Williams v. Department of Veteran Affairs

• Decision Date: 29 March 1995
• Docket Number: Civ. A. No. 94-1545-A.
• Citation: 879 F. Supp. 578
• Parties: John R. WILLIAMS, Jr., Plaintiff, v. DEPARTMENT OF VETERAN AFFAIRS, et al. Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Eastern District of Virginia

879 F. Supp. 578

John R. WILLIAMS, Jr., Plaintiff, v. DEPARTMENT OF VETERAN AFFAIRS, et al. Defendants.

Civ. A. No. 94-1545-A.

United States District Court, E.D. Virginia, Alexandria Division.

March 29, 1995.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

John D. Brosnan, Fairfax, VA, John G. Gill, Jr., Cynthia M. Kratz, Gill & Sippel, Rockville, MD, for plaintiff.

Helen F. Fahey, U.S. Atty., Larry Lee Gregg, Asst. U.S. Atty. (Appearing pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 517), Alexandria, VA, for defendants.

MEMORANDUM OPINION

ELLIS, District Judge.

This Bivens¹ and Privacy Act² suit presents two threshold questions. The first is whether the moving defendants, employees of the Department of Veteran Affairs ("VA") enjoy qualified immunity from suit under the Constitution where one employee unlawfully disclosed a veteran's confidential medical information to an unauthorized third party and the remaining employees thereafter helped conceal the improper disclosure. The second and distinct question is whether a Bivens action based on the unauthorized disclosure of material covered by the Privacy Act should be foreclosed because the Privacy Act is a comprehensive legislative scheme that provides the exclusive remedies for the conduct there proscribed.

I.³

Plaintiff John R. Williams, Jr. is a veteran of the Vietnam War. Since the war, he has experienced certain nervous and mental disorders for which he sought psychiatric treatment. In this regard, Williams consulted the Springfield Veteran Center ("Vet Center")⁴ in September 1992 regarding his deteriorating mental and emotional state. He met first with Defendant Sherwin E. Little, Ph.D., a Vet Center counselor. During this visit, Williams indicated that his primary purpose in seeking treatment at the Vet Center was to attempt to reconcile with his wife, from whom he had separated, and to end what he considered to be a destructive relationship with his girlfriend. Dr. Little agreed to help Williams, and the two met periodically thereafter for therapy sessions at the Vet Center from September 1992 until February 3, 1993.

At one point during the course of this treatment, Dr. Little indicated to Williams that he believed it would be beneficial to invite Williams' wife and girlfriend to participate in his therapy program. Williams expressly rejected this suggestion. Although Dr. Little repeated this suggestion on several other occasions, focusing particularly on the desirability of including Williams' girlfriend in Williams' therapy regimen, Williams remained steadfast in his opposition to the idea. Nonetheless, and without Williams' permission, Dr. Little allegedly contacted the girlfriend by telephone on several occasions, revealing to her confidential information about Williams' mental condition and treatment program.

After learning of these unauthorized communications, Williams filed a complaint concerning Dr. Little's conduct with the Regional Manager of the Vet Center, Defendant Phillip M. Hamme, MSW. Hamme assigned an associate to investigate the complaint. The associate completed his investigation within two weeks and told Williams he would receive a copy of the report, which Williams understood to be highly critical of Dr. Little. Notwithstanding the associate's assurances, Hamme later refused to approve the report's release to Williams. Instead, Hamme notified Williams that he would review the report, make any necessary revisions, and incorporate the findings into a letter. This was apparently done, and in the letter, Hamme assured Williams that the investigation had uncovered no evidence that Dr. Little had revealed any of Williams' confidences. Thereafter, Williams, suspicious that this was not so, made repeated, unsuccessful attempts to obtain a copy of the associate's initial report through requests under the Freedom of Information Act, 5 U.S.C. § 552, and the Privacy Act, 5 U.S.C. § 552a. In response to Williams' requests for the report, agency officials indicated that the associate's report no longer exists because it simply constituted "draft findings" that were reviewed, incorporated into the letter sent to Williams, and then destroyed.

Williams contends that Hamme, with the assistance of his secretary, Defendant Linda Wilson, destroyed or concealed the report in order to cover up Dr. Little's unlawful behavior. In addition, Williams contends that in furtherance of this alleged cover-up, Dr. Little has since completed a "Request for and Consent to Release of Information" form that Williams had previously signed in blank with the understanding that it would not be completed without his consent. Williams claims he never gave that consent, nor did he ever consent to any release of his personal psychological information. Thus, contends Williams, Dr. Little completed the consent form as a cover or as an attempt to provide post hoc justification for his unlawful conduct.

