McKee v. St. Paul Eye Clinic, P.A. – April 2015 (Summary)

DISRUPTIVE CONDUCT/AGE DISCRIMINATION

McKee v. St. Paul Eye Clinic, P.A., No. A14-0681 (Minn. Ct. App. Apr. 20, 2015)

The Court of Appeals of Minnesota affirmed a trial court’s grant of summary judgment in favor of an eye clinic that was sued by a physician after it terminated his employment based on his pattern of disruptive conduct, including angry outbursts at colleagues and two incidents of patient abuse (striking patients during the course of surgery).

This case arose when the physician, following his termination, brought suit alleging that the majority shareholders of the eye clinic breached a fiduciary duty to him, a minority shareholder, by terminating his employment without conducting a thorough investigation of the facts and by reporting information about him to the state’s physician health program (as part of the eye clinic’s request that the physician be evaluated for some physical or psychological cause of his disruptive conduct). Finding in favor of the eye clinic, the appellate court noted that the physician’s at-will employment agreement made it clear that the ophthalmologist could be terminated at any time and, in this case, uncontroverted evidence supported the fact that the shareholders of the eye clinic made the business decision to terminate the physician’s employment based on the honest belief that he had an anger management problem and constituted a liability to the clinic.

The court also rejected the physician’s argument that the peer review statute had been violated when information about a patient abuse incident was shared with the majority shareholders, holding that the incident report involving the event was filed in the general course of business by nurses present at the time of the patient abuse. That report was not filed at the request of a peer review body, nor as part of its activities, and therefore was not protected by the peer review statute. Finally, the court found no evidence in the record to suggest that the eye clinic’s proffered reason for terminating the physician (disruptive conduct) was a pretext for age discrimination.

Instead, the court noted that the record was “replete with testimony from several majority shareholders regarding Dr. McKee’s angry outbursts directed at his work colleagues.” The court pointed to several instances where Dr. McKee’s colleagues felt personally threatened and noted: “Fearful of potential confrontations with Dr. McKee, some St. Paul Eye Clinic physicians acquired conceal-and-carry permits for a firearm.”