Court Opinion

ID: 9930642
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2024-02-07 15:03:06.540451+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:24:14.813583
License: Public Domain

FIRST DISTRICT COURT OF APPEAL
                 STATE OF FLORIDA
                 _____________________________

                        No. 1D2021-3171
                 _____________________________

CHRISTINA B. PAYLAN, M.D.,

    Appellant,

    v.

FLORIDA DEPARTMENT OF
HEALTH,

    Appellee.
                 _____________________________

On appeal from the Circuit Court for Leon County.
Angela C. Dempsey, Judge.

                         February 7, 2024

TANENBAUM, J.

     As the caption indicates, Christina Paylan is a medical doctor.
She saw her license at first suspended for two years by the Board
of Medicine and later subjected to a ten-year non-renewal period
at the hands of the Department of Health. Both agency actions
stemmed from felony convictions she sustained for fraudulently
obtaining a controlled substance and fraudulent use of personal
information. The suspension was part of a penalty imposed against
her license (along with a $5,000 administrative fine) following a
formal evidentiary hearing. The non-renewal came two years later,
following Paylan’s application and an informal agency hearing.

     The department’s non-renewal order was rendered under
section 456.0635, Florida Statutes, based on her controlled-
substance conviction, a third-degree-felony violation of section
893.13(7)(a)9. The former provision states the following, in
pertinent part:

    (3) The department shall refuse to renew a license,
    certificate, or registration of any applicant if the
    applicant or any principal, officer, agent, managing
    employee, or affiliated person of the applicant:

    (a) Has been convicted of, or entered a plea of guilty or
    nolo contendere to, regardless of adjudication, a felony
    under chapter 409, chapter 817, or chapter 893, or a
    similar felony offense committed in another state or
    jurisdiction . . . . Any such conviction or plea excludes the
    applicant from licensure renewal unless the sentence and
    any subsequent period of probation for such conviction or
    plea ended:

    ....

    2. For felonies of the third degree, more than 10 years
    before the date of application, except for felonies of the
    third degree under s. 893.13(6)(a).

§ 456.0635(3)(a)2., Fla. Stat. (emphasis supplied).

     Paylan appealed the department’s denial of her renewal
application to the Second District Court of Appeal. That court
affirmed, rejecting her arguments that the non-renewal effectively
was a prohibited “second administrative punishment for the same
conduct” and that application of the statute was “unjust.” Paylan
v. Dep’t of Health, 226 So. 3d 296, 298–99 (Fla. 2d DCA 2017).

     She then sued the department in the Sixth Judicial Circuit,
raising as-applied and facial constitutional challenges to section
456.0635(3)(a)2. According to Paylan’s complaint, section
456.0635(3)(a)2. is unconstitutional as applied to her because the
department wielded it to enhance her administrative penalty, an
improper use of its disciplinary authority given that she was
“declared not to have a substance abuse diagnosis.” Paylan also
averred that the statute is facially unconstitutional because it
enables the department to enhance a licensee’s punishment and is

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not in harmony with other statutes, but she failed to identify a
single conflict between the statutory text and any constitutional
provision. * The suit transferred to the Second Judicial Circuit
(which is within our territorial jurisdiction), and the receiving trial
court granted the department’s motion for summary judgment.

     In its final judgment, which is what we have for review in this
appeal, the court concluded that “[b]ecause the arguments and
issues brought by Plaintiff in this action have already been fully
litigated, the action is barred by the doctrine of collateral estoppel.”
We affirm the trial court’s judgment dismissing the complaint, but
for a different reason. Cf. Applegate v. Barnett Bank of
Tallahassee, 377 So. 2d 1150, 1152 (Fla. 1979) (“Even when based
on erroneous reasoning, a conclusion or decision of a trial court will
generally be affirmed if the evidence or an alternative theory
supports it.”); see also Dade Cnty. Sch. Bd. v. Radio Station WQBA,
731 So. 2d 638, 644 (Fla. 1999) (“[I]f a trial court reaches the right
result, but for the wrong reasons, it will be upheld if there is any
basis which would support the judgment in the record.”); In re
Yohn’s Estate, 238 So. 2d 290, 295 (Fla. 1970) (“It is elementary
that the theories or reasons assigned by the lower court as its basis
for the order or judgment appealed from, although sometimes
helpful, are not in any way controlling on appeal and the Appellate
Court will make its own determination as to the correctness of the
decision of the lower court . . . [so] if the lower court assigns an
erroneous reason for its decision the decision will be affirmed
where there is some other different reason or basis to support it.”).

