Opinion ID: 2996370
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Defendants’ Motion for JMOL

Text: The defendants also maintain that the case should never have gone to the jury in the first place because the district court should have granted their motion for JMOL at the close of evidence. They give two reasons in support of this argument. First, they assert that Denius failed to establish an essential element of his claim—that the constitutional violation in question caused his injuries. See Papapetropoulous v. Milwaukee Transp. Serv., Inc., 795 F.2d 591, 595 (7th Cir. 1986). According to the defendants, in order to prove causation, Denius had to show that he did not sign the First Authorization specifically because he did not want to authorize the release of his medical records. Defendants then argue that Denius did not meet this burden because he provided no evidence that he was concerned with medical records in particular when he refused to sign; rather, Denius’s testimony was simply that he found the First Authorization objectionable because it was “an invasion of privacy” and “too personal.” Denius counters that the defendants are “turn[ing] causation on its head.” He believes that his state of mind is completely irrelevant to the causation inquiry, so he did not have to establish that the “medical records” aspect of the First Authorization had any bearing on his decision not to sign. Instead, according to Denius, all he had to prove was that the defendants’ conduct (conditioning employment on his signing the release form) caused his injury (loss of his job). We disagree with this formulation. If the evidence had shown that Denius’s refusal to sign was motivated solely 5 Because JMOL was proper, we need not address the district court’s alternative holding that Denius is entitled to a new trial. Nos. 01-3422, 01-3575, 02-1398 & 02-1460 13 by, say, personal animosity towards Dunlap, there would be no causal link between the constitutional violation and Denius’s dismissal. Or suppose the evidence showed that Denius’s only concern about the form was that it required disclosure of attorney-client communications (a claim on which defendants are entitled to qualified immunity, see Denius I, 209 F.3d at 955). Again in this situation, Denius would not have proved that the defendants’ intrusion into the confidentiality of his medical records was the cause of his injury. Nonetheless, even under defendant’s formulation, which is the correct one, Denius offered enough evidence on causation to justify sending the case to the jury. Denius testified at trial that he did not sign the First Authorization because it was “an invasion of privacy,” “too personal,” “not necessary,” and “unconstitutional.” The defendants allege that this testimony was “too vague” to prove causation since “there are many aspects to the right of privacy, and they are not interchangeable.” But on a motion for JMOL, it was the defendants’ burden to show that no reasonable jury could have found for Denius when reviewing the evidence in a light most favorable to him. Bruso v. United Airlines, Inc., 239 F.3d 848, 857 (7th Cir. 2001). Defendants did not meet this burden. A reasonable jury could have easily inferred from Denius’s testimony that the “medical records” aspect of the release form was at least partly what motivated his decision not to sign. Moreover, Denius also testified that he “was concerned with everything on the release with the exception of the . . . criminal background check and the education records” and that “as a retired military person, [he] knew that [his] records were at the National Personnel Records Center.” This testimony alone was sufficient to preclude granting JMOL. The defendants also claim that the district court should have granted Dunlap qualified immunity because a reasonable official in his position would not have known that the First Authorization extended to medical records. As an initial matter, we note that even if Dunlap is entitled to 14 Nos. 01-3422, 01-3575, 02-1398 & 02-1460 qualified immunity, it would not provide a complete defense because Denius asked for injunctive and declaratory relief in addition to money damages. Canedy v. Boardman, 91 F.3d 30, 33 (7th Cir. 1996). And in any event, qualified immunity does not apply. The defense does not protect “the plainly incompetent or those who knowingly violate the law.” Thompson v. Wagner, 319 F.3d 931, 935 (7th Cir. 2003) (quoting Malley v. Briggs, 475 U.S. 335, 341 (1986)) (quotations omitted). Dunlap asserts that a reasonable official in his position would not have known that the NPRC maintained medical records, nor would a reasonable official “necessarily have investigated every possible legal effect of the Authorization.” We disagree. First of all, Dunlap was the drafter of the Authorization, so we assume that he knew (or at least should have known) what all of its terms meant. Furthermore, we believe that a reasonable official in Dunlap’s position would, at a minimum, have made some effort to look into the form’s legal effect. With just minimal investigation, Dunlap could likely have discovered that veterans’ medical records are housed at the NPRC, but he chose not to conduct such a search. This was plainly unreasonable, so the district court was correct to deny Dunlap’s defense of qualified immunity.