A Leon County circuit judge has dismissed with prejudice a lawsuit seeking to block or invalidate the City of Tallahassee’s transfer of Tallahassee Memorial Hospital assets to Florida State University.
In an eight-page order filed Monday, Aug. 31, Circuit Judge J. Lee Marsh granted motions to dismiss filed by the City of Tallahassee and the Florida State University Board of Trustees. The ruling ends the case at the trial-court level unless the plaintiffs pursue an appeal.
The lawsuit was filed April 30 by the Tallahassee Branch NAACP and four residents — Jacqueline Y. Perkins, Moises Humberto Martinez, Ada Kilpatrick and Wilson Barnes. The plaintiffs sought declaratory and injunctive relief challenging the city’s March 11 vote to transfer the hospital assets to FSU.
The complaint argued the city failed to comply with Section 155.40 of Florida law in carrying out the transaction and alleged the transfer could put health care for indigent residents at risk.
Marsh dismissed the case on what he described as “multiple independent and alternative grounds,” finding that each was sufficient on its own to require dismissal.
First, the court ruled the plaintiffs lacked standing under Section 155.40. Marsh found that the law provides a specific process for challenging a hospital sale or lease and limits an “interested party” to someone submitting a proposal to buy or lease the hospital along with the governing board. None of the plaintiffs submitted such a proposal or sought appellate review of a decision by the Secretary of the Agency for Health Care Administration.
The court also found the plaintiffs lacked standing under broader legal principles because they had not alleged a specific injury different from that potentially experienced by the community generally. The order characterized their status as residents and possible future hospital patients as a generalized grievance and found their claimed financial injury depended upon a speculative series of future events.
In a separate and potentially significant finding, Marsh ruled that Section 155.40 does not apply to the transaction.
The statute addresses the sale or lease of a public hospital to a for-profit or nonprofit Florida entity. FSU, Marsh wrote, is neither. Instead, FSU is a governmental entity and an agency of the State of Florida. Therefore, the court concluded, transferring the assets to FSU falls outside the type of transaction regulated by the statute.
Marsh also determined that allowing the plaintiffs to amend their complaint would be futile because the legal defects identified by the court could not be corrected through new allegations. The case was therefore dismissed with prejudice, making the ruling final at the circuit-court level.
The judge emphasized that his ruling should not be interpreted as an endorsement of the city’s hospital-transfer policy.
“This court can only decide whether or not the policy is legal,” Marsh wrote, adding that the court cannot “second guess whether that is a good or bad policy.”
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