Melamed v. Cedars-Sinai Medical Center
Annotate this CasePlaintiffs filed suit against defendants after he was suspended from his position as a physician at Cedars-Sinai. The suspension stemmed from plaintiff's operation on a young patient, which resulted in complications requiring corrective surgery. The trial court granted the hospital's anti-SLAPP, Code of Civil Procedure 425.16, motion based on its contention that plaintiff's claim arose out of a protected activity—the medical staff's peer review process—and that plaintiff could not show a probability of success on the merits. The court concluded that defendants' acts relating to plaintiff's suspension and peer review process constituted protected activity for purposes of the anti-SLAPP statute and plaintiff's claims arose from that protected activity. Because plaintiffs' claims arose from defendants' protected activity, the burden shifted to plaintiff to submit admissible evidence supporting a prima facie case in his favor. In this case, the court concluded that plaintiff failed to establish a probability of success on the merits of his claims under the Health and Safety Code and he failed to exhaust his administrative remedies. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment.