Atteberry v. Nocona General Hospital

430 F.3d 245, 2005 U.S. App. LEXIS 23825
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit
DecidedNovember 3, 2005
DocketNos. 04-11330, 04-11387, 04-11388, 04-11390 to 04-11392, 04-11394 to 04-11397
StatusPublished
Cited by153 cases

This text of 430 F.3d 245 (Atteberry v. Nocona General Hospital) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Atteberry v. Nocona General Hospital, 430 F.3d 245, 2005 U.S. App. LEXIS 23825 (5th Cir. 2005).

Opinion

KING, Chief Judge:

In this consolidated interlocutory appeal, defendants-appellants Charles R. Norris and Barbara Jean Perry challenge the district court’s denial of their motions to dismiss. For the reasons stated below, we AFFIRM.

I. FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND

A. Factual Background

The plaintiffs-appellees (the “Plaintiffs”) in this consolidated appeal are relatives or representatives of eleven deceased patients and one surviving minor patient (collectively, the “patients”) at Nocona General Hospital (“Nocona” or the “Hospital”), a small hospital in Nocona, Texas. The Plaintiffs allege that Vickie Jackson (“Nurse Jackson”), a nurse at the Hospital, willfully deprived the patients of life and liberty interests by injecting them with a paralytic drug named Mivacron.1 The Plaintiffs claim that Nurse Jackson repeatedly stole Mivacron from hospital crash carts2 and used it to kill as many as twenty-two patients between November 2000 and February 2001.

Defendant-appellant Charles R. Norris (“Norris”) is alleged to have been the Hospital Administrator at Nocona during the relevant time period, with general administrative and supervisory authority over the hospital staff and policymaking authority over drug storage and medical care. Defendant-appellant Barbara Jean Perry (“Perry”) is alleged to have been the Director of Nursing at Nocona during the relevant time period, with supervisory and training authority over Nurse Jackson.

B. Procedural Background

In January and February of 2003, the Plaintiffs filed suits in the Northern District of Texas against Nurse Jackson, the Hospital, Norris, Perry, and eleven other defendants. The Plaintiffs claimed Nurse Jackson’s actions deprived the patients of their substantive due process rights to life and liberty. See U.S. Const. amend. XIV; see also Doe v. Taylor Indep. Sch. Dist., 15 F.3d 443, 450-51 (5th Cir.1994) (en banc) (recognizing the due process “right to be free of state-occasioned damage to a person’s bodily integrity”) (internal citation omitted). The Plaintiffs claimed that the Hospital, Norris, Perry, and the other defendants were liable for these constitutional violations based on their conscious or deliberate indifference to the activities of Nurse Jackson, the disappearing Mivacron from the crash carts, and the ever-increasing number of unexplained deaths.

[251]*251Beginning in April of 2003, multiple defendants (including Norris and Perry) filed motions to dismiss under Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(6), attacking the sufficiency of the Plaintiffs’ pleadings and asserting the defense of qualified immunity. After consolidating the cases and sending them to a magistrate judge for pretrial management, the district court denied the defendants’ motions to dismiss, adopting the magistrate judge’s conclusion that the Plaintiffs had stated a § 1983 claim against some defendants, including Norris and Perry.3 The district court also declined to resolve the defendants’ respective rights to qualified immunity, adopting the magistrate judge’s recommendation that a “[djetermi-nation of the Qualified Immunity of these defendants should abide” the resolution of factual issues “upon completion of discovery, summary judgment or trial.” Atteberry v. Nocona Gen. Hosp., 2004 WL 2002425, at *12 (N.D.Tex. Sept. 8, 2004) (mem.).

Defendants Norris and Perry appeal the denial of their 12(b)(6) motions to dismiss.4 We hold that the district court correctly concluded that qualified immunity will not protect the conduct alleged in the pleadings in this case, and we affirm the district court’s denial of Norris’s and Perry’s 12(b)(6) motions to dismiss on the basis of qualified immunity.

II. APPELLATE JURISDICTION AND STANDARD OF REVIEW .

“[A]n order denying qualified immunity, to the extent it turns on an ‘issue of law,’ is immediately appealable.” Behrens v. Pelletier, 516 U.S. 299, 311, 116 S.Ct. 834, 133 L.Ed.2d 773 (1996) (quoting Mitchell v. Forsyth, 472 U.S. 511, 530, 105 S.Ct. 2806, 86 L.Ed.2d 411 (1985)). Our jurisdiction in this context extends to interlocutory appeals taken from both denials of motions to dismiss and denials of motions for summary judgment. See Behrens, 516 U.S. at 307, 116 S.Ct. 834 (stating that “an order rejecting the defense of qualified immunity at either the dismissal stage or the summary judgment stage is a ‘final’ judgment subject to immediate appeal”). Specifically, the denial of a motion for dismissal on qualified immunity grounds falls into that

“small class” of district court decisions that, though short of final judgment, aré immediately appealable because they “finally determine claims of right separable from, and collateral to, rights asserted in the action, too important to be denied review and too independent of the cause itself to require that appellate consideration be deferred until the whole case is adjudicated.”

Behrens, 516 U.S. at 305, 116 S.Ct. 834 (quoting Cohen v. Beneficial Indus. Loan Corp., 337 U.S. 541, 546, 69 S.Ct. 1221, 93 L.Ed. 1528 (1949)).

When reviewing a denial of qualified immunity on an interlocutory appeal, we are restricted to determinations “of question[s] of law” and “legal issues,” and we do not consider “the correctness of the [252]*252plaintiffs version of the facts.” Mitchell, 472 U.S. at 528, 105 S.Ct. 2806. The “ ‘essentially legal [immunity] question,’ ” which we treat as an entitlement “distinct from the merits” of the case, is appealable only “ ‘to the extent that it turns on an issue of law ....’” Behrens, 516 U.S. at 306, 116 S.Ct. 834 (quoting Mitchell, 472 U.S. at 526, 530, 105 S.Ct. 2806) (omission in Behrens). Only these issues of law qualify as appealable “final decisions” before a final judgment. See id.

We review “the district court’s refusal to dismiss [the complaint] on the basis of qualified immunity de novo.” Wilkerson v. Stalder, 329 F.3d 431, 434 (5th Cir.2003) (emphasis omitted); see also Morin v. Caire, 77 F.3d 116, 119-20 (5th Cir.1996) (stating, in a similar qualified immunity context, that a district court’s ruling on a motion to dismiss is subject to de novo review). In applying this standard, we accept “all well-pleaded facts as true, viewing them in the light most favorable to the plaintiff.” Jones v. Greninger, 188 F.3d 322, 324 (5th Cir.1999) (citing Doe v. Hillsboro Indep. Sch. Dist., 81 F.3d 1395, 1401 (5th Cir.1996)). Dismissal is inappropriate “unless the plaintiff would not be entitled to relief under any set of facts or any possible theory that he could prove consistent with the allegations in the complaint.” Jones, 188 F.3d at 324 (citing Vander Zee v. Reno,

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Bluebook (online)
430 F.3d 245, 2005 U.S. App. LEXIS 23825, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/atteberry-v-nocona-general-hospital-ca5-2005.