Maduka v. Sunrise Hosp.

FOR PUBLICATION
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT
(cid:252)

GODWIN MADUKA, M.D.,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
v.
SUNRISE HOSPITAL, a Nevada
corporation, dba Sunrise Hospital
and Medical Center; SUNRISE
HOSPITAL AND MEDICAL CENTER
FAIR HEARING COMMITTEE;
COLUMBIA/HCA HEALTHCARE
CORPORATION, a Delaware
corporation,
Defendants-Appellees. (cid:254)

(cid:253)

No. 03-15332
D.C. No.
CV-00-00830-LDG
OPINION

Appeal from the United States District Court
for the District of Nevada
Lloyd D. George, District Judge, Presiding

Argued and Submitted
April 14, 2004—San Francisco, California

Filed July 15, 2004

Before: J. Clifford Wallace, Alex Kozinski, and
Sidney R. Thomas, Circuit Judges.

Opinion by Judge Wallace

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9331

COUNSEL

Randall H. Scarlett, Randall H. Scarlett Law Group, San
Francisco, California, and Cal J. Potter, III, Potter Law
Offices, Las Vegas, Nevada, for the plaintiff/appellant.

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MADUKA v. SUNRISE HOSPITAL

John R. Bailey, Law Offices of John R. Bailey, Las Vegas,
Nevada, and Dennis L. Kennedy, Lionel Sawyer & Collins,
Las Vegas, Nevada, for the defendants/appellees.

OPINION

WALLACE, Senior Circuit Judge:

Dr. Godwin Maduka appeals from the district court’s judg-
ment dismissing his Second Amended Complaint with preju-
dice. We have jurisdiction over Maduka’s timely filed appeal
pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1291. We reverse.

I.

The following narrative is drawn primarily from Maduka’s
complaint. Sunrise Hospital hired Maduka, an American of
African ancestry, as an anesthesiologist in August 1997.
Shortly after completing the hospital’s monitorship program,
Maduka was involved in two incidents that prompted the
revocation of his staff privileges.

On May 4, 1999, Maduka was administering anesthesia to
a candidate for cardio-defibrillator implant surgery. Maduka’s
initial placement of a laryngeal mask airway was unsuccess-
ful, as the blueish hue of the patient’s skin proved. Maduka
attempted to insert an endotracheal tube, but soon needed to
reintubate with a larger tube. The surgery was aborted,
although Maduka’s complaint does not indicate why. The
patient apparently did not suffer any neurological damage
from a lack of oxygen, yet he subsequently died from an
arrhythmia brought on by his cardiac condition.

Exactly one month after the first reintubation, another
patient under Maduka’s care began showing signs of oxygen
deprivation, and Maduka again had to reinsert an endotracheal

MADUKA v. SUNRISE HOSPITAL

9333

tube. This operation proceeded as planned once Maduka suc-
cessfully reintubated the patient, and there were no indica-
tions of any side effects from the improper initial placement.

Although the supervising physicians did not file a report on
either occasion, two nurses apparently witnessed the incidents
and provided statements to Dr. Mantin, who relayed the state-
ments to the Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center Fair Hear-
ing Committee (Committee). Acting as prosecutor in the
Committee’s subsequent hearing, Dr. Mantin vouched for the
witnesses’ credibility, but he did not reveal their identities.
Maduka was denied several standard procedural protections at
the hearing, including the opportunity to cross-examine the
two nurses. The Committee summarily suspended Maduka’s
staff privileges on June 4, 1999.

Maduka filed a federal civil rights action against Sunrise
Hospital and several related entities (Sunrise) in the United
States District Court. The district court dismissed all his
claims with prejudice except his charge of defamation (which
was dismissed without prejudice) and denied a subsequent
petition for reconsideration. After the filing of Maduka’s First
Amended Complaint, the district court granted Maduka’s
motion to reconsider, vacated its order dismissing Maduka’s
discrimination claim with prejudice, and instead dismissed the
claim without prejudice. Maduka’s Second Amended Com-
plaint (Complaint)—the one at issue here—only alleged dis-
crimination. The Complaint asserted claims under the United
States Constitution and 42 U.S.C. §§ 1981 and 1988, alleging
that Sunrise’s actions were motivated by his race, and offering
two examples demonstrating this discriminatory motive. First,
whereas other Sunrise staff who were not Americans of Afri-
can ancestry violated hospital rules during the two incidents,
none faced discipline. Second, Sunrise summarily dismissed
Maduka without providing various procedural protections,
which it routinely affords non-black staff members.

Sunrise moved to dismiss the Complaint pursuant to Fed-
eral Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6) for failure to state a

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MADUKA v. SUNRISE HOSPITAL

claim upon which relief can be granted. The district court
granted the motion and dismissed the Complaint on January
22, 2003. It held that Maduka made “only conclusory allega-
tions of racial discrimination, and . . . fail[ed] to allege any
fact or facts constituting either direct or circumstantial evi-
dence of discrimination.”

II.

