Opinion ID: 466082
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: findings and rulings

Text: 35 Four counts of Bratt's original seven remained for consideration on remand to the district court: Count III alleged that IBM, through Liebtag, violated his right of privacy by informing other management employees, including his immediate managers of his assertion of his open door rights. Count V alleged that Wesley Liebtag had violated Bratt's right of privacy by distributing the memos of October 1978 and September 1979, which stated that a physician considered Bratt paranoid and a psychiatrist believed that there was a mental problem beyond IBM. Count VI alleged that IBM violated Bratt's right of privacy by allowing discussion of his medical problems between Dr. Nugent and IBM management without obtaining a signed release authorizing disclosure. And fourth, Count VII alleged that Dr. Nugent violated Bratt's right of privacy and confidentiality by talking to IBM management staff without obtaining authorization or a release. 36 The test established by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court for determining whether communication of personal information about an employee by an employer violates the statutory right of privacy requires a balancing of the employer's legitimate business interest in obtaining and publishing the information against the substantiality of the intrusion on the employee's privacy resulting from the disclosure. Bratt v. IBM Corp., 467 N.E.2d at 135-36. This would include the communication of medical information by the employer as well as other kinds of information. The test for whether an employee's right of privacy is violated by a physician's disclosure of personal medical data involves a balancing of the degree of intrusion on privacy and the public interest in preserving the confidentiality of a physician-patient relationship balanced against the employer's need for the medical information. Id. at 137. The Supreme Judicial Court determined that when medical information is reasonably necessary to serve such a substantial and valid interest of the employer, it is not an invasion of privacy, under 1B, [of the statute] for a physician to disclose such information to the employer. Id. 37 The district court held that the test articulated by the SJC was essentially whether disclosure constituted an unreasonable interference with a person's privacy. Recognizing that questions of reasonableness are usually reserved for the fact finder, the district court went on to find that in this case no rational view of the evidence warrants a finding that defendants acted unreasonably under all the circumstances and granted summary judgment for the defendants. The court found on Bratt's claim that his privacy was violated by excessive disclosure concerning his use of the open door process that there was no evidence in the record that ... [this] information 'was published more widely than to managerial employees who had a legitimate interest in the information because of its bearing on Bratt's work assignments.'  As to the disclosure of information about Bratt's medical condition, the district court first concluded that, contrary to Bratt's allegations that Liebtag's October 18 and 19 memos were disseminated to as many as sixteen people, the evidence did not support dissemination to more than two managerial employees, and this would not be an unreasonable disclosure since the information was of legitimate interest to these employees. The district court further found that, even if all sixteen people had learned of Bratt's medical problems, this would not have been unreasonable. In arriving at this conclusion, the district court weighed two factors: the IBM internal regulations about the disclosure of medical information; and the extent to which Bratt himself made disclosures about his medical problems or impliedly authorized conversations about them by discussing his medical problems with his supervisors. The court concluded that, under the circumstances of this case, the defendants' disclosures about Bratt were not an unreasonable interference with his right of privacy. 38 Bratt argues that the district court erred in deciding by summary judgment the issue of the reasonableness of the conduct of IBM, Liebtag and Dr. Nugent. He particularly emphasizes that most of these disclosures were made in violation of IBM policy and that as such cannot be considered clearly reasonable. In a similar vein, Bratt argues that IBM cannot have a legitimate business interest in unrestricted access to information to which it has voluntarily limited its own access. Bratt also argues that the district court assumed, without actually finding, that each individual who received this information had a legitimate business interest in it. 39 Summary judgment is proper only if the pleadings, depositions, answers to interrogatories, and admissions on file, together with affidavits, if any, show that there is no genuine issue as to any material fact and that the moving party is entitled to a judgment as a matter of law. Fed.R.Civ.Pro. 56(c). The court must indulge in all inferences favorable to the party opposing the motion. Hahn v. Sargent, 523 F.2d 461, 464 (1st Cir.1975), cert. denied, 425 U.S. 904, 96 S.Ct. 1495, 47 L.Ed.2d 754 (1976). Where the critical issue in a case is the reasonableness of a defendant's behavior, as it is here, summary judgment will only be appropriate where no reasonable fact finder could find the defendant's conduct unreasonable under the agreed facts. Taylor v. Gallagher, 737 F.2d 134, 137 (1st Cir.1984). With this standard in mind, we review the district court's grant of summary judgment for defendants IBM, Liebtag, and Dr. Nugent on all four privacy counts. 