Opinion ID: 1799487
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: violation of state constitutional right to due process

Text: ¶ 32. Dr. Wong next complains that the adverse summary judgment was improper with regard to his claim that his state due process rights were violated by this termination because the trial court applied the wrong standard in concluding that the Hospital's actions were not closely enough linked with the state to invoke constitutional constraints. Dr. Wong argues that since the Mississippi Code had delegated its traditional judicial authority to govern the discharge of physicians to the Hospital in allowing it to conduct its own suspension and revocation hearings, there is a sufficiently close nexus between the government and the Hospital's actions so that actions of the Hospital may be treated as those of the government, therefore constituting state action. He cites some Code sections that govern hospitals and suggests that these sections provide the parameters under which a physician's hospital privileges can be revoked. ¶ 33. The circuit court granted summary judgment on this claim on the grounds that, one, the statutory scheme regulating private hospitals was not a grant of state power such as would transform the Hospital into a state actor and two that the claim was collaterally estopped, since the federal district court, in a decision affirmed in the Fifth Circuit, found that the Hospital's conduct was not state action as would support Dr. Wong's claims under 42 U.S.C. §§ 1983, 1985. Wong v. Stripling, 881 F.2d at 203. ¶ 34. The circuit court was correct in its determination that Dr. Wong was collaterally estopped from relitigating the issue of whether the Hospital's conduct was state action. This issue was litigated, actually determined, and was essential to the judgment in Dr. Wong's second suit in this matter that was pursued in federal court, in which he alleged violations of his First and Fourteenth Amendment rights under 42 U.S.C. §§ 1983, 1985. In Wong v. Stripling, the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit considered Dr. Wong's present argument that the Mississippi Code's regulatory scheme governing hospitals operates to delegate to them the exclusive province of traditional state functions, as well as his further argument that there is a nexus between the Hospital and the state that is so close that the Hospital's actions can be fairly attributed to the State. Id. at 202. ¶ 35. In response, to Dr. Wong's arguments, the court found that the statutory scheme simply authorized action which was already legal at common law, although it further requires that hospitals comply with their own bylaws. That court further found that nothing in the Mississippi statutory scheme mandated or even encouraged the Hospital's conduct toward Dr. Wong, thus concluding that, in light of its rights at common law, the Hospital's termination of Dr. Wong was not undertaken under some statutory grant of traditional state authority. Furthermore, the court found that the statutory scheme would not suffice to establish the nexus necessary to transform the Hospital's conduct into state action because the scheme consisted of purely procedural regulations. Id. ¶ 36. In light of these findings, Dr. Wong is collaterally estopped from relitigating the question of whether the Hospital's conduct was state action, and we therefore hold that the adverse summary judgment on his constitutional due process claim was proper. [4]