Court Opinion

ID: 9487839
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 12:27:44.219239+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:52:30.569084
License: Public Domain

MILES, District Judge,
concurring in part and concurring in the judgment.
I write separately because I do not share the view that defendant Peninsula Psychiatric Center, Inc., which owned and operated the mental hospital where plaintiff Ellison was detained, is not a “state actor” for purposes of 42 U.S.C. § 1983.
Although I agree that the actions of the physician defendants do not satisfy any of the traditional tests for determining the existence of state action, I cannot reach the same conclusion with regard to Peninsula. As noted in Judge Siler’s opinion, after Doctors Garbarino and Bramson executed Certificates of Need for Emergency Admission, the General Sessions Court for Blount County, Tennessee ordered that Ellison be detained on an emergency basis. Ellison was then detained at Peninsula until January 10, 1992, when a Blount County judge dismissed the proceedings against Ellison based on two more certificates, one signed by a licensed psychologist and another signed by defendant Dr. Bruce Green, which concluded that Ellison should not be held for additional care and treatment.
Based upon a state court order, Ellison was detained at Peninsula. Acts performed by private parties under compulsion of state law violate the Fourteenth Amendment. Adickes v. S.H. Kress & Co., 398 U.S. 144, 170-71, 90 S.Ct. 1598, 1615-16, 26 L.Ed.2d 142 (1970). “The state compulsion test requires that a state exercise such coercive power or provide such significant encouragement, either overt or covert, that in law the choice of the private actor is deemed to be that of the state.” Wolotsky v. Huhn, 960 F.2d 1331, 1335 (6th Cir.1992) (citations omitted). Although state coercion has been found lacking in the voluntary commitment context, see Lewis v. Law-Yone, 813 F.Supp. 1247, 1255 (N.D.Tex.1993), it can be present in the involuntary commitment situation. See Spencer v. Lee, 864 F.2d 1376, 1378 (7th Cir.1989) (“If the State of 'Illinois ordered or encouraged private persons to commit the mentally ill, they would indeed be state actors”).
In this case, Ellison is not complaining of the treatment which he received during his confinement, the terms of which were apparently not ordered by the state.1 Cf. Jarrell v. Chemical Dependency Unit of Acadiana, 791 F.2d 373, 374 (5th Cir.1986) (no state action shown'where -plaintiff, involuntarily committed to chemical dependency unit, complained of constitutional deprivations during treatment). Instead, he is complaining simply that he was wrongly confined at Peninsula without due process. Someone at the hospital caused Ellison to be detained, and they are alleged to have acted pursuant to a state court order. See Spencer, 864 F.2d at 1384-85 (Ripple, J., joined by Flaum, J., dissenting) (Illinois private health care institution holds involuntarily committed patient *198“by direction of the state’s judicial process” and state has, in effect, “delegated the task of enforcing state-ordered commitment to a private facility”). Under the circumstances, while I hesitate to comment upon whether Ellison has sufficiently alleged a Due Process violation given his apparent failure to challenge the Tennessee statute under which he was detained, I would conclude that state action has been sufficiently alleged as to Peninsula’s conduct.
Although I disagree with my colleagues’ conclusion that the hospital in this ease was not a state actor, I agree that the district court’s decision as to the hospital should be affirmed. Peninsula argued as an alternative basis for summary judgment that it could not be held vicariously liable under § 1983 for the acts of its employees. See Monell v. Dep’t of Social Serv. of the City of New York, 436 U.S. 658, 691-94, 98 S.Ct. 2018, 2036-38, 56 L.Ed.2d 611 (1978). The district court adopted this position as additional support for its decision. On appeal, Ellison has not challenged the district court’s resolution of this issue.2 Given Ellison’s failure to do so, I concur in the judgment as to Peninsula.

. Ellison does not, for instance, claim that he was abused during his stay at Peninsula.

. In his only brief filed on appeal, Ellison states the sole issue presented for review as
Whether a private hospital and private physicians act under color of state law pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983 when they involuntarily commit an individual to a private hospital or hold an individual against his will in such private hospital such that the hospital and physicians are subject to federal court jurisdiction pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and 28 U.S.C. § 1331.
Appellant’s Brief at p. vii.