40 We consider each count separately. Count III charges IBM with revealing information about Bratt's use of the open door process to managerial employees not directly involved in the open door process. Although not specifically alleged in the complaint, we assume that this count was meant to encompass Bratt's claim that the manager of the Cambridge center knew of his history of using the open door process and that this formed the basis for his unwillingness to let Bratt work there. Bratt also alleges by affidavit that the three copies of Liebtag's October memos found in the Waltham file during discovery were kept in Waltham and were available to numerous Waltham employees, including MacKinnon, the manager of the Cambridge Center. An affidavit by the IBM attorney responsible for this case states, contrary to Bratt's suggestion, that the file was created in response to Bratt's litigation and was kept at IBM headquarters in New York. 41 We agree with the district court that no reasonable fact finder could conclude that there had been an unreasonable intrusion upon Bratt's privacy by the limited dissemination of the fact that Bratt had used the open door process several times. The information itself, although it may have had a negative connotation to some managers, is not of such a personal nature that an intrusion upon privacy results from its disclosure. Cf. Hastings & Sons Pub. Co. v. City Treasurer, 374 Mass. 812, 375 N.E.2d 299, 303 (1978) (no breach of privacy in disclosure of payroll records because information not intimate or highly personal). This is especially true because the open door process necessarily involved the disclosure of the complaint to any person who was Bratt's immediate manager so that a full investigation could be made. Most of the sixteen or more persons he claims knew of his rather extensive use of the open door process were directly involved in the process, either as investigators, supervisors of investigators, or persons investigated. There can be no question that these individuals had a legitimate business need for this information and that Bratt's voluntary use of the open door process essentially waived any claim of breach of privacy vis-a-vis these persons. This leaves only Bratt's claim that MacKinnon was improperly apprised of his open door history by Liebtag's distribution of the October memos in the Waltham file. It is Bratt's contention that this improper distribution is a disputed issue of fact which must go to the jury. We cannot agree. Plaintiff is not permitted to build a case on the gossamer threads of whimsy, speculation and conjecture. Manganaro v. Delaval Separator Co., 309 F.2d 389, 393 (1st Cir.1962). The October memos indicate on their face that copies were sent to D.E. McKinney, the IBM Vice-President of Personnel, and T.A. Vadnais, Administrative Assistant to the Chairman of the Board, both of whom supervised Liebtag's work. There can be no serious question that the three copies of the memo found in the file are precisely the three copies made by Liebtag, one of which was kept in his own file and two of which he sent to his supervisors. Bratt's suggestion that the Waltham file containing these memos was anything other than a file compiled as a result of this litigation is mere speculation. Given the insubstantial nature of the intrusion upon Bratt's privacy caused by the disclosure of this information and the mere speculation that it was improperly disclosed, the district court properly granted summary judgment for IBM on Count III. 42 We now turn to Count V which alleges that Liebtag violated Bratt's privacy by distributing the memos of October 18 and 19 which stated that Bratt was paranoid and had a mental problem and by informing Rich and Leventhal of Bratt's mental problems in September of 1979. Once again, the test for a violation of privacy is whether the substantiality of the intrusion on the employee's privacy which results from the disclosure outweighs the employer's legitimate business interest in obtaining and publishing the information. The personal nature of the information is one factor to be considered in determining the substantiality of the intrusion. The information at issue in this case--Bratt's mental state--is clearly more personal than the open door information at issue in Count III. The more personal the information disclosed, the greater the intrusion upon an individual's privacy. On the other hand, we must also consider the degree of disclosure. A limited disclosure will result in a less substantial intrusion than will wide-spread disclosure. The disclosures at issue here are those created by Liebtag's October 1978 memos and September 1979 discussion with Leventhal and memo to Rich. We have already found that Bratt's claim that the