     We first note that the trial court’s application of the “collateral
estoppel” (or “estoppel by judgment”) doctrine was incorrect. That
doctrine has no application to an appellate court disposition (here,
the Second District’s decision on Paylan’s first appeal). The
doctrine’s application is limited to adjudicated facts that had been
in dispute between the parties. See Bagwell v. Bagwell, 14 So. 2d
841, 843 (Fla. 1943) (“It is the essence of estoppel by judgment that
it be made certain that the precise facts were determined by the

    * At the beginning of her complaint, Paylan merely stated that

she was suing “pursuant to the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments
to the U.S. Const., and Article 1 § 9 of the Florida Constitution.”

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former judgment.” (emphasis supplied)); cf. Cromwell v. Sac
County, 94 U.S. 351, 353 (1876) (explaining that a prior judgment
“operates as an estoppel only as to those matters in issue or points
controverted, upon the determination of which the finding or
verdict was rendered” (emphasis supplied); United States v. Moser,
266 U.S. 236, 242 (1924) (noting that the doctrine of res judicata
“does not apply to unmixed questions of law” but that “a fact,
question or right distinctly adjudged in the original action cannot
be disputed in a subsequent action, even though the determination
was reached upon an erroneous view or by an erroneous
application of the law”); Austin Wakeman Scott, Collateral
Estoppel by Judgment, 56 HARV. L. REV. 1, 2–4 (1942) (describing
the application of collateral estoppel to bar only questions of fact
actually litigated and determined); id. at 7–10 (explaining how the
doctrine generally does not apply to pure questions of law).

     An appellate court does not adjudicate factual disputes; only
the trial court does. Cf. Plaut v. Spendthrift Farm, Inc., 514 U.S.
211, 218–19, 227 (1995) (explaining that the judicial power that
the U.S. Constitution vests in Article III is “the power, not merely
to rule on cases, but to decide them, subject to review only by
superior courts in the Article III hierarchy—with an
understanding, in short, that a judgment conclusively resolves the
case because a judicial Power is one to render dispositive
judgments” (second emphasis supplied) (internal quotation and
citation omitted)). The function of a district court in Florida, like
any appellate court, then is “to enquire whether a judgment when
rendered was erroneous or not.” United States v. Schooner Peggy,
5 U.S. 103, 110 (1801). In doing so, an appellate court determines
only whether the proper rule of law has been applied to the facts
adjudicated by the trial court. Cf. Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. 137,
175 (1803) (“It is the essential criterion of appellate jurisdiction,
that it revises and corrects the proceedings in a cause already
instituted, and does not create that cause.”); id. (explaining that
the judicial branch “say[s] what the law is,” and that in applying
“the rule [of law] to particular cases, [courts] must of necessity
expound and interpret that rule”); Schooner Peggy, 5 U.S. at 110
(distinguishing between a trial court’s judgment and an appellate
court’s decision and holding that an intervening change in the
governing legal “rule” must be applied in an ongoing appellate
review of the judgment); Plaut, 514 U.S. at 226 (explaining that

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“[w]hen a new law makes clear that it is retroactive, an appellate
court must apply that law in reviewing judgments still on appeal
that were rendered before the law was enacted, and must alter the
outcome accordingly”).

