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Brinton v. IHC Hospitals12/29/1998
pellate panel's deliberations. The district court found that Dr. Brinton had not waived these objections and addressed them by construing IHC's actions as substantially complying with the Bylaws.
Section 7.70 of the FHP provides that appellate deliberations shall take place "outside the presence of the parties." The purportedly "unauthorized" persons present during deliberations were James Gilson, the Board's in-house counsel, Larry Dursteler, a hospital administrator, and Merlene Southwell, an IHC employee in charge of risk management. Hence, assuming these persons were "parties" for purposes of section 7.70, their presence would technically violate that section.
Determining whether these persons qualified as "parties" under the Bylaws is a complicated and difficult question. Adjudicating it would require an understanding of which persons had undertaken adversarial roles within the context of the Bylaws. Yet, Dr. Brinton has utterly failed to elucidate the nature of the roles played by the persons involved and has provided no argument beyond his conclusory assertions that they were not entitled to be there.
The district court found that, even if any of these people were "parties" for purposes of section 7.70, the Hospital had substantially complied with the Bylaws provisions because Dr. Brinton had failed to meet his burden of demonstrating prejudice to create a material issue of disputed fact. The court held that (1) the presence of IHC's counsel had actually benefitted Dr. Brinton because that counsel could offer advice on compliance with the Bylaws for Dr. Brinton's benefit; (2) Dursteler was entitled to be present because he was a member of the Board; and (3) Southwell had merely acted as a courier to obtain documents and other materials during deliberations. Dr. Brinton has failed to materially rebut these rulings on appeal. We therefore uphold the district court's ruling that IHC substantially complied with its Bylaws in providing Dr. Brinton with appellate review.
H. General Allegations of Bad Faith Conduct of Peer Review
Finally, Dr. Brinton contends that IHC pursued a vindictive and unsubstantiated course of action against him that would constitute a violation of IHC's contractual obligation to pursue its peer review in good faith. Specifically, Dr. Brinton alleges that Dr. Romney, the Hospital's medical director, acted in bad faith, and he points to evidence in the record questioning the motivations of another prominent physician in the OB-GYN department, Dr. Stephen Clark. However, apart from fragmentary pieces of evidence showing that these two individuals were not entirely objective in their treatment of Dr. Brinton, there is no specific evidence of bad faith actions by the Board or any of the hearing panels, who were the entities that ultimately decided his fate.
Dr. Brinton's allegations that the Hospital Board vigorously pursued its disciplinary actions against him in a vindictive and conspiratorial manner are not supported by any record evidence. In fact, the record indicates the contrary, showing that the Board was willing to recognize when Dr. Brinton was doing well and was meeting the terms of his probation. For instance, in April of 1990 the Board wrote Dr. Brinton a congratulatory letter, and the Board minutes of April 29, 1992, reflect that Dr. Romney delivered a favorable report about Dr. Brinton's progress.
Moreover, Dr. Brinton had the opportunity to present and explore the issue of bad faith bias on multiple occasions and specifically presented testimony from a number of people who directly questioned Dr. Romney's motives and the Board's actions. Yet the October 1992 Hearing Panel, though somewhat c
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