Poplardo v. Adelberg

Background

Michael R. Poplardo, proceeding without a lawyer, sued school supervisors, members of the school board, a school attorney and law firm, and therapy providers. He alleged claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, the federal civil-rights statute used to sue state actors for constitutional violations, as well as state-law claims for medical malpractice, defamation, libel, slander, and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

The dispute arose from disciplinary proceedings concerning Poplardo’s teaching. A hearing officer imposed a six-month unpaid suspension and required impulse-control therapy at Poplardo’s expense, subject to the school district’s discretion. School officials later arranged therapy, demanded information about Poplardo’s treatment, and sought a signed authorization allowing access to medical information. After Poplardo signed the authorization, disciplinary charges were not withdrawn as he says he expected. A later disciplinary hearing dismissed 13 of 14 charges and imposed a $5,000 fine for failing to sign the authorization by the required deadline.

Rulings on the Federal Claims

The court dismissed Poplardo’s procedural due-process claims. It held that the therapy requirement’s implementation was left to the school district’s discretion, so Poplardo had not identified a protected property interest in how the requirement was implemented. The court also held that available state-court proceedings provided an adequate way to challenge the disciplinary process and that Poplardo had not adequately alleged a denial of due process during the later hearing.

The court allowed Poplardo’s Fourteenth Amendment substantive-due-process claim concerning medical privacy to proceed against the supervisory and board defendants. The court recognized that medical and psychiatric information can receive constitutional privacy protection and held that, at the pleading stage, Poplardo plausibly alleged that officials lacked a sufficient reason to demand broad, ongoing therapy information, pressured him with threats of discipline and dismissal, and punished him for refusing to provide it. The court concluded that these allegations plausibly described conduct that could be sufficiently extreme to support a substantive-due-process claim.

The court dismissed the Fourth Amendment claim. Although it rejected the argument that Poplardo automatically lacked a privacy interest because the records were held by a third party, it found that Poplardo voluntarily signed the medical-record authorization. The court concluded that the alleged promise to withdraw disciplinary charges, even if deceptive, was not so extreme that it made his consent involuntary under the circumstances alleged.

The court also addressed who could be sued under § 1983. It found that Poplardo had not adequately alleged personal involvement by Manno, Silverstein, or The Therapy Center, LLC. It found sufficient allegations of personal involvement by Adelberg, Haynsworth, the board defendants, and Gerety. Although Richmond was a private attorney, the court held that Poplardo plausibly alleged that she acted together with a school official during the disciplinary hearing, so it treated her as a state actor for purposes of the § 1983 claims. The supervisory and board defendants’ qualified-immunity requests were denied because Poplardo sued them only in their official capacities, and qualified immunity applies only to officials sued individually.

Rulings on the State Claims

The court dismissed the defamation, libel, and slander claims as untimely. It held that those claims accrued when the statements about the disciplinary award were published on September 5, 2019, more than one year before Poplardo filed suit. The court also dismissed the intentional-infliction-of-emotional-distress claim as untimely, using June 17, 2020—the date Poplardo identified as the latest conduct supporting that claim—as the latest possible accrual date.

The court found that Poplardo’s medical-malpractice claim was timely, but dismissed it for inadequate pleading. Poplardo alleged that he attended one session with Snow, but did not allege what treatment Snow provided, how it departed from accepted medical practice, or how that treatment caused his claimed injury. The court also held that Poplardo had not alleged a duty of care by Gerety, Silverstein, or The Therapy Center because he alleged that Snow was the only therapy-center employee who interacted with him.

Disposition and Further Proceedings

The court’s conclusion states that all claims were dismissed except the Fourteenth Amendment substantive-due-process claim against the supervisory and board defendants. It therefore dismissed all other served defendants. The court granted Poplardo 60 additional days from the date of the opinion to serve Kass and Snow, who had not appeared, while warning that failure to serve them could result in dismissal. The court also granted Poplardo 30 days to file an amended complaint and terminated the pending motions to dismiss.