'1,000 Places to Fall to Your Death,' Utah edition, means American tort law hasn't undermined pioneer spirit

I can't help but check out the tortscape when I travel.  As mentioned last week, I have been traveling recently in Utah.  The sights are breathtaking.  And as an indicator of the health of the American tort system, I am pleased to report, Utah has many places where one can fall to one's death.

If your foreign friends are like mine, then you too are tired of being teased about fencing at the Grand Canyon, supposedly erected by the National Park Service to protect itself from lawsuits.

It's nonsense, of course.  There are a very few railings and barriers installed at the most popular viewing areas at the Grand Canyon.  Given the often present throng, the limited installations are only sensible, to protect the canyon as well as the people.  Plenty of visitors still manage to fall and die.  And if anything about such deaths speaks powerfully to "the American way," it's the sovereign immunity that usually dispatches any subsequent lawsuits.

(In all seriousness, for a tragic and compelling problem in this vein, and an excellent case for torts profs to introduce the Federal Tort Claims Act, see the recent and pending claim against the National Park Service by the family of Esther Nakajjigo, a human rights activist and tourist who was decapitated by a swinging traffic control gate at Arches National Park in Utah in 2020.  Read more from Moab Sun News, NBC News, Fox13 Salt Lake City, and Yahoo News Australia.  The case is Michaud v. United States, No. 1:21-cv-01547-KLM (filed D. Colo. June 8, 2021) (Court Listener).)

Railings such as these represent a reasonable exercise of discretion by any global measure:
surrounding a viewing platform at Sipapu Bridge at Natural Bridges National Monument.

My friends' teasing persists because it capitalizes on two stereotypes of Americans: first, as camera-happy tourists who don't know how to handle themselves when voyaging giddily away from home on their precious ten days of unguaranteed vacation; and second, as lawsuit-addicted complainants eager to forsake personal responsibility for a pay day.  Corporate America's tort-deform messaging has saturated the globe.

I should know better.  But, I admit, my insecurities are allayed whenever I discover a new place one can fall to death amid the sublime splendor of an American natural wonder.  And I found many such places in Utah.  I'm thinking about writing a book in the vein of Patricia Schultz's 1,000 Places to See Before You Die.  Mine will be "1,000 Places to Fall to Your Death in America."  It's simultaneous travel literature and tort-reform opposition.

This is my favorite new candidate for the book: Kodachrome Basin State Park in Utah.  It's oddly appropriate because the park is in fact named after a corporation.  National Geographic featured the land in color photography in 1949 and, with permission of the Eastman Kodak company, named the area after the company's pioneering color film, which had been introduced in 1935 (and was discontinued in 2009).  The park is a worthwhile stop, or destination unto itself, on Utah's famed Scenic Byway 12, near Cannonville.

Kodachrome Basin boasts some 67 "sedimentary pipes," columns of rock rising from the basin floor.  According to park literature, the pipes are the result of erosion, but geologists are not sure whether historical earthquakes or ancient springs explain the erosion-resistant columns.  There are more than 14 miles of trails in the park from which one can see the pipes and take in the park's chromatic appeal.

I did one of the shorter hikes. The 1.5-mile Angel's Palace Trail rises 150 feet from the basin floor to afford views from Kodachrome to nearby Bryce Canyon.  Angel's Palace offers many short side tracks to scenic viewpoints, like this one:

Here's a 360-degree panoramic:

The trail drops off on both sides:

If you meander down this pathway, it narrows to a small rocky point, maybe 10 square inches of a rounded top of crumbly rock, where, I suppose, someone with a death wish could make a killer TikTok hopping on one foot.  I got only far enough along to take this photo:

In further furtherance of the pioneer spirit, there's one other unmitigated way to die in Utah, and that's in an agricultural encounter.  At the American West Heritage Center in Wellsville, Utah, I was surprised to see this sign:

In 1L Torts, I always include some coverage of sector-specific statutory liability limitations, usually adopted to protect domestic businesses especially from suit by out-of-state tourists.  In my first year as a legal writing instructor in the 1990s, colleagues and I used a problem involving the Colorado skier responsibility law.  Utah has one, too.  This was the first time, though, that I've learned of a sector-specific liability limitation in "agritourism."  Actually, this was the first time I ever heard of agritourism (also "agrotourism").

