Bastidas v. Good Samaritan Hosp. LP — Nov. 2016 (Summary)

CIVIL RIGHTS

Bastidas v. Good Samaritan Hosp. LP
Case No. 13-cv-04388-SI (N.D. Cal. Nov. 21, 2016)

The United States District Court for the Northern District of California denied a hospital’s motion for summary judgment of a retaliation claim made by a surgeon, while granting a motion for summary judgment as to individual defendants.

This litigation arose following a complicated surgery at a hospital that resulted in the death of a patient and the suspension of the surgeon’s privileges.  After peer review proceedings, the Board of Trustees issued a final report on the matter, recommending that the surgeon be proctored for a number of surgeries prior to regaining his surgical privileges.

The surgeon was elected to the Chair of Surgery while his proctorship was pending.  The Medical Executive Committee (“MEC”) at the hospital, under the staff bylaws, disallowed his chair appointment on the basis that a majority of MEC members voted against him.  The MEC also removed the surgeon from the Cancer Care Committee.

The court found that the surgeon was engaged in “protected activity” when he filed a discrimination lawsuit and was, shortly afterwards, subjected to an “adverse employment action” by virtue of the defendant’s delay in implementing the proctoring program.  The delay prevented the surgeon from “perform[ing] certain types of surgeries at [the hospital]” which formed a large portion of his practice.  The court also held that a jury could reasonably find that the defendant’s failure to timely update the National Practitioner Data Bank also could have affected the surgeon’s employment privileges in an adverse way.

Although the defendants produced evidence that there were legitimate, nondiscriminatory reasons for the “adverse employment action,” the MEC’s failure to ratify the Chair of Surgery election results and the removal of the surgeon from the Cancer Care Committee raised an issue of fact as to whether those nondiscriminatory reasons were actually a pretext.  Ultimately, the close relationship between the “protected activity” and the “adverse employment action” was a sufficient basis on which to deny the defendant’s motion for summary judgment.