Opinion ID: 321397
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The existence of a private remedy

Text: 5 The District Court held that the Act did not provide expressly or by implication for a private civil remedy as a means of enforcing the Act's provisions. There is no express authorization but we hold there is implied authorization. The District Judge noted two lines of authority concerning implying a private remedy under the Hill-Burton Act, and elected to follow Stanturf v. Sipes, 224 F.Supp. 883 (W.D.Mo.1963), aff'd 335 F.2d 224 (CA8, 1964) cert. denied, 379 U.S. 977, 85 S.Ct. 676, 13 L.Ed.2d 567 (1965), and Don v. Okmulgee Memorial Hospital, 443 F.2d 234 (CA10, 1971), while declining to follow Euresti, supra, and two District Court decisions from this circuit, Organized Migrants in Community Action v. James Archer Smith Hospital, 325 F.Supp. 268 (S.D.Fla.1971), and Cook v. Ochsner Foundation Hospital, 319 F.Supp. 603 (E.D.La.1970). In Cook the District Court concluded without resort to the legislative history that the provisions of the Hill-Burton Act evidenced a design, 'at least in part, to benefit persons unable to pay for medical services,' just as this court had concluded in Gomez v. Florida State Employment Service, 417 F.2d 569 (CA5, 1969), that the Wagner-Peyser Act was intended to benefit migratory farm workers. Noting that the 'mechanisms by which the two acts are administered are similar,' the District Court decided that the analysis supporting the implication of a private cause of action in Gomez was applicable in Cook as well. 319 F.Supp. at 605-606. Organized Migrants adopts the reasoning of Cook. Independent of Gomez, Cook, and Organized Migrants, Justice Clark's opinion in Euresti examines both the Act and its legislative history and concludes that the Act was clearly intended to provide indigents with hospital services and that, 6 with this clear intent, it is not decisive that the language of the Act included no explicit indication that indigents were to have a right to enforce the Act's provisions. A civil remedy may be implied for those clearly within the protective realm of legislation or regulations in the public interest. Texas & Pacific Ry. Co. v. Rigsby, 241 U.S. 33, 40, 36 S.Ct. 482, 60 L.Ed. 874 (1916). 7 458 F.2d at 1118. Stanturf v. Sipes, supra, provides only weak support for the District Court's conclusion. There the plaintiff apparently did not argue for implication of a private cause of action, but asserted the somewhat different theory that he was a third-party beneficiary of a contract between the hospital and the United States. Stating simply that 'no authority has been cited to sustain this position nor have I been able to find any,' the District Judge rejected the argument. 224 F.Supp. at 890. The relevance of Don v. Okmulgee Memorial Hospital, supra, is still more attenuated. There an osteopathic physician and some of his patients claimed that a hospital's action in denying him admission to the hospital staff violated, inter alia, the Hill-Burton Act. It was in this context, one different from that of the present action, that the Tenth Circuit stated that 'the Act itself creates no personal rights or causes of action . . ..' A year later the same court, with the judge who wrote Don sitting as a member of the panel, decided Euresti. We believe that Euresti, Cook and Organized Migrants are persuasive on the issue here and should have been followed by the District Judge.