The cited section of the Utah Code indeed defines agritourism as "the travel or visit by the general public to a working farm, ranch, or other commercial agricultural, aquacultural, horticultural, or forestry operation for the enjoyment of, education about, or participation in the activities of the farm, ranch, or other commercial agricultural, aquacultural, horticultural, or forestry operation."

The statute doesn't depart radically from the negligence standard, but, like the sign says, affords service providers an assumption-of-risk defense when signs are posted.  The statute specifies risks inherent in agritourism:

a danger, hazard, or condition which is an integral part of an agricultural tourism activity and that cannot be eliminated by the exercise of reasonable care, including:
     (i) natural surface and subsurface conditions of land, vegetation, and water on the property;
     (ii) unpredictable behavior of domesticated or farm animals on the property; or
     (iii) reasonable dangers of structures or equipment ordinarily used where agricultural or horticultural crops are grown or farm animals or farmed fish are raised.

I didn't run into any of those problems.  I must be a pioneer at heart.

Me holding up a natural bridge on the Hickman Bridge Trail, Capitol Reef National Park

(All photos by RJ Peltz-Steele, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.)

'Clinton' honorific draws fire at Arkansas law school

"The Clinton Law School"
was not to be.

An op-ed in The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette by Mike Masterson on Saturday reported a mess at the "William H. Bowen" law school at the University of Arkansas, Little Rock, since a professor there started calling himself the "William J. Clinton Professor."  The ADG quoted an email from my friend and colleague, Distinguished Professor J. Thomas Sullivan, obtained under the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act (FOIA):

I don't recall when the Law and Public Policy Professorship was re-named for President Clinton.... I first noticed this reference in the signature block on an email sent by ["Dean Emeritus and William J. Clinton Professor of Constitutional Law and Public Service"] John DiPippa in March.

This professorship was originally designated as the Law and Public Policy professorship and was created, as I recall, after we moved into the current building. There was discussion that the Law School itself would be named for Clinton, but that was scuttled because there was serious concern that he would be subjected to some adverse legal action ... for giving false testimony in the civil action brought by Paula Corbin Jones....

I couldn't find any reference to the professorship as the "William J. Clinton Professor of Constitutional Law and Public Service" on the Bowen web site. In fact, John's faculty page describes him as: Dean Emeritus and Distinguished Professor of Law and Public Policy.

It may be that I missed an announcement ... but I am not aware of the re-designation of the professorship in the name of William J. Clinton or the reference to "Constitutional Law and Public Service." Had this been brought to the faculty for discussion ... I would have opposed the change in designation for a number of reasons:

First, President Clinton was disbarred from practice before the United States Supreme Court and the Arkansas courts following the impeachment trial, in 2000 or 2001. I believe that John took the opportunity to defend him against disbarment at the time, but conceded that some form of censure was appropriate, being quoted at the time by The Washington Post: ... "But DiPippa also said Clinton should be punished more severely because of his position. He suggested a suspension of his license for some period of time. Disbarment ought to be reserved for what I've called incorrigible lawyers—lawyers who are just going to repeat their offenses and continue to harm clients, he said." ....

I simply do not think it appropriate for a law school to honor a disbarred lawyer—it strikes me as hardly sending a deterrent message to law students or practitioners. But beyond the disbarment, I have grave concerns about Bowen being aligned with significant policy decisions taken by Clinton that have [caused] irreparable damage to our legal system.

The mass incarceration of Americans, particularly affecting the poor and African American communities, was accelerated during the Clinton administration in an effort to deflect potential Republican claims that Democrats were/are soft on crime....

Second, the 1994 law shaped Democratic Party politics for years. Under the leadership of Bill Clinton, Democrats wanted to wrest control of crime issues from Republicans, so the two parties began a bidding war to increase penalties for crime. The 1994 crime bill was a key part of the Democratic strategy to show it can be tougher-on-crime than Republicans.

Of particular importance, Clinton signed the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 which effectively eliminated federal habeas corpus as a protection against state court criminal convictions tainted by procedural irregularities and failure of state courts to correctly apply U.S. Supreme Court precedent in disposition of claimed violations of federal constitutional protections.

