Martinez v. Downstate Medical Center of State University of New York

113 A.D.2d 753
CourtAppellate Division of the Supreme Court of the State of New York
DecidedSeptember 3, 1985
StatusPublished
Cited by3 cases

This text of 113 A.D.2d 753 (Martinez v. Downstate Medical Center of State University of New York) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of the State of New York primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Martinez v. Downstate Medical Center of State University of New York, 113 A.D.2d 753 (N.Y. Ct. App. 1985).

Opinion

In a proceeding pursuant to CPLR article 78, inter alia, to compel respondents Downstate Medical Center of the State University of New York (Downstate) and Kings County Hospital Center (KCHC) to reinstate petitioner to a position as director of the Joint Respiratory and Surgical Intensive Care Unit at Downstate and KCHC and to reinstate him as a tenured associate professor at Downstate, and to transfer the ICU back to the Department of Anesthesiology, petitioner appeals from a judgment of the Supreme Court, Kings County (Rader, J.), dated April 27, 1983, which dismissed the petition except to the extent that it remitted the issues of the denial of petitioner’s promotion and of tenure status to Downstate for further administrative review.

On the court’s own motion, appellant’s notice of appeal is treated as an application for leave to appeal from so much of the judgment as remitted the issues of the denial of petitioner’s promotion and tenure status to Downstate for further administrative review, said application is referred to Justice Mangano and leave to appeal is granted by Justice Mangano (CPLR 5701 [b] [1]).

Judgment modified, on the law, (1) by granting that branch of the petition which sought to implement the decision of the Medical Board of KCHC and to reinstate petitioner to a position comparable to director of the ICU at Downstate and KCHC; and (2) by deleting the provision thereof which remitted the issues of promotion and tenure for administrative review under the collective bargaining agreement of the parties, and substituting therefor a provision remitting the issue of whether petitioner should be reinstated as a tenured associate professor at Downstate together with all accrued compensation, benefits and interest, to respondent Downstate for determination pursuant to the hearing and appeals procedure provided for in section 10 of article 3 of the bylaws of the Medical and Dental Staff of State University Hospital of Downstate, at which proceeding all the respondents shall have their views and positions heard and which determination shall be binding on all respondents. As so modified, judgment affirmed, with one bill of costs to petitioner payable by respondents appearing separately and filing separate briefs.

[754]*754Prior to 1980, petitioner for many years had a joint appointment as an attending physician in the Department of Anesthesiology at KCHC and as an associate professor of anesthesiology at Downstate, to which rank he had been promoted in 1971. Petitioner, who is a specialist in the subspecialty of critical care medicine, helped form the ICU which was administered by the Department of Anesthesiology and which served both KCHC and Downstate.

In 1980, respondent Dr. James Cottrell, chairman of the Department of Anesthesiology at Downstate and chief of anesthesiology at KCHC, and others decided to transfer the administration of the ICU from the Department of Anesthesiology to the Department of Surgery. In August 1980, petitioner returned from a nine-month leave of absence he had taken due to a heart attack and was informed by Dr. Cottrell that he had been reassigned to work in the operating room instead of the ICU. Petitioner protested this reassignment in light of the many years of service he had given in forming the ICU, because the reassignment placed him in a position that he believed made less use of his abilities and experience, and because it appeared to him to entail a loss of prestige. Petitioner initially refused to report to his new assignments and instead appeared at his previous position as director of the ICU. In November 1980, he commenced a prior proceeding pursuant to CPLR article 78 to challenge the reassignment as well as the pending transfer of the ICU to the Department of Surgery. In an order to show cause in that proceeding, Special Term directed respondents to pay petitioner at the rate of pay for the position of director of ICU so long as petitioner reported for and performed the duties assigned him. While Dr. Cottrell asserted in that proceeding that petitioner did not report to the recovery room to which he was later assigned, several co-workers supported petitioner’s claim that he did in fact report there.

Meanwhile, according to petitioner, in October 1980, Dr. Cottrell formed an Alternate Route Committee for making recommendations for academic promotions, recommended that petitioner not be appointed to this committee because he was too ill, and instituted a review of petitioner’s qualifications for purposes of promotion to the rank of full professor, although petitioner had not requested such a review at that time. The Alternate Route Committee decided against recommending the promotion. Petitioner also sought to vacate that recommendation in the prior proceeding.

In December 1980, while that prior proceeding was still [755]*755pending, Cottrell advised Downstate and KCHC to stop payment on petitioner’s salary checks and not to send further payments, based on Dr. Cottrell’s allegation that petitioner was not reporting for work. On Dr. Cottrell’s recommendation, a letter dated January 5, 1981 was mailed to petitioner informing him that pursuant to section 23.10 of the collective bargaining agreement between the State and the United University Professions, Inc. (the UUP agreement) he was deemed to have resigned his position as associate professor effective January 2, 1981 for failing to report to work since October 23, 1980.

Thereafter, in a judgment dated April 21, 1981, Special Term (Shaw, J.), dismissed the prior article 78 proceeding on the ground that petitioner had failed to exhaust his administrative remedies. The court directed that the parties submit the matter to KCHC "for a proper disposition under the procedures set forth in Article X of the by-laws of the parties”. Under said procedures, an ad hoc hearing committee of the Medical Board of KCHC held a hearing and then concluded that neither petitioner’s appointment as "Attending Physician of Anesthesiology” nor his exercise of clinical privileges had been adversely affected. Thereafter, a hearing was conducted by the Medical Board, which Board then voted to reject the findings of the ad hoc committee. The Board decided that petitioner should be reinstated to a position within the Department of Anesthesiology comparable to that which he had held before his dismissal.

Upon the refusal of respondent KCHC or the then New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation (HHC) President Stanley Brezenoff to follow these recommendations, petitioner commenced the instant proceeding pursuant to CPLR article 78. In this proceeding, petitioner, inter alia, sought his reinstatement to a position as director of the ICU, and to his position as a tenured associate professor, and to transfer the ICU back to the Department of Anesthesiology.

Special Term (Rader, J.), in a judgment dated April 27, 1983, denied that branch of the petition which pertained to petitioner’s reassignment from his position as director of the ICU and to the transfer of the ICU to the Department of Surgery, and remitted the issues of "forced” resignation, promotion and tenure to respondents for further administrative review by Downstate under the UUP agreement. The court left open the question of timeliness with respect to the filing of such grievances under the UUP agreement.

Thereafter, in response to petitioner’s subsequent request [756]*756for an administrative hearing, Downstate declined to hear the merits of the propriety of the loss of the faculty appointment or of the promotion issue.

Free access — add to your briefcase to read the full text and ask questions with AI

Related

Laureiro v. New York City Department of Consumer Affairs
41 A.D.3d 717 (Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of New York, 2007)
Ostrow v. State University of New York at Stony Brook
202 A.D.2d 587 (Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of New York, 1994)
Lachica v. State
139 Misc. 2d 772 (New York State Court of Claims, 1988)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
113 A.D.2d 753, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/martinez-v-downstate-medical-center-of-state-university-of-new-york-nyappdiv-1985.