Walters v. County of Contra Costa

Background

Walter L. Walters, an African American, board-certified anesthesiologist, worked as a temporary physician at Contra Costa Regional Medical Center, a County hospital, from November 1 through December 29, 2017. Walters had rheumatoid arthritis, an unusual gait after ankle surgery, a speech impediment and dentures that sometimes affected his speech, inflammatory bowel disease, and related pain and fatigue.

On December 29, after working long shifts, Walters rested in a hospital call room. Hospital personnel reported to Felicia I. Tornabene, the hospital’s Medical Director, that Walters appeared physically or mentally impaired and might not be able to provide safe patient care. Tornabene went to the call room with Deputy Sheriff Brian Cain and others. Walters said he was told to leave, was not allowed to drive himself home, and was directed to take a taxi. Walters later alleged that Cain restrained him near his car and used force, but the defendants did not seek summary judgment on the excessive-force claim or the assault-and-battery claim in this motion.

Evidence and judicial notice

The court granted Walters’s request for judicial notice as to the existence of two reports submitted to the Medical Board of California, Cain’s incident report, and the hospital’s medical-staff bylaws, as well as representations made in the reports. It denied judicial notice as to factual assertions within those documents and otherwise denied the request concerning the bylaws.

The court overruled Walters’s objection to Tornabene’s declaration. It denied as moot his objections to Lieutenant Brandon Garry’s declaration because Walters clarified that he was not pursuing a failure-to-train claim. The court sustained defendants’ objection to Dr. Shorr’s declaration and denied Walters’s request to submit Dr. Dan Field’s declaration because the expert disclosures were late and not substantially justified. The court also sustained hearsay objections to statements attributed to Tornabene and an objection to Walters’s unsupported statement about a hospital drug-testing protocol.

Claims against the County under 42 U.S.C. § 1983

Walters alleged that the County violated the Fourth Amendment through Cain’s conduct and sought to hold the County responsible for Cain’s actions. Walters clarified that he was not pursuing a failure-to-train theory and instead relied on the County’s alleged responsibility for Cain’s failure to follow policies and procedures.

The court held that a municipality may be liable under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 only for its own actions taken under an official policy or practice that caused the constitutional injury. It cannot be held vicariously liable for an employee’s conduct. Because Walters sought to impose liability on the County based on Cain’s own actions, the court granted summary judgment on the § 1983 claim against the County.

Fourth Amendment claim against Cain concerning leaving the hospital

The court noted that it had already dismissed Walters’s claim based on Cain’s and Prasad’s order that he leave the hospital without force. That earlier ruling granted qualified immunity on that claim. The court therefore treated the substantially similar claim in the operative complaint as already dismissed rather than deciding it again on summary judgment.

Fourth Amendment claim against Cain concerning the taxi

Walters alleged that Cain unlawfully forced him to leave the hospital in a taxi instead of his own car. The court assumed, without deciding, that Cain’s conduct might have violated the Fourth Amendment. It granted Cain qualified immunity because Walters did not identify Supreme Court or Ninth Circuit authority that would have clearly informed a reasonable officer, acting as hospital security and not investigating criminal conduct, that enforcing the hospital’s taxi order amounted to a seizure requiring reasonable suspicion of a crime.

Qualified immunity protects government officials from civil damages when their conduct did not violate a clearly established constitutional or statutory right. The court concluded that Walters had not satisfied the requirement of showing that the relevant right was clearly established. It therefore granted summary judgment on this claim without reaching whether Cain actually violated the Fourth Amendment.

Negligent infliction of emotional distress

Walters’s negligent-infliction-of-emotional-distress claim was based on Tornabene’s and Cain’s alleged failure to investigate whether he was sober before he was ordered to leave. The court treated this claim as a form of negligence requiring a duty, breach, causation, and damages.

As to Tornabene, the court held that Walters had not shown that emotional harm was reasonably foreseeable from the general category of conduct at issue: a hospital supervisor’s failure to investigate an employee’s sobriety before removing the employee because of suspected physical or mental impairment. The court therefore held that Tornabene owed Walters no duty to investigate his sobriety and granted summary judgment on the claim against her.

As to Cain, the court held that California law generally does not impose a duty on law-enforcement officers to investigate for a member of the public unless the officer creates a special relationship and induces reliance. Walters offered no evidence that Cain created such a relationship. The court granted summary judgment on the claim against Cain and, because the claim against the County was based on responsibility for Cain’s and Tornabene’s actions, also granted summary judgment on the claim against the County.

The court rejected defendants’ separate argument that Walters’s California Tort Claims Act filing failed to identify Tornabene. The court held that the filing described the hospital staff’s conduct sufficiently and that the County did not explain how the absence of Tornabene’s name prevented it from investigating.

Defamation

Walters’s defamation claim was based on two reports submitted to the Medical Board of California and an alleged statement by Tornabene that Walters refused a drug test. The court held that Walters’s administrative claim to the County described the hospital-removal incident and the physical interaction with Cain but did not mention the Medical Board reports, the alleged drug-test statement, or facts suggesting a defamation claim.

Because the defamation claim relied on different facts and a different legal theory from those in the administrative claim, the court held that Walters could not proceed with the defamation claim. It granted summary judgment on the defamation claim against Tornabene and the County.

Punitive damages and unresolved claims

The court found a triable issue concerning Cain’s state of mind because a jury would decide whether the force used against Walters was reasonable. The opinion’s conclusion does not separately state a ruling on the punitive-damages claim. The defendants’ motion did not seek summary judgment on Walters’s excessive-force and assault-and-battery claims against Cain, and the defendants appeared to withdraw their motion as to the negligence claim based on Cain’s alleged use of force. The opinion therefore identifies those matters as outside the specified summary-judgment rulings.