Court Opinion

ID: 9474659
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 05:04:23.365589+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:44:14.466122
License: Public Domain

ALVIN B. RUBIN, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
Whether Dr. Davis was in fact a good doctor who was the victim of racial discrimination or whether he failed to adhere to proper medical standards and was removed from the hospital staff for good cause, we do not, and may never, know, for we must decide this case only on the basis of what the record shows. Based on that, I would reach a conclusion different from the one my brothers reach. I, therefore, respectfully dissent.
We all agree that the district court erred in dismissing this case for want of jurisdiction and in failing to consider the statistical evidence. Both of these errors result from *687an analysis so patently strained and so clearly incorrect as to indicate an attitude that must certainly have influenced the court’s findings on other issues. Although we can cure the jurisdictional error, I do not think that we, as an appellate court, can, or should, evaluate de novo the weight of the statistical evidence.1
I do not suggest remand, however, because I think that the district court also erred in refusing to apply collateral estoppel. The majority notes that Dr. Davis did not invoke the doctrine until after the trial. He could not have done so earlier for the decision on which he relied had been appealed and had not sooner become final.
Avoiding redundant trials is one, but not the only, reason to preclude relitigation of a decided issue: avoiding an appeal that might otherwise not be taken,2 and preserving the consistency of the judicial system so that results do not depend on a trier-of-fact lottery are others. For these reasons, the district court should have given preclusive effect to the jury’s findings on those issues previously litigated between the same parties.
Although the earlier jury finding did not establish that a majority of the Board discriminated against Dr. Davis, this does not preclude the Hospital’s liability, for respondeat superior does apply to Title VII claims of race discrimination.3 Considering the jury findings, the conclusion that the Hospital did not discriminate against Dr. Davis seems to me clearly erroneous. Dr. Davis argued that the Hospital’s Chief of Surgery and Chief of Staff preselected the data presented to the Texas Medical Association to ensure a finding that Davis was incompetent, and the jury found that they were motivated by racial prejudice. The Texas Medical Association finding was the basis for the Board’s termination of Dr. Davis’s operating privileges. Even though a majority of the Board may not have voted against Dr. Davis because of discriminatory motives, the Hospital cannot avoid liability for the prejudicially motivated acts of its supervisory employees that caused the termination.
Unlike the majority, I draw no inference from the jury’s failure to award Dr. Davis damages on his equal protection claim. The jury answered a special interrogatory as follows:
Do you find that any actions taken against Dr. Davis were made in violation of his right to equal protection (that is, that they were primarily motivated by racial considerations)?
Answer “yes” or “no” as to each defendant:
Dr. William Manax [Chief of Surgery] yes
Dr. Robert Shirey [Chief of Staff] yes
Harvey Kelly [Chairman of Board] yes
B.J. Neely [Hospital Administrator] yes
This explicit finding speaks for itself. The ' jury may have felt that the $300,000 award it made to Dr. Davis on other issues was ample and so, for reasons sufficient to itself, made no additional award for the equal protection violation.
For these reasons, I respectfully dissent.

. See Anderson v. City of Bessemer, — U.S. —, 105 S.Ct. 1504, 1512, 84 L.Ed.2d 518 (1985).

. ALI, Restatement of Judgments 2d, Introductory Note to § 26.

. See, e.g., Calcote v. Texas Educ. Found., Inc., 578 F.2d 95, 98 (5th Cir.1978); Flowers v. Crouch-Walker Corp., 552 F.2d 1277, 1282 (7th Cir.1977); cf. Young v. Southwestern Savings & Loan Ass’n, 509 F.2d 140, 1447 n. 7 (5th Cir.1975).