Court Opinion

ID: 9527477
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 03:30:56.013573+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:25:49.140515
License: Public Domain

SUPPLEMENTAL OPINION ON DENIAL OF REHEARING Mr. JUSTICE LORENZ delivered the opinion of the court:  Plaintiff has filed a petition for rehearing. He first contends that we erred in refusing to consider his argument that section 16(11) of the Medical Practice Act (Ill. Rev. Stat. 1975, ch. 91, par. 16a(ll)) is unconstitutional. The cited statute authorized the Department of Registration and Education to revoke plaintiff’s Illinois medical license on the basis of the revocation of his license in the sister State of Michigan. Plaintiff now argues, as he did for the first time in these proceedings in his reply brief, that the statute improperly allows the delegation of authority over Illinois licenses to other States, and denies equal protection of the laws by discriminating against Illinois doctors with out-of-State licenses. Contrary to plaintiff’s implication, the record reveals that the former argument was only obliquely raised in the trial court, the latter was not raised at all, and neither was ruled upon. It is clear, of course, that “[w]here no constitutional question was presented to or passed upon by the trial court and the only question is the interpretation of a statute, a constitutional question is not present on appeal.” (Department of Public Works & Buildings v. Schon (1969), 42 Ill. 2d 537, 538, 250 N.E.2d 135, 136.) Moreover, plaintiff does not contest the fact that, as we stated in our opinion, the arguments he attempts now to assert were not raised in his original appellate brief and therefore under Supreme Court Rule 341(e)(7) (Ill. Rev. Stat. 1975, ch. 110A, par. 341(e)(7)), they “are waived and shall not be raised in the reply brief, in oral argument, or on petition for rehearing.” Plaintiff nevertheless does attempt to raise the arguments in his petition for rehearing, and points out that Supreme Court Rule 341(e)(7) is not a limitation on a reviewing court’s jurisdiction. (City of Wyoming v. Liquor Control Com. (1977), 48 Ill. App. 3d 404,362 N.E.2d 1080.) He argues that a reviewing court may, in the exercise of its responsibility for a just result, ignore a consideration of waiver and decide a case on grounds not properly raised (Occidental Chemical Co. v. Agri Profit Systems, Inc. (1975), 37 Ill. App. 3d 599, 346 N.E.2d 482) and that we should now grant a rehearing on his waived constitutional arguments.  We reject this argument. The mere fact that attempted arguments raise constitutional questions does not prevent the otherwise proper application of the waiver rule. (See Berk v. County of Will (1966), 34 Ill. 2d 588, 218 N.E.2d 98; Withers v. City of Granite City (1961), 23 Ill. 2d 156, 177 N.E.2d 181.) Moreover, we disagree with plaintiff’s suggestion that our responsibility to achieve a just result requires us to rule upon his waived arguments. Plaintiff argues that the challenged statute is unconstitutional because it is arbitrary and makes “an invidious discrimination * * * without rational justification.” We cannot agree, however, that a statute establishing a revocation in a sister State as a possible ground for revocation in Illinois is, as the traditional equal protection standard requires, patently arbitrary with no rational relationship to any legitimate governmental interest. (See, e.g., Jefferson v. Hackney (1972), 406 U.S. 535, 32 L. Ed. 2d 285, 92 S. Ct. 1724; Richardson v. Belcher (1971), 404 U.S. 78,30 L. Ed. 2d 231,92 S. Ct. 254.) Various interests, such as the general desire to hold physicians to the highest standards of competency and integrity or the prevention of “state-hopping” by physicians whose licenses have been revoked, suggest themselves as rational bases for the statute. The right and duty of the legislature to enact strict regulations concerning physicians has been well explained by this court as follows: “Society places itself in the hands of plaintiff’s profession for protection of the life and health of the community. The practice of medicine, in addition to skill and knowledge, requires honesty and integrity of the highest degree. 000 The state under its police powers has the duty of protecting society from those of the profession who are not qualified to be the recipients of this trust. In this connection the state has the power to enact comprehensive, detailed and rigid regulations for the practice of medicine.” Accordingly, we conclude that plaintiff should not be granted a rehéaring on his waived constitutional attacks on section 16(11) of the Medical Practice Act. Schyman v. Department of Registration & Education (1956), 9 Ill. App. 2d 504,522-23,133 N.E.2d 551,560, cert, denied (1957), 352 U. S. 1001, 1 L. Ed. 2d 545, 77 S. Ct. 557. Plaintiff also contends that we erred when in response to the Department’s emergency motion, we ordered that our mandate should issue to the trial court. The Department’s motion cited our reversal of the portion of the trial court’s order which stayed the revocation of plaintiff’s license pending appeal. The Department noted, however, that it could not move the trial court to dissolve the stay because plaintiff had filed an affidavit of intent to petition the supreme court for leave to appeal, and under Supreme Court Rule 368(b) (Ill. Rev. Stat. 1975, ch. 110A, par. 368(b)), our mandate was thereby automatically stayed. The Department therefore requested that we dissolve the stay entered by the trial court. Following plaintiff’s response to this motion, on November 17, 1978, we ordered that our mandate reversing the trial court’s stay and remanding the cause should issue forthwith to the trial court. In his petition for rehearing, plaintiff concedes that we had the authority to enter this order under Rule 368(b), which provides for the automatic stay of our mandate as described but states that “[t]he Supreme Court, the Appellate Court, or a judge of either court may upon motion order otherwise 0 0 0 upon just terms.” Plaintiff argues, however, that this standard for ordering otherwise was not met here, because the Department did not file its motion to dissolve the stay until after certain newspaper articles which it attached to its motion began to appear. Plaintiff further argues that the Department’s motion and our subsequent order were only supported by those newspaper articles, which named him in “sensational and unsubstantial allegations.” He therefore requests that our mandate be recalled, so that the trial court’s stay may be reinstated,  We find that plaintiff’s arguments are without merit. The propriety of a stay in these proceedings was, as plaintiff notes, a question of first impression, and, as we explained in our opinion, one which required the resolution of a statutory conflict. The Department properly raised the issue in its brief and argument on appeal. After we reversed the trial court and remanded the case, it only became necessary for the Department to file its motion when, as explained above, plaintiff’s affidavit of intent to appeal caused our mandate to be automatically stayed. The Department filed its emergency motion five days after plaintiff filed his af fidavit. We conclude that no challenge can be made to our order based on allegations of tardiness against the Department. Further, plaintiff argues under a misapprehension concerning the newspaper articles about which he complains. It is true that certain newspaper articles referring to plaintiff were attached and referred to in the Department’s motion. We noted that fact when we stated in the findings preliminary to our order that “the motion to dissolve the stay is not supported by affidavit or competent evidence of any kind but merely by newspaper clippings dated subsequent to the filing of our opinion concerning conduct of plaintiff-appellee [sic] not related to the charge involved in the instant case.” Our order then concluded that the record herein sufficiently justified the issuance of our mandate. Plaintiff’s suggestion that this order was based on newspaper clippings which we specifically indicated were not competent evidence is simply not tenable. As we decided in our opinion, the stay on the revocation of plaintiff’s license is specifically forbidden by statute and was erroneously entered. This ruling has been and remains the basis for our reversal of the stay and order that the mandate issue. Plaintiff’s request that our mandate be withdrawn is accordingly denied. Based on the foregoing, the petition for rehearing and the request for a recall of our mandate are denied. SULLIVAN, P. J., and MEJDA, J., concur.