October memos were widely distributed is pure speculation and we cannot assume that the memos went any further than the two individuals to whom they were sent. This means that a total of four individuals were apprised that Bratt might have a mental problem, two during the 1978 open door and two during the 1979 open door. 43 We must balance the degree of intrusion on privacy created by this disclosure against the legitimate business interest in that information held by the employees to whom the disclosure was made. Two of the people who learned of Bratt's mental problems from Liebtag were his supervisors, McKinney and Vadnais. A third, Leventhal, was responsible for finding Bratt a permanent job after his three-month medical leave. The fourth person apprised of Bratt's mental problem was Rich. Bratt has not pointed to any internal IBM regulations which limited managerial disclosure of medical information to other managerial employees. It cannot be said, given the nature of the complaints Bratt made during the 1978 and 1979 open door grievances, that the possibility that Bratt was suffering from some sort of paranoia was not relevant to an evaluation of his complaints and any decision about what should be done with him. We do not believe that any reasonable fact finder could have found that the limited disclosure made here was unreasonable in light of the legitimate interest the individuals who received the information had in it. We affirm the district court's grant of summary judgment for the defendants on Count V. 44 We turn to Count VI. Count VI charges IBM with a breach of privacy because it allowed Dr. Nugent to discuss Bratt's medical problems with IBM management without his permission. This count may also include, although Bratt's pleadings, memos, and brief are vague on this, a claim that the IBM medical staff breached Bratt's privacy through its discussions of his medical problems with IBM management personnel. Again, we balance the substantiality of the intrusion upon Bratt's privacy against the legitimate business interests of those to whom disclosure was made. Because the crux of this claim is that the disclosure which occurred violated IBM's own internal regulations concerning the disclosure of medical information by the medical staff to the management, we must determine how these regulations should be factored into the balancing test. The existence of company regulations protecting the confidentiality of medical information serves to enhance an already existing expectation of privacy concerning information of this kind. The substantiality of an invasion upon privacy is thereby increased where a company violates such internal regulations. In addition, where a company has established certain information as private and has set up strict rules for the publication and use of such information internally, the company has imposed on itself a heavy burden of showing that its business interest in obtaining the information warrants a violation of its own rules. 45 The district court concluded that, despite the existence of these internal rules, no rational fact finder could conclude that the disclosure of this information to the managerial employees unreasonably violated Bratt's right of privacy because they had a legitimate business interest in obtaining the information. We do not believe the result of the balancing test established by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court is foreordained. A rational fact finder might decide, given the expectation of privacy created by IBM, that the disclosures made by Dr. Nugent and the medical staff were a substantial intrusion into Bratt's privacy. Such fact finder could further conclude that IBM managerial employees did not have a legitimate interest in obtaining this information in a manner which violated IBM's internal rules. The documentary evidence provided by Bratt was sufficient to create a genuine issue of material fact concerning the extent of the disclosure of Dr. Nugent and the IBM medical staff and, look[ing] at the record ... in the light most favorable to Bratt, Hahn v. Sargent, 523 F.2d at 464, we do not find that a rational fact finder would necessarily come to the conclusion reached by the district court. The district court erred in granting summary judgment for the defendant IBM on Count VI. 46 The final count is Count VII, which alleges that Dr. Nugent violated Bratt's right of privacy and confidentiality by discussing the results of her examination of Bratt with IBM management staff without his permission. In our certification request to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, we stated that Dr. Nugent was a general practitioner retained by IBM. In answering the question directed to the standard applicable to a physician's disclosure of medical information to an employer, the Massachusetts Court stated that we would consider the degree of intrusion on privacy and the public interest in preserving the confidentiality of a physician-patient relationship balanced against the employer's need for the medical information. Bratt, 467 N.E.2d at 137. It pointed out that an employer may have a substantial and valid interest in aspects of an employee's ability to effectively perform job duties, id., and concluded