     To put this a different way, a district court of appeal does not
“try” a question or action between the parties at all. It is the lower
court’s judgment that is on trial, so to speak. See State v. Hull, 20
So. 762, 763–64 (Fla. 1896) (characterizing a proceeding on a writ
of error, the precursor to the present-day appeal, as “less an action
between the original parties than a question between the judgment
and the law”); Atl. Coast Line R. Co. v. Benedict Pineapple Co., 42
So. 529, 531–32 (Fla. 1906) (Shackleford, C.J., concurring) (“While
the parties to the cause remain the same, though generally
changing places, the defeated party becoming the plaintiff in error,
and the successful party the defendant in error, the primary object
of a writ of error is not to try the question between the parties, but
rather to try the judgment of the court below—to test the judgment
by the law. It is not the action to be tried, but the judgment.”
(internal quotation and citation omitted)). The Second District
Court of Appeal, then, could not have—and did not—adjudicate
any factual dispute between Paylan and the department. In
essence, the department’s final administrative order was on trial
in the appellate court, not the facts, so no estoppel could arise from
the appellate court’s determination that the order was free from
prejudicial error.

     Even though the trial court incorrectly relied on a collateral-
estoppel theory, we nevertheless can affirm based on the judicial
policies addressed by the supreme court in Key Haven Associated
Enters., Inc. v. Bd. of Trustees of Internal Imp. Tr. Fund, 427 So.
2d 153 (Fla. 1982). In Key Haven, the supreme court disallowed, as
a matter of judicial policy, a suit claiming an agency applied a
statute or rule “in such a way that the aggrieved party’s
constitutional rights have been violated.” Id. at 158. The supreme
court explained that “administrative remedies must be exhausted
to assure that the responsible agency has had a full opportunity to
reach a sensitive, mature, and considered decision upon a complete
record appropriate to the issue.” Id. (internal quotation and
citation omitted). If Paylan’s underlying suit purported to make an

                                  5
as-applied constitutional challenge, such a challenge is barred by
this policy, and dismissal is the correct outcome.

     The supreme court established another judicial policy in Key
Haven: An “aggrieved party” may make a facial constitutional
challenge on direct review in the district court under section
120.68, Florida Statutes, at the completion of the administrative
process, or that party may assert the facial challenge in a separate
suit in the trial court. Id. at 157. This approach “allow[s] all issues
to be decided in the least expensive and time-consuming manner.”
Id. The party, however, cannot do both. “[O]nce a party chooses one
or the other alternative, [s]he is foreclosed from proceeding with
the alternative remedy.” Id. Insofar as Paylan was attempting to
make a facial constitutional challenge in the trial court after
having asserted her challenge in the Second District, the claim in
the trial court was barred under this judicial policy. So again, the
suit properly was dismissed.

     There is one last reason to affirm. Paylan asserted in her
complaint that section 456.0635(3)(a)2., Florida Statutes, is
unconstitutional on its face. Paylan introduces her complaint as
one brought pursuant to the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments of
the U.S. Constitution and Article I, section 9, of the Florida
Constitution, but nowhere did she identify the conflict between the
constitutional and statutory text that required judicial resolution.
It simply was not enough for Paylan to assert that the statute is
generally “unconstitutional.” For her facial challenge to have been
a judicially cognizable one, Paylan had to specify the constitutional
rule that, as she saw it, could not operate fully with respect to cases
like hers, free from interference by the statute she was
challenging. Cf. Marbury, 5 U.S. at 177 (“If two laws conflict with
each other, the courts must decide on the operation of each.”); id.
at 178 (“So if a law be in opposition to the constitution; if both the
law and the constitution apply to a particular case, so that the
court must either decide that case conformably to the law,
disregarding the constitution; or conformably to the constitution,
disregarding the law; the court must determine which of these
conflicting rules governs the case. This is of the very essence of
judicial duty.” (emphasis supplied)).

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     In the end, the trial court correctly dismissed the complaint
via summary judgment.

    AFFIRMED.

B.L. THOMAS, J. concurs; M.K. THOMAS, J., concurs in result only.

                 _____________________________

    Not final until disposition of any timely and
    authorized motion under Fla. R. App. P. 9.330 or
    9.331.
               _____________________________

Christina B. Paylan, M.D., pro se, Appellant.

Eric O. Husby, Tampa, for Appellant.

Sarah Young Hodges, Florida Department of Health, Tallahassee,
for Appellee.

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