Court Opinion

ID: 9404624
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-06-23 17:00:59.888923+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:20:15.866840
License: Public Domain

NOT FOR PUBLICATION                           FILED
                    UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS                        JUN 23 2023
                                                                      MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK
                                                                       U.S. COURT OF APPEALS
                           FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

TIMOTHY RYAN, M.D., an individual,              No.    22-55144

                Plaintiff-Appellee,             D.C. No.
                                                2:17-cv-05752-CAS-RAO
 v.

BRANT PUTNAM, M.D., an individual;              MEMORANDUM*
JANINE VINTCH, M.D., an individual,

                Defendants-Appellants,

and

ANISH MAHAJAN, M.D.; et al.,

                Defendants.

TIMOTHY RYAN, M.D., an individual,              No.    22-55406

                Plaintiff-Appellee,             D.C. No.
                                                2:17-cv-05752-CAS-RAO
 v.

CHRISTIAN DE VIRGILIO, M.D.; ROGER
LEWIS, M.D.,

                Defendants-Appellants,

and

      *
             This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent
except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3.
BRANT PUTNAM, M.D., an individual; et
al.,

                Defendants.

                  Appeal from the United States District Court
                      for the Central District of California
                  Christina A. Snyder, District Judge, Presiding

                       Argued and Submitted June 6, 2023
                             Pasadena, California

Before: WALLACE and OWENS, Circuit Judges, and FITZWATER,** District
Judge.
Concurrence by Judge FITZWATER.

      Defendants Brant Putnam, Janine Vintch, Roger Lewis, and Christian de

Virgilio appeal from the district court’s two denials of summary judgment on their

qualified immunity defense to Timothy Ryan’s 42 U.S.C. § 1983 action against

them. Ryan claims Defendants violated his First Amendment rights by retaliating

against his employment for reporting medical fraud. Because the parties are

familiar with the facts, we do not recount them here. We affirm the denial of

qualified immunity.

      We review summary judgment rulings de novo. Dodge v. Evergreen Sch.

Dist. #114, 56 F.4th 767, 776 (9th Cir. 2022). On interlocutory appeal of the

      **
            The Honorable Sidney A. Fitzwater, United States District Judge for
the Northern District of Texas, sitting by designation.

                                         2
denial of summary judgment on a qualified immunity defense, our jurisdiction is

limited to resolving legal questions. See Plumhoff v. Rickard, 572 U.S. 765, 771-

73 (2014). “Where disputed facts exist, we assume that the version of the material

facts asserted by the Plaintiff . . . is correct.” Eng v. Cooley, 552 F.3d 1062, 1067

(9th Cir. 2009) (cleaned up).

      Defendants are not entitled to qualified immunity if their conduct violated

Ryan’s First Amendment rights and constituted a violation of clearly established

law at the time of the incidents. District of Columbia v. Wesby, 138 S. Ct. 577, 589

(2018). Clearly established law exists if precedent placed the unconstitutionality

of the conduct “beyond debate.” White v. Pauly, 580 U.S. 73, 78-79 (2017).

      1.     To establish a First Amendment retaliation claim, Ryan must show

that his protected speech motivated Defendants to take an adverse employment

action against him. Eng, 552 F.3d at 1070. Defendants assert that they are entitled

to qualified immunity because there is no clearly established law showing that

Ryan suffered an adverse employment action. However, we have previously held

that a peer review committee’s investigation of a doctor that threatened to revoke

his clinical privileges was an adverse employment action. See Ulrich v. City &

Cnty. of S.F., 308 F.3d 968, 977 (9th Cir. 2002). Thus, the initiation of the

Focused Professional Performance Evaluation (“FPPE”) of Ryan was an adverse

employment action under clearly established law. The decision to impose a

                                          3
behavioral contract and revoke clinical privileges in the alternative was also an

adverse employment action under clearly established law. The revocation of

clinical privileges will necessarily result in termination, a quintessential adverse

employment action. See Brooks v. City of San Mateo, 229 F.3d 917, 928 (9th Cir.

2000).

      Defendants argue that these actions are not sufficiently final to constitute

adverse employment actions because the FPPE would not necessarily result in

discipline and the decision to revoke privileges was subject to appeal. But we have

previously held that actions for which the disciplinary outcome is uncertain—such

as an investigatory inquiry—are adverse employment actions. See, e.g., Poland v.

Chertoff, 494 F.3d 1174, 1180 (9th Cir. 2007).