Sullivan is right about the naming of the law school; I was there then, too.  The money was coming from Bowen, an Arkansas banker—over faculty objections that UALR was selling itself to a donor for less money than any law school had ever taken for the honor—and Bowen's name was substituted when Clinton's became politically problematic.  In the op-ed, Professor Rob Steinbuch, a colleague of Sullivan's and co-author of mine on transparency research, confirmed Sullivan's take on the unilateral impropriety of the name change.

Sullivan wrote further:

Of general importance is the usurpation of faculty governance by the law school administration. At a minimum, the question of re-designating a named professorship should be announced to the faculty for purposes of eliciting legitimate concerns. The faculty originally adopted the rule regarding named professorships that was altered to give the dean sole authority for designation—apart from specific directions given by a donor.

I don't recall whether there was faculty input in altering terms of the original rule, but I do recall the faculty were generally notified of the current rule, as published. In either event, the legitimate authority of the faculty to advise and consent, if not promulgate, a policy that may have significant consequences for the law school in terms of our mission and reputation, shouldn't be dismissed by expediency or political interests of a dean, advisers or supporters answering only to the dean.

Sullivan has his own history with named professorships at UALR.  He was stripped of his in the past for the sin of dissent.  The professorships are better measures of academic-political compliance than of merit.  They're awarded only for five-year terms so as to incentivize continuing obedience to the dean among tenured faculty who otherwise might be hard to wrangle.

Such is academics.  My school, too, punishes anyone who dares not be a "team player," or fails to dumb down her or his own performance to the median.  The problem of "workplace mobbing" to enforce group-think and tame high achievers is so severe in academics that sociologist Kenneth Westhues wrote books about it.

No duty: Court clears homeowner of liability in fatal shooting that sparked town ban on Airbnb

Not where the party was: historic Henfield House in Lynnfield, Mass.
(photo by John Phelan CC BY 3.0)

A homeowner is not liable in the shooting death of a party guest in a case that sparked a town ban on Airbnb, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled on June 7.

A 33-year-old father of two, Keivan B. Heath was shot and killed at a house party in Lynnfield, in northeastern Massachusetts, in the early-morning Sunday hours of Memorial Day weekend in 2016.  The plaintiff in wrongful death sued party organizers and the homeowner, who had rented out the house.

According to the court opinion, drawing facts from the complaint with reasonable inferences in favor of the plaintiff, defendant Victor had "informed the [homeowner] that he planned to hold a college reunion party. However, he advertised a Saturday event on social media as the 'Splash Mansion Pool Party,' open to 'Special Invitation & Girls Only,' with three named disc jockeys to provide the music."  More than 100 persons attended.  

The property was the home of the Styller family.  The property comprised "a 5,000 square foot home, a three-car garage, a 2,000 square foot patio, an in-ground heated pool, and a pool house with a fireplace and a bar on a three-acre lot in Lynnfield."  Defendant Styller

rented out the premises for short periods of time using a variety of Internet platforms [including Airbnb and HomeAway (now Vrbo), according to Boston magazine]. During each rental, the [Styller family] would leave the property and stay elsewhere. In the listings, the defendant touted the property's secluded location, fenced-in yard, and electronically operated gates. He also described the property as being in one of the safest areas in Massachusetts. Renters used the house for, among other things, business retreats, conferences, "photo shoots," and reunions.

The court described the tragedy:

At approximately 3 a.m., police received two 911 calls reporting that someone at the party had been shot; one caller said that the decedent was "dying," and the other reported that people were attempting cardiopulmonary resuscitation and then said, "he's gone." Police arrived to find many vehicles leaving and people fleeing on foot. The decedent was lying alone, face up and unresponsive, near the pool. He was transported to a nearby hospital, where he was pronounced dead in the emergency room. The cause of death was two gunshot wounds to the chest.

The murder remains unsolved.

Affirming dismissal in favor of Styller, the SJC opinion is a straightforward analysis of duty in negligence.  The duty of a property owner reasonably to maintain property in a safe condition does not extend generally to protect an injured from the "dangerous or unlawful acts" of third parties.

