Weisman v. Barnes Jewish Hosp., Case No. 4:19-cv-00075-JAR
| Decision Date | 29 May 2020 |
| Docket Number | Case No. 4:19-cv-00075-JAR |
| Parties | JEFFERY WEISMAN, Plaintiff, v. BARNES JEWISH HOSPITAL, et al., Defendants. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Eastern District of Missouri |
This matter is before the Court on Motions to Dismiss filed by Defendants Washington University1 ("WashU"); Dr. Alex Evers, Chair of Anesthesiology; and Drs. Richard Benzinger and Thomas Cox, Anesthesiology Residency Program Supervisors (Doc. 41); and by Barnes-Jewish Hospital ("BJH"); and BJC Healthcare (Doc. 43). Plaintiff Jeffery Weisman, MD, has responded in opposition (Doc. 53), and Defendants have replied (Docs. 56, 58). Thereafter, the Court granted requests from both sides to supplement their arguments with additional authority. (Docs. 63, 64, 65, 67.) Also pending is Plaintiff's Motion to Strike Certain Exhibits (Doc. 52), to which Defendants have responded (Doc. 59).
Because it affects the factual basis on which the Court will evaluate Defendants' Motions to Dismiss, the Court will first resolve Plaintiff's Motion to Strike. (Doc. 52). Plaintiffasks the Court to strike three exhibits attached to one of Defendants' motions to dismiss, which he describes as "private academic records . . . on file at the university." (Id. at 1.) He argues that the exhibits are not admissible on a motion to dismiss under Rule 12(b) and that their contents are "immaterial and impertinent." (Id. at 2.)
Defendants respond that motions to strike exhibits as immaterial or impertinent may only be directed at pleadings and not motions to dismiss. (Doc. 59 at 1-2). Further, they argue that the exhibits are central to Plaintiff's claims and are necessarily embraced by Plaintiff's Amended Complaint. (Id. at 2-3); see Ashanti v. City of Golden Valley, 666 F.3d 1148, 1151 (8th Cir. 2012).
The Court agrees with Defendants. The exhibits at issue are an internal letter excerpting several negative reviews of Plaintiff's performance during his residency; a survey response sent to Plaintiff's medical school rating him poorly; and a confidential review of Plaintiff's medical school performance.2 (Docs. 42-1, 42-2, 42-3.) Plaintiff concedes in his motion to strike that he "describes generally, but does not disclose" the first two documents in his Amended Complaint. (Doc. 52 at 2.) The Amended Complaint describes the letter under his claim for defamation, asserting that it contained "a series of false statements about Plaintiff" and "was sent to several Deans at Washington University." (Doc. 35 at ¶ 116.) The survey response is also included as factual support for his defamation claim. (Id. at ¶ 121.) Defendants argue that the Amended Complaint referenced the third document by stating that "Benzinger falsely told Louisiana State University Health Science Center, Shreveport . . . that Plaintiff's Medical Student Performance Evaluation reported weak clinical performance." (See Doc. 35 at ¶ 121.)
Plaintiff quotes directly from the first two documents in his Amended Complaint. The Court concludes from that fact alone that the Amended Complaint necessarily embraces those documents. Further, the Court concludes that the Amended Complaint also embraced the third document when Plaintiff specifically referenced it as part of Benzinger's allegedly defamatory response to the survey.
Accordingly, the Court will deny Plaintiff's motion to strike those documents.
The following facts acts are taken from Plaintiff's Amended Complaint (Doc. 35), and documents necessarily embraced by the Amended Complaint. See Ashanti, 666 F.3d at 1151. Plaintiff is an accomplished individual. He holds master's degrees in finance and cellular biology, a juris doctorate, a Ph.D. in biomedical engineering, and, after graduating from Louisiana State University ("LSU") in 2016, an M.D. While in medical school, Plaintiff started and directed a research laboratory that he affiliated with LSU and Louisiana Tech University and staffed with two biomedical engineering students and one of his medical school classmates. The lab focused on biomedical applications of 3D-printing and generated valuable intellectual property while drawing a significant amount of research funding. Its research was widely published.
Plaintiff's medical school grades were not outstanding, but LSU faculty agreed that his formal grades did not sufficiently reflect Plaintiff's substantial dedication and focus on his extracurricular achievements. The Dean of the LSU medical school wrote that Plaintiff possessed "a level of intellectual curiosity that I had not encountered previously" and predicted that he "will be an outstanding physician-scientist [who] will make a tremendously importantcontribution, not only to his training program but also in the scientific community." (Doc. 25-3 at 4.)