that when medical information is necessary reasonably to serve such a substantial and valid interest of the employer, it is not an invasion of privacy, under 1B [of the Massachusetts privacy statute] for a physician to disclose such information to the employer. Id. 47 In a decision published after Bratt but almost three weeks before the district court's second summary judgment order, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court for the first time directly addressed the parameters of a physician's duty of confidentiality. Alberts v. Devine, 395 Mass. 59, 479 N.E.2d 113 (1985). The Court found that in this Commonwealth all physicians owe their patients a duty, for violation of which the law provides a remedy, not to disclose without the patient's consent medical information about the patient, except to meet a serious danger to the patient or to others. Id. 479 N.E.2d at 119. This duty arises from the physician-patient relationship. Id. at 120. 48 The significance of the Alberts decision for the privacy standard articulated in Bratt is that where there is a physician-patient relationship, the public interest in the confidentiality of that relationship may well outweigh any interest in medical information on the part of the employer so that a breach of privacy may result from disclosure not necessary to meet a serious danger to the patient or others. As a result, we must look closely at Bratt's allegation that Dr. Nugent owed him a duty of confidentiality since the presence of such a duty will significantly enhance his breach of privacy claim. 1 49 Bratt's argument essentially is that regardless of Dr. Nugent's arrangement with IBM, she entered into a physician-patient relationship with him and, therefore, owed him a duty of confidentiality. He testified in his deposition that he believed that everything he said to her would be held in confidence. The record before the district court contains a pamphlet describing an IBM program which provided confidential counseling to employees with psychological problems called the Employee Assistance Program (EAP). The pamphlet states that [e]mployees will not be sent to the EAP by IBM management, but that managers may encourage employees to use the EAP as a resource. From this it could be inferred that even if Dr. Nugent was retained by IBM to provide services for it, Bratt could have been under the impression that her services were being offered to him as a private physician whom he could choose to consult freely. This impression was not contradicted by Dr. Nugent, who neither informed him that she would be reporting the results of the examination to IBM nor asked him to sign a disclosure form. Moreover, it was Bratt who initially paid Dr. Nugent's bill, which expense was later reimbursed in part by his IBM major medical insurance and in part by IBM petty cash. The method of payment could also be found to have fostered the impression of a private physician-patient relationship. 50 The question is whether, under these facts, there could be found a duty of confidentiality owed by Dr. Nugent to Bratt to be factored into his breach of privacy claim. In Bratt, the Massachusetts Court observed that [w]hen an employer retains a physician to examine employees, generally no physician-patient relationship exists between the employee and the doctor. 467 N.E.2d at 136 n. 21. In Alberts, the existence of a physician-patient relationship was unquestioned. The Massachusetts Court, therefore, has not addressed the conditions under which a physician-patient relationship is formed. We believe it would find the existence of such a relationship even if the physician is retained by the employer where the patient reasonably believes that a physician-patient relationship has been established and where the physician knew or reasonably should have known that the patient had such an expectation. Under such a rule, we believe that Bratt has alleged sufficient facts to create a genuine issue of material fact concerning his contention that Dr. Nugent owed him a duty of confidentiality. We stress that if such a duty is found, it does not give Bratt a separate claim for breach of such duty. See n. 1, supra. The duty of confidentiality, and any breach thereof, is a factor to be weighed in determining whether Bratt's privacy rights under the Massachusetts statute were violated by Dr. Nugent. 51 In addition to the factual question whether Dr. Nugent may have owed Bratt a duty of confidentiality, we also note that if Dr. Nugent was bound by the same internal rules as the IBM medical staff, which is a question of fact, her actions were contrary to the practice set up by those regulations. The effect of these regulations, as we found in our analysis of Count VI, could be found to both increase the substantiality of the intrusion created by her unauthorized disclosure and decrease the reasonable business necessity for this information. Viewing the facts most favorably to Bratt on the issues of confidentiality, degree of intrusion upon privacy, and business necessity for the information, we do not believe that a rational fact finder could only conclude that Bratt's right of privacy had not been breached by Dr. Nugent's disclosures. We, therefore, must reverse the district court's