The plaintiff attempted to predicate liability on "special relationship" exceptions for foreseeable harms and for common-carrier defendants.  The court rejected both theories.  On foreseeability, courts have drawn exceptions in cases in which property owners knew of violent crimes on premises in the past.  But plaintiffs could not sustain the allegation here.  "Although the complaint cites a finding made by a Land Court judge in a related case that short-term rentals have 'significant external effects on the neighboring community and community at large,' it does not allege that short-term rentals are correlated with an increase in violent crime" (footnotes omitted).

Significantly for the short-term rental market, the court refused to analogize an Airbnb, Vrbo, etc., host to a common carrier or place of public accommodation, such as a transport provider, restaurant, or hotel, which would enhance the defendant's duty.  "This comparison missed the mark," the court wrote.

Aside from the fact that there is no allegation of any relationship between the defendant and the decedent other than the fact that the decedent was shot and killed on property owned by the defendant, perhaps the biggest difference between the relationship between a business establishment and its customers and the defendant's relationship to the decedent is that the defendant had no control over the premises during the rental period.

Styller's duty as a property owner stopped with the condition of the property at the time he turned over the keys.

In a related case decided the same day, the SJC ruled against Styller in a dispute in Land Court with the town of Lynnfield.

After the Heath murder, Lynnfield amended town law expressly to ban short-term property rentals, such as Airbnbs.  Lynnfield asserted that short-term rentals such as Styller's already violated the law.  But ordinances, such as a prohibition on operating a "lodging or rooming house," were ambiguous on the contemporary home rental question.

The SJC disagreed with the Land Court's ruling that the short-term rental of a whole home violated the law as to rooming houses, before amendment.  However, Styller wanted a ruling that his prior use was permissible, and the SJC would not go that far.  In the sum of various provisions, the court held, town law "clearly and unambiguously excluded, in pertinent part, purely transient uses of property in [a residential zoning district]."

Of interest from a procedural perspective, the court ruled on the zoning case despite alleged mootness arising from Styller's sale of the property.   "Unlike standing, 'mootness [is] a factor affecting [the court's] discretion, not its power,' to decide a case," the court explained.

[W]e view the viability of short-term rental use of property in the context of existing zoning regulations as one of public importance, in the sense that it raises "an important public question whose resolution will affect more persons than the parties to the case" and that "is primarily a matter of statutory [or, in this case, zoning bylaw] interpretation, not dependent on the facts of the particular case."

As well, Styller argued that the permissibility of the rental before the town amended the law remained a live issue in collateral matters of insurance coverage.

The wrongful death case is Heath-Latson v. Styller, No. SJC-12917 (June 7, 2021) (Justia).  The zoning case is Styller v. Zoning Board of Appeals, No. SJC-12901 (June 7, 2021) (Justia).  Chief Justice Kimberly S. Budd wrote both opinions for a unanimous court, excluding the two most recently appointed justices.

Disputed allegations in malicious prosecution suits against Apple raise data protection issues

Apple Store Osaka (Sébastien Bertrand CC BY 2.0)

A case of identity theft, now the subject of lawsuits against Apple and a security contractor, SIS, in three jurisdictions, seems to have raised an alarm about data protection.  But the case might be more complicated, as the defendants have accused the plaintiff of false pleadings.

Plaintiff Ousmane Bah was a 17-year-old Bronx honors student and permanent resident alien applying for citizenship at times relevant to the complaints.  An acquaintance of Bah's acquired Bah's temporary New York driving learner's permit (ID); it is disputed what Bah knew about the acquisition.

The ID did not have a photo, and the biographical data did not match the acquaintance's in all particulars, such as height.  Nevertheless, when the acquaintance was, according to the complaints, apprehended trying to shoplift from Apple stores in New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts, he was misidentified as Bah.  Bah was criminally charged, subject to arrest warrants, and repeatedly compelled to defend himself.  The case does not directly implicate the known risk of race discrimination in facial recognition algorithms.  But in Bah’s version of events, Apple's use of facial recognition technology to identify the perpetrator in subsequent incidents gave police a false confidence that the suspect was Bah.

