Opinion ID: 437080
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Specific Contacts

Text: 21 The District Court felt that Dr. Kreuzer's allegations of specific contacts between the ADA and the AAP during the pendency of his membership application raised more serious inferences and questions. 516 F.Supp. at 1039. There are primarily two such instances of specific contact. 11 The first such contact involved an inquiry made by Ms. Holmquist, Executive Secretary of the AAP, to Elliot Dunn, Secretary of the ADA Council on Judicial Procedures, Constitution and Bylaws. The second such contact involved a letter from Dr. Sugarman, President of the AAP, to the ADA seeking advice on how the limited practice requirement should be applied in certain specific situations. 22 At the April 30, 1976 meeting of the AAP's Executive Committee, the Executive Secretary of the AAP, Ms. Holmquist, made the following statement: 23 In pursuing what we ought to do about Dr. Kreuzer, we did some of the leg work about asking the ADA Council on Judicial Procedures, the ADA Council on Constitution and Bylaws, how they would interpret this, because since our Bylaws tie us to the ADA, we wanted to be certain that the ADA would interpret it in a particular way, and I put the question very squarely to Elliot Dunn, Secretary of that Council, and he brought it to the Council and he came back to me with the answer, which was that if a man did restorative care routinely in his practice, the Council would not consider that he was ethically qualified to announce as a periodontist. 24 Exhibit H to Plaintiff's Brief, R.E. 322-23. 25 On January 5, 1977, Dr. Marvin Sugarman, then President of the AAP, wrote a letter to the ADA's Council on Judicial Procedures, Constitution and Bylaws. Swanson Dep.Ex. 10, R.E. 267-85. This letter contained two questions regarding the limited practice requirement. The first question asked whether a dentist who holds himself out to the public as a specialist in periodontics may ... engage in the practice of permanent restorative dentistry...? The second question inquired whether a periodontist may refer patients needing essential restorative procedures to a dentist selected only to perform that restorative work. Neither Dr. Kreuzer nor his application for active membership were referred to in this letter. Attached to the letter was a background paper on periodontal prosthesis prepared by the AAP. Again Dr. Kreuzer was not named in the paper. Appended to the background paper was a list of AAP members trained in periodontal prosthesis. Dr. Kreuzer's name was one of twenty that appeared on that list. By letter of March 4, 1977, Dr. Bernard Conway of the ADA replied to Dr. Sugarman's questions. Swanson Dep.Ex. 11, R.E. 286. He answered the first question in the negative and reported that he lacked specific factual information to answer the second question. Dr. Conway did not refer to Dr. Kreuzer or his membership application. 26 The District Court concluded that this abstract opinion was insufficient to establish an agreement between the ADA and the AAP to restrain trade. The court held that [n]othing indicates that the ADA had any involvement with the limitation of practice requirement the AAP applied to Kreuzer. 516 F.Supp. at 1039.