Opinion ID: 794319
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Qualified Immunity and Attorney Fees

Text: 15 MOPAS claims Schuffman's decision not to disclose the requested peer review report violated clearly established law, thus DMH and Schuffman are liable under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. 2 A state official like Schuffman is protected by qualified immunity from a section 1983 claim unless [his] alleged conduct violated clearly established federal constitutional or statutory rights of which a reasonable person in [his] position[ ] would have known. See Wright v. Rolette County, 417 F.3d 879, 884 (8th Cir.2005) (citation omitted), cert. denied, Sims v. Wright, ___ U.S. ___, 126 S.Ct. 1338, 164 L.Ed.2d 53 (2006). 16 We previously concluded Schuffman violated MOPAS's statutory right of access to medical peer review reports under PAMII. We must therefore determine whether that right was clearly established. Id. (citation omitted). For a right to be clearly established, [t]he contours of the right must be sufficiently clear that a reasonable official would understand that what he is doing violates that right. Anderson v. Creighton, 483 U.S. 635, 640, 107 S.Ct. 3034, 97 L.Ed.2d 523 (1987). That is to say, in the light of pre-existing law the unlawfulness must be apparent to the official. Id. (citation omitted). 17 At the time of Schuffman's decision, two appellate courts had analyzed PAMII preemption with disparate results. The Third Circuit found PAMII preempted a conflicting state law, see Houstoun, 228 F.3d at 428, while the New Hampshire Supreme Court, relying on the legislative history and the DHHS regulation described supra, found the opposite, see Disabilities Rights Ctr., Inc. v. Comm'r, N.H. Dep't of Corr., 143 N.H. 674, 732 A.2d 1021, 1023-24 (N.H.1999). 3 18 Standing before these divergent decisions, Schuffman followed the New Hampshire Supreme Court rather than the Third Circuit. 4 Given the fact no Supreme Court, Missouri, or Eighth Circuit case had yet decided the issue, we cannot say Schuffman's decision was unreasonable under the circumstances. See McMorrow v. Little, 109 F.3d 432, 435 (8th Cir.1997) (Because there is no applicable North Dakota precedent and a split in the decisions by other courts, we cannot conclude that the law was well established and we hold that the constitutional right that McMorrow claims the officials violated was not clearly established.). We recognize when one faces an unsettled legal issue, determining a governing legal standard can be quite hairy; it mires one in conflicting cases, each presented by reasonable jurists interpreting the applicable rule of law. In sum, we hold MOPAS's PAMII-based statutory right to the requested peer review report was not clearly established such that a reasonable person in Schuffman's position at the time would have known following Mo.Rev.Stat. § 537.035(4) and not disclosing the report violated 42 U.S.C. § 10805(a)(4)(A).