Apple and SIS have filed for Rule 11 sanctions in New Jersey and characterize the complaint in that jurisdiction as fiction.  They rely on discovered communication between Bah and the acquaintance to allege that Bah knew well that he was being impersonated, and that misidentification resulted from the acquaintance’s deliberate deception, not from error on the part of Apple or SIS. 

Media have been quick to seize on the allegations in the initial complaint, which does resonate with extant privacy issues in public policy.  If the plaintiff’s allegations are complete and accurate, then the case speaks to Americans’ lack of comprehensive data protection law.  A data protection regulation like Europe’s, generally speaking, would shift the burdens of fair and accurate identification to the defendants, rather than a victim of identity theft, time and again.

Moreover, if the plaintiff’s allegations are complete and accurate, the case has unpleasant overtones in race and socioeconomic equality.  A mismatch of data between the false ID and the acquaintance's appearance prompts concern that “black” was all the retailer needed to see, and one must worry whether persons of limited means can afford to defend themselves against false charges and wrongful arrest, not to mention the collateral effects of publication of misidentification to third parties, such as employers and creditors.

Bah claims defamation and malicious prosecution.  The complaints at least allege evidence in support of actual malice, which Apple and SIS deny.  Malicious prosecution is usually a claim made against public officials in tandem with civil rights violations, but the tort is viable against private parties who initiate criminal proceedings on false pretenses.  Whether the plaintiff’s allegations hold up, I do not know.  The counter-allegations of Apple and SIS in seeking sanctions in the New Jersey case are biting.

The cases are:

• Bah v. Apple Inc., No. 1:19-cv-03539-PKC (S.D.N.Y. filed Apr. 22, 2019) (Court Listener);
• Bah v. Apple Inc., No. 2:20-cv-15018-MCA-MAH (D.N.J. filed Oct. 27, 2020) (Court Listener); and
• Bah v. Apple Inc., No. 1:21-cv-10897-RGS (D. Mass. filed May 28, 2021) (Court Listener).

Bah is represented in the New York case by UMass Law alumnus Subhan Tariq, '13.  My thanks to Steven Zoni, '13, for bringing this case to my attention.

RIP Hollis Joslin, JD '14, attorney, pilot, novelist

I'm heartbroken to report the sudden death of a dear friend, attorney, and alumnus, Hollis Gordon Joslin, JD '14, at age 56.

A husband, father, and grandfather, Hollis was a real-life "Renaissance man."  Besides lawyer, he was an auto mechanic, entrepreneur, licensed pilot, outdoorsman, poet, musician, and novelist.  In law, he practiced in bankruptcy and personal injury.  He made a series of funny ads for his practice, but also a serious one.  Owing to popular skepticism of lawyers, a viewer might misinterpret his serious ad as saccharine, but I can say from knowing Hollis, and knowing his Christian faith, that his down-home expression of compassion for would-be clients is purely genuine.

Hollis came to formal higher education only later in life, finishing his bachelor's in 2010.  In the finest tradition of a non-traditional student in law school, he was respected and adored by youthful classmates, whom he mentored generously with gentle and humble wisdom.  If formally a student in my torts classes, he was foremost a teacher to me, too.  He thought deeply about philosophy, economics, and politics, and was eager for a discussion partner to test out revelations.  I obliged to my own benefit.

One auspicious fruit of Hollis's deep thinking—I like to imagine forged at least in part by our conversations, but I probably self-aggrandize—was a clever novel that he conceived of as a contemporary revision of Randian objectivism, incorporating his own ideas.  Like me, Hollis subscribed to laissez-faire regulatory policy in principle, embodying the libertarian impulses of his native Texas.  But he also was deeply troubled by the prospect of corporatocracy.  Here is a précis of the book, "Citizens United":

If, as the Supreme Court said in Citizens United, the political speech of a corporation is no less protected by the First Amendment than that of natural persons, then the First Amendment implies a right for corporations to speak from elected office. That is the theory Vizion Inc. proposed to justify the corporation's candidacy for president of the United States: a less than remarkable development in a dystopian world dominated by the Global Trade Partnership. But the new Republic of Texas is having none of it. Flourishing under a policy of liberty and individual empowerment, Texas is all that stands between freedom and the tyranny of a corporate new world order. 

Hollis had an exciting video trailer made for the book.