In light of these events, Williams decided to discontinue his counseling sessions at the Vet Center. In lieu of these sessions, he began mental health treatment with Walter C. Guarino, M.D., a private psychiatrist. Hamme approved payment for these private sessions, acknowledging that continued treatment at the Vet Center would be inappropriate. After Williams' fifth session with Dr. Guarino, however, Hamme, without explanation, discontinued funding for this private treatment.

Thereafter, Williams filed suit against the VA for alleged violations of the Privacy Act, 5 U.S.C. § 552a, and against Dr. Little, Mr. Hamme, and Ms. Wilson ("the individual defendants") for alleged violations of his constitutional privacy and due process rights.⁵ Specifically, Williams contends that the agency improperly disclosed material from his personal records to unauthorized third parties in violation of 5 U.S.C. § 552a(b), and wrongly withheld Williams' access to his own private records in violation of § 552a(d). With respect to the individual defendants, Williams claims that the improper disclosures by Dr. Little and the subsequent cover-up by all three individual defendants violated his constitutional right to privacy in his confidential medical information, a right he argues is firmly grounded in the First, Fourth, Fifth, and Ninth Amendments to the Constitution. In addition, Williams contends that by engaging in a wholesale cover-up of the improper disclosures, the individual defendants deprived him of his Fifth Amendment due process right to a valuable property interest, namely his entitlement to VA services as a disabled veteran. Because the alleged cover-up has led Williams to mistrust the VA, he claims that the agency's counseling services are no longer effective in his case and have therefore lost their value.

In response to this suit, the individual defendants filed the instant motion to dismiss on two independent grounds.⁶ First, they claim that their qualified immunity as government agents protects them from suit in this instance, since the constitutional law on privacy and due process is far from clearly established. Second, the individual defendants claim that the Privacy Act is a comprehensive statutory scheme that provides the exclusive remedy for the conduct alleged to have violated Williams' constitutional rights. Thus, they contend, it would be inappropriate to allow Williams to sue directly under the Constitution for conduct already regulated under the Privacy Act. Williams opposes the motion to dismiss, contending that qualified immunity should not be an obstacle to suit given the individual defendants' clear transgressions of law. Furthermore, he argues, nothing in the text or history of the Privacy Act precludes a victim of improper disclosures of personal information from bringing constitutional causes of action such as those presented here. Resolution of these disputes constitutes the task at hand.

II.

The first question presented is whether the individual defendants are immune from suit in this instance. It is undisputed that, as ordinary government officials, the individual defendants in this case are protected by a qualified, but not absolute, immunity. See, e.g., Butz v. Economou, 438 U.S. 478, 98 S.Ct. 2894, 57 L.Ed.2d 895 (1978). The Supreme Court addressed the contours of a qualified immunity defense in Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 102 S.Ct. 2727, 73 L.Ed.2d 396 (1982). There, the Supreme Court held that government actors protected by qualified immunity are immune from suit if their conduct does not violate "clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known" at the time of the conduct. Id. at 818, 102 S.Ct. at 2738. The inquiry is an objective one. Thus, in a case involving allegations of constitutional violations by government officials, the relevant question is not whether the government actor behaved maliciously or with ill intent, but rather whether a reasonable person in the official's situation would have understood that the conduct was unconstitutional. Id. at 815-19, 102 S.Ct. at 2736-39. See also Anderson v. Creighton, 483 U.S. 635, 638-39, 107 S.Ct. 3034, 3038-39, 97 L.Ed.2d 523 (1987); Hodge v. Jones, 31 F.3d 157, 162 (4th Cir.), cert. denied, ___ U.S. ___, 115 S.Ct. 581, 130 L.Ed.2d 496 (1994). Furthermore, in determining whether the constitutional right at issue was "clearly established" at the time of the alleged violation, courts must look beyond the general acceptance of the right at its most abstract level. Because general constitutional rights such as "due process" and "privacy" continue to evolve and change form over time, it is not enough to observe that these rights are, at the most basic level, clearly established. Rather, "the contours of the right must be sufficiently clear that a reasonable official would understand that what he is doing violates that right." Anderson, 483 U.S. at 640, 107 S.Ct. at 3039; Hodge, 31 F.3d at 167. Thus, the qualified immunity analysis properly focuses on whether a reasonable...