      Defendants also contend that the actions against Ryan are not attributable to

them under clearly established law because their only action was voting as

members of the Medical Executive Committee. However, we have previously

explained in this context that “[a]nyone who ‘causes’ any citizen to be subjected to

a constitutional deprivation is . . . liable,” and that the “requisite causal connection

can be established not only by some kind of direct personal participation in the

deprivation, but also by setting in motion a series of acts by others which the actor

knows or reasonably should know would cause others to inflict the constitutional

                                           4
injury.” Dahlia v. Rodriguez, 735 F.3d 1060, 1078 n.22 (9th Cir. 2013) (en banc)

(citations omitted).

      2.     To succeed in his claim, Ryan must also show that he spoke as a

private citizen instead of as a public employee. See Garcetti v. Ceballos, 547 U.S.

410, 421 (2006). Defendants contend that they are entitled to qualified immunity

because there is no clearly established law showing that Ryan spoke as a private

citizen. “Statements are made in the speaker’s capacity as [a private] citizen if the

speaker had no official duty to make the questioned statements, or if the speech

was not the product of performing the tasks the employee was paid to perform.”

Posey v. Lake Pend Oreille Sch. Dist. No. 84, 546 F.3d 1121, 1127 n.2 (9th Cir.

2008) (cleaned up).

      Whether Ryan spoke as a private citizen depends on what his employment

duties required, which is a factual dispute. See Ellins v. City of Sierra Madre, 710

F.3d 1049, 1058-59 (9th Cir. 2013). Defendants contend that Ryan conceded that

his speech was within the scope of his job by asking the county to indemnify him

in Rodney White’s lawsuit. However, the speech at issue here is Ryan’s external

reports of fraud to the District Attorney’s office and the National Institutes of

Health, which Ryan argues was not part of his job. Resolving this factual dispute

in Ryan’s favor, as we must, Eng, 552 F.3d at 1067, reporting suspected fraud

externally was beyond the scope of his employment as a physician. And by the

                                           5
time of the adverse employment actions, it was clearly established that speech by a

public employee “not made pursuant to [their] official job duties” is made in their

capacity as a private citizen. Karl v. City of Mountlake Terrace, 678 F.3d 1062,

1074 (9th Cir. 2012).

          3.    Even where speech would otherwise be protected, Defendants can

defeat Ryan’s claim by demonstrating that their “legitimate administrative interests

outweigh [Ryan’s] First Amendment rights” and the public’s interest in Ryan’s

speech. Eng, 552 F.3d at 1071; see City of San Diego v. Roe, 543 U.S. 77, 82

(2004). Here, Defendants assert that they are entitled to qualified immunity

because there is no clearly established law showing that Ryan’s interests outweigh

theirs.

          We have previously held that the interests of the public employee and the

public in whistleblower speech outweigh the employer’s interest where the

employer shows only the potential for disturbance in the workplace. See Robinson

v. York, 566 F.3d 817, 824 (9th Cir. 2009). Here, Defendants have shown no

interest in suppressing Ryan’s whistleblower speech because they do not argue that

Ryan’s reports of fraud caused disruption or affected patient care. Instead, they

argue that their actions were justified by complaints of Ryan’s unprofessional

behavior largely unrelated to his reports of fraud. But the balancing inquiry does

not allow public employers to suppress speech due to the speaker’s other conduct.

                                            6
See Moser v. Las Vegas Metro. Police Dep’t, 984 F.3d 900, 910 (9th Cir. 2021)

(noting that the proper inquiry is whether the speech in question threatened the

employer’s interests).

      Because Defendants presented no argument that Ryan’s whistleblowing

itself harmed or would harm their interests, that they lose in the balancing analysis

is “beyond debate” and therefore clearly established. Pauly, 580 U.S. at 79.

      Whether Defendants would have taken the same adverse employment

actions regardless of Ryan’s whistleblowing is a separate question on which we

express no opinion because it is not before us.

      AFFIRMED.

                                          7
                                                                                  FILED
Ryan v. Putnam, 22-55144, 22-55406                                                JUN 23 2023

                                                                              MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK
FITZWATER, District Judge, concurring:                                          U.S. COURT OF APPEALS

      Considering the district court’s decision in light of the record before it, and our

limited appellate jurisdiction, see, e.g., Russell v. Lumitap, 31 F.4th 729, 736 (9th Cir.

2022), I concur in the panel’s decision to affirm the denial of qualified immunity for

Defendants-Appellants. I write separately to emphasize that our affirmance does not

remove qualified immunity from consideration on remand. In the words of another

panel of this court, “[t]he result of our affirmance on this interlocutory appeal of the

district court’s denial of summary judgment motion based upon qualified immunity

is to return the qualified immunity issue to the district court for determination on its

merits. We express no view on those merits here . . . .” Thompson v. Mahre, 110 F.3d

716, 719 n.1 (9th Cir. 1997) (emphasis omitted) (quoting Thompson v. Mahre and

Steen, 959 F.2d 241 (9th Cir. 1992) (mem.)).