I had always intended to write something about Citizens United (the book) here at The Savory Tort, but Hollis had asked me to wait until he devised a sort of "grand premiere."  I think that ambition fell by the wayside as he dove into law practice, and, I admit, I never followed up.

Hollis is survived by his lovely and loving wife, Dr. Cheryl Wathier, a kind and patient soul the likes of which a Renaissance man needs in a partner.  I was privileged to visit Hollis and Cheryl once in Arizona, and I never imagined that would be the last time I would see him.  Now I pray for strength for Cheryl and the kids.  In memory of Hollis, the family asked for donations to St. Jude's Children's Hospital.  My thanks to Justin Kadich, '14, for apprising me of the sad news.

Drought grips western U.S., induces ag angst in Utah

Salt Lake City—I’ve been traveling in Utah, so have witnessed the drought gripping the West.  I’m no climate scientist, so I can’t say how far off normal conditions are.  Here is what I've seen and been told.

This was my first time in Salt Lake City (SLC), at least beyond the airport.  It’s a remarkable place.  Having visited the cedars of Lebanon and driven the Dead Sea highway in Jordan, I understand now why the Mormon pioneers of 1847 thought there was something divinely ordained about the cedar break at the Great Salt Lake.

Salt Lake City overlook from Desolation Trail in Millcreek Canyon

I've wanted to see the Great Salt Lake as long as I can remember, but especially since reading Terry Tempest Williams's natural history-classic Refuge in the 1990s.  The Great Salt Lake's salinity tops out at about 27%.  That's shy of the roughly 34% of the Dead Sea, but still enough to preclude any waterborne animal life bigger than a brine shrimp.

Great Salt Lake from Great Salt Lake State Park

 

Bison on Antelope Island in the Great Salt Lake; Salt Lake City in the distance

At the same time, from a contemporary, climate-wary perspective, one can’t help but look at SLC and think, “Maybe this shouldn’t be here” (a sentiment admittedly more apt with regard to desert cities to the west, such as Las Vegas).

Salt Lake City from atop the Utah Capitol Steps

I have seen warnings all around Utah not to park cars on dry grass, for fear of fire.  The rotatable Smoky-the-Bear fire danger signs are dialed up to “Extreme.”  Radio ads ask me to “slow the flow,” limiting my use of water.  Yesterday morning, June 24, it rained in SLC for the first time since May 23.  The local weather announcer gleefully reported 0.02” accumulation by 9:30 a.m. 

At Lake Powell, water levels are too low for the ferry to operate between Halls Crossing and Bullfrog.  Near Hite, Utah, in the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, a dusty red campground sits eerily vacant astride a dry riverbed where the Colorado River falls shy of Lake Powell’s north end.

In wetter times, a waterfront campsite at the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area

 

Dry riverbed between the Colorado River (at left) and Lake Powell

A signboard with tips to “Play It Safe in the Water,” picturing jubilant boaters, gives the campground a “Planet of the Apes” feel of abandoned human infrastructure.  We often think about climate change in terms of rising sea levels, but the opposite happens, too.

"Play It Safe in the Water"

The chatty clerk at the Hollow Mountain convenience store in Hanksville told me with a pained face that she has never seen it so dry, and, she added, her memory goes back to 1964.  She didn’t strike me as much older than 60, so I’m assuming she’s been in Utah all her life.

Hollow Mountain, Hanksville

An innkeeper in Escalante was less concerned.  He said that the drought is affecting agriculture, and that might be a welcome wake-up call to abate the cultivation of water-intensive crops that should not have been planted where they are anyway.  “Culinary water” has not been affected, he said; the area provides ample water for human settlement and tourism.

Settlers planted orchards at what is today Capitol Reef National Park.

The place that most stoked my concern and compassion was the Navajo Nation on Utah’s southeastern border.  At a Navajo-family-run inn and café in Mexican Hat, just above the border, a server told me that the area hasn’t seen a torrential rain for 10 years.  She seemed to me maybe 19, so I wonder whether she remembers.

The San Juan Inn overlooks the San Juan River, which also feeds Lake Powell.

