Dennis King v. Garfield Cty Public Hospital , 641 F. App'x 696 ( 2015 )

FILED
NOT FOR PUBLICATION
DEC 24 2015
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK
U.S. COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT
DENNIS KING; TRICIA KING, husband No. 14-35460
and wife,
D.C. No. 2:12-cv-00622-TOR
Plaintiffs - Appellees,
v. MEMORANDUM*
GARFIELD COUNTY PUBLIC
HOSPITAL DISTRICT NO. 1, a
municipal corporation; SUSAN
MORROW; JAMES D. MORROW;
ANDREW CRAIGIE; BARBARA
CRAIGIE; MICHELE BEEHLER;
BLAINE BEEHLER,
Defendants - Appellants,
and
TERENCE SEAN MCGEE, M.D.; KIM
MCGEE; OHS HEALTH & SAFETY
SERVICES, INC.,
Defendants.
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Eastern District of Washington
Thomas O. Rice, District Judge, Presiding
*
This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent
except as provided by 9th Cir. R. 36-3.
Argued and Submitted November 17, 2015
Richland, Washington
Before: LEAVY, GRABER, and TALLMAN, Circuit Judges.
Plaintiff Dennis King, a nurse previously employed at Defendant Garfield
County Public Hospital, filed a complaint under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 after the hospital
terminated him following a positive drug test. Plaintiff alleged that his termination
violated his procedural due process rights under the Fifth and Fourteenth
Amendments. Defendants appeal the district court’s denial of their motion for
summary judgment on qualified immunity. Because Defendants were entitled to
qualified immunity, we reverse.
"[P]rocedural due process requirements can rarely be considered clearly
established[,] at least in the absence of closely corresponding factual and legal
precedent." Shinault v. Hawks, 782 F.3d 1053, 1059 (9th Cir. 2015) (internal
quotation marks omitted); see id. at 1060 (holding that the defendant was entitled
to qualified immunity when there was an "absence of precedent establishing a
state’s obligation to provide a pre-deprivation hearing" to an inmate before the
Oregon Department of Corrections withdrew funds from his trust account). Here,
no clearly established law put Defendants on notice that Plaintiff was entitled to
more process than he received.
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Before the termination, Defendants provided Plaintiff with notice that the
presence of drugs in his sample could result in termination under hospital policy.
Plaintiff had an opportunity to explain the drug test result at a lengthy meeting with
three hospital administrators and the medical review officer who interpreted the
drug test results. He also had ample opportunity (a period of several weeks) to
submit additional documentation explaining the presence of drugs in his sample,
following the meeting and before his eventual termination. Indeed, he took
advantage of that opportunity. Various arguments that Plaintiff was not provided
sufficient process are not persuasive:
• The medical review officer’s decision to change the designation of the drug
screen report from negative to positive three weeks after Plaintiff’s meeting
with the hospital administrators does not demonstrate a lack of due process.
To the contrary, the timing of the decision suggests that Defendants and the
medical review officer were willing to consider Plaintiff’s explanations for
his test results.
• The doctrine of qualified immunity shields officials from civil liability so
long as their conduct does not violate clearly established law of which a
reasonable person would have known. Mullenix v. Luna, 136 S. Ct. 305,
308 (2015) (per curiam). "This inquiry turns on the objective legal
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reasonableness of the action . . . ." Pearson v. Callahan, 555 U.S. 223, 244
(2009) (internal quotation marks omitted). Contrary to Plaintiff’s argument
that Defendants’ personal ignorance of the procedural requirements of a
name-clearing hearing should influence our decision, a defendant’s state of
mind is not relevant to the objective qualified immunity inquiry.
• The fact that Defendants never gave Plaintiff the numerical values of his test
results (as distinct from the conclusion that the drug test was positive) is not
dispositive, because Defendants reasonably could have believed that the
process that they provided was sufficient. See Levine v. City of Alameda,
525 F.3d 903, 906–07 (9th Cir. 2008) (holding that an official was entitled to
qualified immunity even though the plaintiff’s due process rights had been
violated, because the official reasonably could have believed that his
conduct was lawful).
• "The fundamental requirement of due process is the opportunity" for an
individual "to be heard at a meaningful time and in a meaningful manner."
Kaley v. United States, 134 S. Ct. 1090, 1114 (2014) (emphasis added)
(internal quotation marks omitted). Due process does not, however, require
the decision-maker to reach the individual’s desired outcome in order for the
process to be constitutional.
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For the foregoing reasons, we hold that Defendants were entitled to qualified
immunity.
REVERSED.
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FILED
King v. Garfield Cty. Public Hosp., 14-35460
DEC 24 2015
LEAVY, Circuit Judge, dissenting. MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK
U.S. COURT OF APPEALS
I would affirm the district court’s denial of the motion for summary
judgment on the issue of qualified immunity filed by defendants Andrew Craigie,
Susan Morrow, and Michele Beehler. These individual defendants stated that they
were unaware of the requirements for a hearing prior to discharging an employee
for serious wrongdoing. They did not know that the meeting which they asked
King to attend was what they now refer to as a “hearing.”
The defendants told King at the meeting that he had tested “positive” for
certain drugs, but no test results were provided. King was told that his continued
employment depended on final laboratory results and interpretation by the medical
review officer. Several days after the meeting, the defendants received the
laboratory results indicating King’s drug test was “negative” because the results
accounted for King’s valid prescription from his dentist. Later, the medical review
officer changed the drug test report from negative to positive.
The defendants terminated King because of the level of drugs disclosed in
the drug test. Throughout this so-called “hearing” process, King was never
informed of his drug level. The parties acknowledge that the drugs prescribed by
King’s dentist would have caused the presence of the drugs in his system. It is
only the level at which the drugs were present that caused the defendants to claim
that the test result was positive. King was first told of his drug levels six days after
his termination. Three days after he was informed of his drug levels, the Garfield
County Public Hospital reported King to the Washington Department of Health,
Nursing Care Quality Assurance Commission, stating that King had tested positive
for opiates. Following an investigation, the Commission determined that no cause
for discipline existed because the evidence did not support a violation.
The Supreme Court holds that a “public employee is entitled to oral or
written notice of the charges against him, an explanation of the employer’s
evidence, and an opportunity to present his side of the story.” Cleveland Board of
Education v. Loudermill, 470 U.S. 532, 546 (1985); see also Vanelli v. Reynolds
School Dist. No. 7, 667 F.2d 773, 777-78 (9th Cir. 1982) (stating that “procedural
protections of due process apply if the accuracy of the charge is contested”). Here,
a reasonable public official would have been aware that publishing stigmatizing
information in the course of King’s termination triggered King’s right to confront
the defendants’ evidence prior to his termination, particularly in light of the
shifting conclusions based on undisclosed drug levels. See Cox v. Roskelley, 359
F.3d 1105, 1113 (9th Cir. 2004) (stating that existing case law and the operation of
Washington public disclosure law precludes a “head-in-the-sand” defense, and that
“even in the absence of a Ninth Circuit case directly on point, government officials
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may still be fairly warned of potential constitutional deprivations”).
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