Bizarre behavior had overcome Jersey City Police Officer Henry M. Hart. In the midst of a deteriorating marriage, Hart started to act out. He slashed four tires of a car parked at his home and went on to attempt to slash the telephone and cable television wires.
When his employers picked up on Hart's escapades, they took action, Reluctant to let Hart walk around with a gun, they ordered him to undergo treatment with a psychologist. When Hart refused, he was forced to turn in his gun and uniform. Soon after Hart was ordered to undergo a fitness-for-duty examination, including drug tests and psychological evaluation. Based on the results of the tests, Hart was returned to duty and recommended to undergo outpatient alcohol counseling. Hart's suspension was published in an in-house police department bulletin. This publication lead Hart to file several claims against the Jersey City Police Department and Jersey City. Among the claims: intentional infliction of emotional distress, defamation, intrusion of seclusion, false light and one § 1983 claim. A motion judge dismissed all the state law claims and a trial court dismissed the § 1983 claim. Hart appealed to the Superior Court of New Jersey, Appellate Division.
Holding: The appellate court sided with the lower courts. Hart's claim for intentional infliction of emotional distress failed because there had been no outrageous conduct on the part of the police department. Without malice or disregard for falsity, both the defamation and false light claims also failed. Since the published statements were true, no unverifiable picture of Hart bad been painted. The intrusion of seclusion claim also went the way of the other claims but for a different reason. As a police officer exercising certain power and occupying a position of public trust, Hart had a diminished expectation of privacy.
Although the court recognized an individual's 14th Amendment right to refuse medical treatment (citing Cruzan v. Director, Missouri Dep't of Health, 497 U.S. 261 [1990]), it stated that such a right is not absolute. As a police officer with access to firearms, the police department had not infringed on Hart's rights by ordering tests and treatment.
| John G. Culhane, Esq. Professor of Law Widener University School of Law |
Professor Culhane comments: The Hart court noted that the privacy claim alleging that the plaintiff's solitude had been intruded upon was foreclosed by the diminished expectation of privacy that police officers possess. The court might better have noted that neither the department nor its employees had engaged in the type of intrusive conduct that would be "highly offensive to a reasonable person", as the tort requires.
The court had then to address plaintiff's claim that he was denied the fundamental right to refuse unwanted medical care, a right protected under the 14th Amendment's guarantee of liberty. The vehicle for redressing the right would be the claim under § 1983, but the high hurdles to success under that statute could not be cleared.
The court noted that public officials enjoy qualified immunity under § 1983, and are not liable so long as their "conduct does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known," (quoting Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800 [1982]).
"Even were the employee not charged with such an important public responsibility, a psychiatric examination would doubtless have been warranted because of the effects plaintiff's behavior might be expected to have on his work."
Given this demanding standard, the appellate court had little difficulty in agreeing with the trial court that "plaintiff had made no prima facie showing that a clearly established right was impinged." The plaintiffs right to refuse medical treatment had to be weighed against the interest of others, especially in this case, where "[i]t was a matter of public record that [plaintiff] had been exhibiting alarming behavior." As the court noted, plaintiff, a police officer, had "authoritative sway and access to arms." Further, the issue of qualified immunity in such a case was properly a matter for pre-trial disposition.
Even were the employee not charged with such an important public responsibility, a psychiatric examination would doubtless have been warranted because of the effects plaintiff's behavior might be expected to have on his work. The focus should be on the connection between the plaintiff's ability to perform the tasks required of the job and the test ordered. The test in this case was coercive (because it was made a condition of plaintiff's removal from suspension), but the question should be whether the coercion was improper. In cases in which the required test bears no legitimate connection to plaintiff's job performance, a court would probably (and properly) find that a claim had been stated. In this case, though, the city and its higher-ups were acting quite reasonably.