We review a Rule 12(b)(6) dismissal for failure to state a
claim de novo, and accept as true all well-pleaded allegations
of fact in the Complaint, construing them in the light most
favorable to Maduka. Roe v. City of San Diego, 356 F.3d
1108, 1111-12 (9th Cir. 2004). Dismissal “is appropriate if it
appears beyond doubt that [Maduka] can prove no set of facts
in support of his claim which would entitle him to relief.” Id.
at 1112 (internal quotation marks and citation omitted).

[1] Nearly a year before the district court’s dismissal, the
Supreme Court determined the pleading standards appropriate
for complaints alleging employment discrimination. See
Swierkiewicz v. Sorema N.A., 534 U.S. 506 (2002). Presented
with “the question whether a complaint in an employment dis-
crimination lawsuit must contain specific facts establishing a
prima facie case of discrimination under the framework set
forth by this Court in McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green,
411 U.S. 792 (1973),” the Court held “that an employment
discrimination complaint need not include such facts and
instead must contain only ‘a short and plain statement of the
claim showing that the pleader is entitled to relief.’ ” Id. at
508, quoting Fed. R. Civ. P. 8(a)(2).

Surprisingly, neither of the parties in this “employment dis-
crimination lawsuit” cited Swierkiewicz to the district court
and the district court does not appear to have applied it to
Maduka’s case. Only after we ordered the parties to prepare
to discuss the case at oral argument did counsel for Sunrise

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9335

incorporate Swierkiewicz’s standard
into his analysis,
although Maduka’s counsel failed to do so even then.

[2] Admittedly, Swierkiewicz involves a slightly different
context: Maduka seeks relief pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1981,
while the plaintiff in Swierkiewicz asserted claims under Title
VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Age Discrimina-
tion in Employment Act of 1967. See id. at 509. Nevertheless,
there is little doubt that Swierkiewicz governs complaints in
section 1981 discrimination actions. At a minimum, its “rea-
soning applies to any claim to which the McDonnell Douglas
framework is applicable.” Edwards v. Marin Park, Inc., 356
F.3d 1058, 1062 (9th Cir. 2004); see also Swierkiewicz, 534
U.S. at 513 (“Rule 8(a)’s simplified pleading standard applies
to all civil actions, with limited exceptions.”); cf. Galbraith v.
County of Santa Clara, 307 F.3d 1119, 1125-26 (9th Cir.
2002) (holding that Swierkiewicz overruled the heightened
pleading standards imposed by the Ninth Circuit on certain
constitutional tort claims). Since we employ McDonnell
Douglas’s summary
judgment evidentiary approach
to
employment discrimination claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1981,
see, e.g., Rodriguez v. Gen. Motors Corp., 904 F.2d 531, 532
(9th Cir. 1990), it logically follows that we employ Swier-
kiewicz’s pleadings approach to these claims as well. We
therefore hold that in order to survive a Rule 12(b)(6) motion
to dismiss, a complaint asserting a claim for employment dis-
crimination pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1981 “must contain only
‘a short and plain statement of the claim showing that the
pleader is entitled to relief.’ ” Swierkiewicz, 534 U.S. at 508,
quoting Fed. R. Civ. P. 8(a)(2).

III.

Conceding Swierkiewicz’s applicability, Sunrise asserts that
the district court in fact faithfully followed it. Our review,
however, yields a different conclusion: the district court did
not follow the teaching of Swierkiewicz that “the Federal

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MADUKA v. SUNRISE HOSPITAL

Rules do not contain a heightened pleading standard for
employment discrimination suits.” Id. at 515.

[3] The district court framed “[t]he critical question” as
“whether Maduka has alleged sufficient facts showing that he
was similarly situated to a non-African American doctor, but
nevertheless received different treatment.” It concluded that
the Complaint was inadequate under this test because it
included “only conclusory allegations of racial discrimination,
and . . . fail[ed] to allege any fact or facts constituting either
direct or circumstantial evidence of discrimination.” This
approach is inconsistent with Swierkiewicz’s willingness to
“allow[ ] lawsuits based on conclusory allegations of discrim-
ination to go forward,” id. at 514, and it ignores Swier-
kiewicz’s command that “an employment discrimination
plaintiff need not plead a prima facie case of discrimination,”
id. at 515; see also Edwards, 356 F.3d at 1061 (“Swierkiewicz
overruled the . . . practice of imposing, at the dismissal stage,
the prima facie case framework of McDonnell Douglas
. . . .”). Whether “similarly situated individuals outside
[Maduka’s] protected class were treated more favorably” is
one of the four criteria for a prima facie case under McDon-
nell Douglas, Leong v. Potter, 347 F.3d 1117, 1124 (9th Cir.
2003), but Maduka’s Complaint need not satisfy this require-
ment under Swierkiewicz. Simply put, the district court erred
in not applying “the ordinary rules for assessing the suffi-
ciency of a complaint.” Swierkiewicz, 534 U.S. at 511.

IV.

[4] We do not determine here whether Maduka’s complaint
“satisf[ies] only the simple requirements of Rule 8(a).” Id. at
513. Rather, we remand to the district court so that it may do
so in the first instance.

REVERSED and REMANDED.