In late 2015, as he neared his final semester of medical school, Plaintiff joined tens of thousands of other students in the National Resident Matching Program ("NRMP") to match with a residency program that would lead to being licensed and board certified. Out of the blue, Dr. Evers contacted Plaintiff and asked him to consider relocating to St. Louis to enter WashU's specialized five-year "ASAP" program at BJH, which would prepare Plaintiff to be board-certified in anesthesiology while allowing him to continue his aggressive research schedule. Evers suggested that Plaintiff also move his lab to St. Louis to conduct research for the WashU Anesthesiology Department at BJH while he completed his residency.
Although it was against the rules, Evers and Plaintiff agreed to list each other as their top choice in the NRMP. Unsurprisingly, Plaintiff matched with WashU's ASAP program. He moved to St. Louis in 2016 and relocated the lab to a space in the St. Louis College of Pharmacy, across the street from BJH. The lab's biomedical engineers moved, too, including Plaintiff's medical school classmate, who joined the WashU residency program in BJH's Radiology Department. As do all residents at BJH, Plaintiff accepted the terms of a "Memorandum of Appointment to House Staff" distributed by BJH's Chief Medical Officer. (Doc. 35 at 39-56.) The Memorandum of Appointment expressly references the standards for accreditation by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education ("ACGME"). (Id. at 47.)
Plaintiff's residency began in July 2016 with a four-week rotation in emergency medicine. By the first week of August, Plaintiff's relationship with Evers had begun to sour. By February 2017, Plaintiff was out of the ASAP program, and in April 2018, Plaintiff ended his affiliation with WashU and BJH.
Plaintiff alleges that things began to go south early on, when Plaintiff refused to tell Evers the rates for renting lab space at the St. Louis College of Pharmacy. When the lab began conducting research projects on behalf of the Radiology Department in conjunction with Plaintiff's former classmate, Plaintiff alleges that Evers became jealous. Plaintiff further alleges that Evers, Benzinger, and Cox conspired to falsify evaluations and negative reviews that ultimately drove Plaintiff to quit the program so that WashU and BJH could seize control of his research lab. Defendants assert that Plaintiff's performance was, in fact, substandard and that he was failing to meet the basic requirements to continue in their elite ASAP program.
In August 2016, after only six weeks at BJH, Benzinger told Plaintiff that his supervisors had "serious concerns" about Plaintiff's performance. (Doc. 35 at ¶ 61.) Plaintiff told Benzinger that his emergency medicine supervisors had not given him any significant negative feedback in his daily reviews and asked for more information but Benzinger refused. Around the same time, the Anesthesiology Department stopped collaborating with Plaintiff's research lab, and the lab's primary investor pulled out. BJH's Radiology Department assumed the operational costs and the lab's staff ultimately became BJH or WashU employees.
In January 2017, at Plaintiff's first six-month evaluation, Benzinger told Plaintiff that "nearly all of his reviews were negative" and that he had failed multiple four-week rotations in both Emergency Medicine and Internal Medicine. (Id. at ¶ 65.) Benzinger refused to provide written proof of either assertion but Plaintiff later "gained access to computer records" and discovered that his reviews were largely positive and that he had not failed any rotations. (Id. 35 at ¶ 66.) Nevertheless, Plaintiff was forced to repeat two rotations, which precluded him from completing the ASAP program's aggressive five-year schedule. As a result, he was droppedfrom the program and began pursuing a basic anesthesiology residency. Six months later, in July 2017, Benzinger refused Plaintiff's requests to meet for a second evaluation.
According to Plaintiff, Defendants' plot against him intensified during his third six-month residency period. Benzinger and another member of the faculty "pre-arranged negative evaluations . . . by secretly contacting and prejudicing the faculty and staff with whom [Plaintiff] would be working." (Id. at ¶ 71.) In addition, a faculty member harassed Plaintiff by following him around and recording purported mistakes. Plaintiff alleges that Benzinger and others falsified the six one-month rotation evaluations on which his cumulative evaluation would be based.
Plaintiff was presented with the allegedly false evaluations in February 2017, at his third six-month review. During that meeting, Plaintiff was told that he would be referred to the Physician's Health Program, the state medical board's program for assisting doctors with drug addictions or mental health crises. He alleges that such referrals are a well-documented tactic used by Evers and others in the Anesthesiology Department to threaten or damage a practitioner's reputation and career by implying that the he or she was unstable. Faculty asked him to withdraw from the residency program.
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