Meanwhile, the local economy is reeling, as it seems Navajo Parks and Recreation will not be reopening touristic sites, such as Monument Valley Tribal Park, for another summer.  It’s been hard, the young server told me.  But we’ve always survived here, she said of the Navajo, so we’ll adapt.  I found the sentiment rousing, but couldn’t decide if it was wise or naïve.

Anyway, her 84-year-old grandmother makes a mean salsa verde enchilada with a Navajo-chili-style filling.

Salsa verde enchilada at The Juan Cafe, Mexican Hat

(All photos by RJ Peltz-Steele, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.)

'Error in judgment' jury instruction properly cuts room for doctor to escape liability for delay of surgery

Ischemic bowel in CT scan
(image by James Heilman, MD, CC BY-SA 3.0)

A doctor did not commit malpractice by awaiting test results before committing a patient to surgery for an ischemic bowel, even if permanent disability resulted from delay, the Massachusetts Appeals Court ruled before Memorial Day weekend.  The jury was properly instructed to allow leeway for error in judgment.

The plaintiff-patient presented at the emergency room at 1 a.m. in severe abdominal pain and with a history of gastric bypass surgery and hernia repair.  The defendant-doctor correctly suspected ischemic bowel, a blood blockage, and, at 3 a.m., sent the patient for a CT scan.  Based on the scan results, the doctor, at 4:23 a.m., ordered the patient to surgery, which commenced by 6:30 a.m.

The court summarized, "The main dispute at trial was whether [the doctor] acted within the standard of care by ordering the CT scan and waiting for the results, or whether he instead should have contacted a surgeon earlier."  On appeal from judgment entered for the doctor, the plaintiff charged that the jury was erroneously instructed to allow for error in the doctor's professional judgment.

Tracking model jury instructions (p. 5), the trial judge had instructed, inter alia:

"If, in retrospect, the physician's judgment was incorrect, it is not, in and of itself, enough to prove medical malpractice or negligence.

"Doctors are allowed a range in the reasonable exercise of professional judgment and they are not liable for mere errors of judgment so long as that judgment does not represent a departure from the standard of care resulting in a failure to do something that the standard of care requires or in doing something that should not be done under the standard of care.

"In other words, a doctor is liable for errors of judgment only if those errors represent a departure from the standard of care."

In affirming for the doctor, the court upheld the instruction.  The court reviewed a range of approaches in other states to "error of judgment" instruction in medical malpractice cases.  Hawaii and Oregon, for example, reject the instruction as posing too great a risk of confusion for the jury.  California accords with the Massachusetts position.  Other states, such as New York, use the instruction "only where there is evidence at trial that the physician chose from one of several medically acceptable alternatives."  In defense of the Massachusetts position, the court reasoned:

If properly formulated, such an instruction focuses the jury's attention on the standard of care, rather than the particular results in a case.  The instruction also recognizes the reality that, like all professionals, medical professionals need to make judgment calls between various acceptable courses of actions and they should not be found liable unless those judgment calls fall outside the standard of care.

The range of approaches demonstrates civil courts' long struggle with hindsight bias, especially in medical malpractice.  Hindsight bias is a natural human tendency to overestimate one's ability to make a decision correctly when viewing the decision as if in the past, ignorant of consequences, but from a perspective in the present, informed, in fact, by subsequently acquired information.  Shankar Vedantam talked about the problem on The Hidden Brain podcast in 2020.

Hindsight bias is not unique to medical malpractice, nor even to tort law.  Psychologists have documented hindsight bias in "accounting and auditing decisions, athletic competition, and political strategy," besides medicine.  As I wrote in a book on legal pedagogy in 2019, the cartoon South Park even invented a character, Captain Hindsight, to make fun of the human foible.  Hindsight bias inevitably contaminates every tort case, and countering it often is an appropriate strategy in legal argument and jury instruction.  For a juror, like any decision maker, it is difficult to reconstruct a past decision to the complete exclusion of undesired consequences.

The problem is exaggerated in the medical context because of the simplicity of the doctor-patient relationship.  A patient sees a doctor for one purpose, exclusively: to get better.  A doctor has one and only one job: to heal.  When healing is not the result that a patient experiences, and the jury has knowledge of that consequence, it is deceptively easy for jurors to confuse the doctor's failure to heal with a departure from the standard of care.  The Massachusetts instruction is designed to clarify the distinction for jurors.