grant of summary judgment for Dr. Nugent on Count VII. 2 52 In addition to claiming that the district court erred in granting summary judgment for the defendants, Bratt also contends that the district court erred in deciding the defendants' motion for summary judgment without oral argument despite Bratt's request for one. 53 Rules 12(c) and 7(e) of the Rules of the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts state: 54 (c) Request for hearing. (1) Any party making or opposing a motion who believes that oral argument may be of assistance to the court and wishes to be heard orally shall include a request for oral argument in the motion or opposition to the motion. A party making a motion may also request oral argument in a separate paper filed within 2 days after receipt of the opposition to the motion. 55 (2) A request for oral argument shall state the amount of time which the party believes will be necessary for both parties to be heard. The request may also include a brief statement of the reasons why the party believes that oral argument is desirable. 56 .... 57 (e) Hearing. If the court concludes that a hearing on a motion is required or, on the basis of a request for a hearing or otherwise, that there should be a hearing on a motion, the motion will be set down for hearing at such time as the court determines. 58 The implication of section (e) is that the district court will have discretion to decide whether oral argument should be allowed. Bratt makes two distinct claims of error with regard to this rule. The first is that the district court does not have discretion to deny oral argument when it is requested by a party. The second is that, even if the district court does have such discretion, it was an abuse of such discretion to deny oral argument in this case. 59 We begin with the claim that a district court may not refuse oral argument on a motion for summary judgment when it is requested by a party. Local district court rules are promulgated under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 78 which permits district courts to make provision by rule or order for the submission and determination of motions without oral hearing upon brief written statements of reasons in support and opposition in order to expedite its business. We have recently held that a district court should have wide latitude in determining whether oral argument is necessary before rendering summary judgment. CIA. Petrolera Caribe Inc. v. Arco Caribbean, Inc., 754 F.2d 404, 411 (1st Cir.1985). There is nothing impermissible in a district court rule granting the court discretion to deny a request for oral argument on a motion for summary judgment. 60 We now turn to Bratt's argument that the district court abused its discretion in refusing to hear oral argument in this case. Absent a showing of serious prejudice, it is not an abuse of discretion to deny oral argument on a summary judgment motion. Cf. Jasinski v. Showboat Operating Co., 644 F.2d 1277, 1280 (9th Cir.1981) (suggesting but not deciding that prejudice from denial of oral argument is necessary for reversal). The burden on district courts is considerable and eliminating oral argument can save the court valuable time. District court judges must be permitted to assess the need for oral argument in a case without concern that they are creating a pro forma ground for appeal. Where the party opposing the motion has had an adequate opportunity to provide the district court with evidence supporting its position and a memorandum of law, we cannot see any prejudice which cannot be rectified by an appeal of the summary judgment itself. Accord Erco Industries LTD. v. Seaboard Coast Line R. Co., 644 F.2d 424, 431-32 (5th Cir.1981). In this case, Bratt has had since 1980, when the complaint was first filed, to gather and submit evidence to the district court. This was the second time the district court considered this case on motion for summary judgment; the first time was in 1982. On this second go-round, Bratt had from August 1984 to June 1985 to create a record for summary judgment. The record before the district court was substantial and the legal issues for the most part were well defined in the course of the previous summary judgment, the appeal and the SJC's reply to our certification. Despite the fact that we have found that the district court incorrectly granted summary judgment on some of the counts, we cannot see how the denial of oral argument prejudiced Bratt's opportunity to fully present his case to the district court. 61 Finally, we hold, contrary to Bratt's assertion, that the loss of consortium claim raised in Count II is not revived by this action; that claim was premised specifically upon Count I, which claimed intentional infliction of emotional distress. Summary judgment was granted as to Count I by the district court's first order and this claim was later dropped by appellant in light of Foley v. Polaroid, 381 Mass. 545, 413 N.E.2d 711 (1980). 62 We affirm the district court's grant of summary judgment as to Counts III and V. We reverse the district court's grant of summary judgment as to Counts VI and VII. 63 Affirmed in part, reversed in part, remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. 64 No costs to any party.