Opinion ID: 4503038
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Complaints Regarding Staffing

Text: [¶32] In his response to Riverview’s statements of material facts, Pushard asserts that he repeatedly complained that the continuation of the 16 staffing approach by administrator Harper and others in management endangered both patient and employee health and safety.6 [¶33] Pushard told Harper that he was concerned that nurses were being placed in administrative roles instead of on the floor. Specifically, Pushard complained that removing Nurses Orange and Cote from the patient floor was endangering both patient and employee health and safety in already-dangerous work situations. He complained that the replacement of two full-time nurse educators with part-time nurse educators decreased the availability of nurses on the patient floors. Pushard also argued for the hiring of more mental health workers rather than acuity specialists, because there was no provision for acuity specialists rather than mental health workers under the consent decree that governs Riverview’s operations. He continued to report and argue for more mental health workers because there was a ratio of nurses and mental health workers that needed to be maintained under the consent decree. 6In Pushard’s response to Paragraph 16 of Riverview’s statement of material facts (“In his conversations with Harper and others at Riverview about staffing issues, Pushard did not believe that he was making Harper or anyone else aware of anything they were not already aware of.”), Pushard stated that he was more outspoken than other employees and “particularly stressed that the continuation of the staffing approach by Harper and others in management endangered both patient and employee health and safety.” 17 [¶34] In Cormier, we addressed whether complaints about understaffing at healthcare facilities may be protected by the WPA: Although this provision is not triggered by every complaint that relates to safety, it protects employees who, in good faith, make safety-related complaints when the employee reasonably believes that a dangerous condition or practice exists. A complaint is made in good faith if the employee’s motivation is to stop a dangerous condition. A complaint is supported by reasonable cause when the employee has a subjective and objectively reasonable belief that a dangerous condition or practice exists. 2015 ME 161, ¶ 11, 129 A.3d 944 (citation omitted)(quotation marks omitted). [¶35] The Court states that “Pushard’s staffing complaints were not whistleblower protected activity because he was not exposing a concealed or unknown safety issue. Instead, he was simply giving his opinion concerning . . . well-known problems related to staffing,” Court’s Opinion ¶ 19, and that “Pushard was not reporting; he was complaining.” Court’s Opinion ¶ 21. I disagree. [¶36] First, complaints concerning safety may be protected activity, and the complaints do not need to be in the form of a report in order for them to be protected. We made it very clear in Cormier that complaints about safety issues may constitute protected activity. Cormier, 2015 ME 161, ¶¶ 10-16, 129 A.3d 944; see also 26 M.R.S. § 833(1)(B). Second, that the conditions about which 18 Pushard complained were publicly known does not preclude Pushard from convincing a jury that his complaints are protected by the WPA. [¶37] The proposition that complaints about publicly known safety issues can never be protected activity has been expressly overruled by Congress. 5 U.S.C.S § 2302(f)(1)(B) (LEXIS through Pub. L. No. 116-91) (“A disclosure shall not be excluded from subsection (b)(8) [listing WPA protected activities] because . . . the disclosure revealed information that had been previously disclosed.”); see also Hartzman v. Wells Fargo & Co., 1:14CV808, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 18733 at -26 (M.D.N.C. Feb. 17, 2016). In Hartzman, the court refuted the defendant’s contention that the plaintiff’s activity was not protected because the plaintiff raised public information. The court noted that Congress had clearly expressed its intent to the contrary: Further, several of those cases have since been in effect overruled by Congress. For example, Meuwissen v. Department of Interior, 234 F.3d 9 (Fed. Cir. 2000), held that a public employee was not protected under the Whistleblower Protection Act of 1989 (“WPA”) when disclosing information that was already publicly known. After this holding, Congress expressly overruled this case and amended the statute to specifically include disclosures of already public information. 19 Hartzman, 1:14CV808, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 18733 at -26 (citation omitted).7 The WPA protects Pushard’s complaints regarding staffing and safety, whether the alleged understaffing was publicly known or not. [¶38] Furthermore, the content of Pushard’s complaints was not necessarily publicly known. The public may have known that Riverview was operating under a consent decree, and that there were staffing issues, but the public may not have necessarily known that Riverview was not complying with the consent decree, and thereby was creating safety issues for patients and staff. [¶39] The Court fails to take into consideration that Riverview was operating pursuant to a consent decree with the State regarding management and staffing. Pushard’s complaints regarding understaffing and patient safety take on special significance because of the existence of the consent decree. Even though Riverview was under close scrutiny by the courts because of staffing issues, it does not follow that Riverview’s failure to comply with the consent decree was publicly known and that noncompliance created safety 7 See Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act of 2012, Pub. L. No. 112-199, § 101(b)(2)(C) (2012)(codified at 5 U.S.C.S § 2302(f)(1)(B) (LEXIS through Pub. L. No. 116-91)). The Maine Whistleblowers’ Protection Act is comparable to its federal counterpart, 5 U.S.C. § 2302. Me. Human Rights Comm’n v. Me. Dep’t of Veterans’ Servs., 627 A.2d 1005, 1007 (Me. 1993). 20 issues for staff and patients. The issue is not whether Riverview in fact was violating the consent decree and creating safety issues for patients and staff; the issue is whether Pushard had a good faith belief of said safety issues and complained about them to the administration. [¶40] Pushard’s version of the facts paints a completely different picture than the version accepted as fact by the Court. It is up to a jury to decide whether Pushard’s complaints constituted protected activity. See, e.g., Cormier, 2015 ME 161, ¶¶ 9, 16, 129 A.3d 944 (stating that whether a complaint rises to the level of a protected activity is a question of fact for the jury to resolve).