes. The Hospitals alleged that the County had been collecting ad valorem taxes as imposed by the Board but had been refusing to pay their submitted requests for reimbursements under the Special Act, which the Hospitals had begun issuing in late 2008 or early 2009, according to the respective complaints.³ They sought a declaration to determine their rights under the Special Act, to declare that the County is obligated to reimburse them for indigent hospital services, todeclare that the County is obligated to reimburse the Hospitals for their prior invoices, and to grant any other relief the circuit court deemed appropriate. The County raised various affirmative defenses, including sovereign immunity, and several counterclaims, including a challenge to the constitutionality of the Special Act.

In 2012, the County and District jointly sought summary judgment, focusing solely on their argument that the Special Act violated the Florida Constitution's provision against special laws that grant a privilege to a private corporation. See art. III, § 11(a)(12), Fla. Const. The trial court granted the joint motion and entered judgment in favor of the County and the District. This court affirmed and issued an opinion in which we held that the Special Act did indeed grant an unconstitutional special privilege not shared by hospitals elsewhere in the state. See Venice HMA, LLC v. Sarasota County, 198 So. 3d 23, 24 (Fla. 2d DCA 2015). On review, the Florida Supreme Court reversed this court. See Venice HMA, LLC v. Sarasota County, 228 So. 3d 76 (Fla. 2017). The supreme court explained that the relevant entities for comparison, for purposes of article III, section 11(a)(12), were hospitals located in Sarasota County. Id. at 82 ("Because the special law only appliesto Sarasota County, we must limit our comparisons to Sarasota County."). Since all hospitals within the county were granted the same reimbursement privilege, the reimbursement provision of the Special Act was not unconstitutional. Id. at 84.

After the case was remanded back to the circuit court, the County tried a new tack. In April of 2018, the County filed another motion for summary judgment, this time arguing that although the Special Act may be constitutional it could not be lawfully enforced against the County. The County argued that only a general law (which, it contended, the Special Act is not) or an "express written contract" could waive the County's sovereign immunity. The Hospitals countered that the Special Act, when read together with separate legislation, effectively waived sovereign immunity. Further, the Hospitals argued that the enactment of the Special Act, when considered in conjunction with their providing indigent healthcare services in reliance upon the Special Act's payment directions, created an express contract that could be enforced notwithstanding the County's claim of sovereign immunity. After a hearing, the circuit court entered an order denying the motion on August 3, 2018. In its order, the circuit court observed:

It is undisputed that the County has previously reimbursed hospitals in Sarasota County for the provision of indigent care. There are genuine issues of material fact in dispute relative to the facts and circumstances surrounding these past payments as well as whether the County has historically reimbursed hospitals, including those operated by the District or any of the Plaintiffs, for costs of indigent care under the Special Act.

As cited in the Plaintiff's Response, if Defendants truly believed that the instant action was barred by sovereign immunity, they would have pursued dismissal or summary judgment on that basis prior to spending over six years litigating their counterclaims and participating in protracted appeals. The County acknowledged in their Motion, citing Fla. Highway Patrol v. Jackson, (Fla. 1st DCA [] 2018), that "Sovereign immunity is immunity from suit, not just liability and should be expeditiously addressed to prevent unnecessary litigation time and expense." The fact that the County and District expended "litigation time and expense" in pursuing their counterclaims all the way to the Florida Supreme Court begs against finding now that the instant claim i[s] barred by sovereign immunity.

The case proceeded with limited discovery. The County renewed its motion for summary judgment, arguing that there was no general law or written contract waiving sovereign immunity. Addressing the circuit court's apparent concern that past reimbursement constituted waiver, the County conceded that it had made prior reimbursement payments but argued that thosepayments did not waive sovereign immunity; again, according to the County, only a general law or a written contract could do so.

And again, on September 10, 2019, the circuit court denied the County's renewed motion for summary judgment.

It is clear to the [c]ourt that summary judgment cannot be entered on this basis, as there remains considerable dispute as to material facts. It appears to the [c]ourt that the County is, indeed, attempting to "recycle" its previously argued claim of sovereign immunity. In particular, there remain[] genuine disputes as to previous payments made by the County to the private hospitals and as to which legislative authority authorized the previous payments.

The County now urges our court to prohibit the circuit court from allowing the case to be litigated any further.

II.

Our path through the parties' arguments begins, unfortunately, in rather tall weeds. It does so because the County's choice of extraordinary writs, prohibition, has a complicated history with respect to the defense of sovereign immunity.⁴ So we have fashioned our analysis in two parts.

In this part of the opinion, we will examine what the...