The case is Paiva v. Kaplan, No. 19-P-1789 (Mass. App. Ct. May 28, 2021).  Justice Joseph M. Ditkoff authored the opinion of the unanimous panel that also comprised Justices Vuono and Milkey.  In a former post as general counsel of the District Court, Justice Ditkoff's responsibilities included drafting standardized jury instructions.

Extortion claim survives anti-SLAPP motion because defendants could not show petitioning connection

Haverhill, Mass., on the Merrimack River, 2008
(photo by Fletcher6 CC BY-SA 3.0)

Defendants could not raise an anti-SLAPP law against allegations of extortion, the Massachusetts Appeals court ruled before the Memorial Day weekend, because extortion did not relate plausibly to the defendants' constitutionally protected petitioning.

Plaintiffs Stem Haverhill and owner Caroline Pineau were applicants for zoning ordinance changes to permit a marijuana dispensary, since opened, in the downtown riverfront district of Haverhill, Massachusetts, a city 35 miles north of Boston, on the New Hampshire border.  Defendants Brad Brooks and Lloyd Jennings leased nearby residential and restaurant space and opposed the zoning changes.

Brooks and Jennings had had a scrap over property boundary with the previous owner of the Stem lot and had paid $30,000 to resolve the matter.  According to the complaint, Brooks and Jennings, apparently bitter over the former matter, demanded more than $30,000 from Pineau as the price of their acquiescence to zoning changes, no matter what the proposed use.

Stem and Pineau sued under the broad Massachusetts tort-and-consumer-protection statute, chapter 93A, as well as state civil rights law and common law defamation.  As often occurs in anti-SLAPP suits, both parties claimed the exercise of constitutional rights.  The plaintiffs were petitioning the government for zoning changes.  The defendants invoked anti-SLAPP upon the theory that the plaintiffs' civil charges of extortion were calculated to interfere with defendants' petition of government in opposition to the zoning changes.  (Read more about anti-SLAPP on this blog.)

The Massachusetts anti-SLAPP statute facilitates dismissal in favor of the defense by special motion upon the theory that litigation is being weaponized to chill the defendant's (or counter-defendant's) free exercise of the right to petition.  As construed by the Supreme Judicial Court, and quoted in part in the instant case, "a defendant seeking dismissal must show, at the threshold, that the claims against it 'are based solely on [its] exercise of its [constitutional] right to petition.'"

The extortion allegations did not fit the anti-SLAPP pattern, the court concluded, affirming the trial court on de novo review.  "Here, some of the defendants' statements to the Pineaus cannot reasonably be viewed as relating to the defendants' petitioning activities. As discussed, the defendants' focus was to obtain money from Pineau that the defendants knew Pineau did not owe to them."  Litigation in the Land Court could not produce a financial award, the court observed, thus undermining the defendants' position.  The court further reasoned:

Here the defendants did not merely oppose Pineau's proposed business, nor did they merely seek to negotiate their price.  Rather, the complaint describes a concerted and extended effort to coerce Pineau to pay, "or else"—complete with thinly veiled threats such as that Pineau "doesn't know who she is dealing with." The complaint thus adequately describes extortion—coercion by improper means that is designed to reap an economic reward. Such actions, in the business context, can be actionable under c[hapter] 93A, and given the facts alleged here, the suit is not based solely on petitioning activity as required by the anti-SLAPP cases.

Though the "solely" limitation is not found in the anti-SLAPP statute, the rule appropriately narrows the doctrine to its roots in protecting the right to petition.  Had the case proceeded in the Massachusetts anti-SLAPP process, the plaintiff would have been afforded an opportunity in rebuttal, also, to articulate a purpose apart from chilling the right to petition.  As the Appeals Court observed, "The Supreme Judicial Court has construed the statute several times, and has provided a framework, which has evolved over time, for analyzing whether an anti-SLAPP motion to dismiss should be allowed."

The case is Haverhill Stem LLC v. Jennings, No. 20-P-537 (Mass. App. Ct. May 26, 2021).  Justice John Englander authored the opinion for a unanimous panel that also comprised Chief Justice Green and Justice Kinder.